The pie isn't
getting bigger.
Just cut differently.

On 22nd July, Special Needs Jungle published a characteristically forensic explainer on a DfE consultation that had slipped past most of the sector's radar amid the end-of-term rush and a change of Education Secretary: “Upfront funding for mainstream schools: creating a local SEND inclusion formula.” It closes on 18th September, the same day as the EOTAS consultation. It deserves far more attention than it's getting.

This one is about money, and specifically about changing how money gets from the Department for Education to the child in front of a teacher. That sounds dry. It isn't. If this goes ahead in the way it's currently framed, it will change the incentives around identifying need, requesting an EHCP, and evidencing what a child actually receives, in ways that will land very differently depending on whether a school has kept good records.

How the Money Is Meant to Work Now

Strip away the jargon and mainstream SEND funding runs on three elements. Element 1 is core per-pupil funding, paid regardless of need. Element 2 is a notional SEN budget drawn from the same core funding, intended to cover support costs up to a threshold, currently £6,000 per pupil per year, that a school is expected to absorb itself. Element 3 is top-up funding from the Local Authority's High Needs Block, meant to follow the individual child once their needs exceed that threshold, and is where most EHCP-funded provision sits.

The £6,000 figure was set by a consultant in 2009 and hasn't kept pace with fourteen years of inflation. In practice, that means more and more pupils blow through the threshold, more schools go to the Local Authority for Element 3 top-up, and more of those requests arrive wrapped in an EHC needs assessment application, because that's the route that gets a school taken seriously. The DfE's own data confirms most EHCP requests now originate from schools, not families. The threshold that was supposed to be a backstop has become a funnel.

Why This Is a Bigger Deal Than It Looks

The stated logic is sound enough on its face. If schools have money in hand before a child's needs escalate, the theory goes, they can act earlier, they won't need to wait for a Local Authority panel decision, and fewer children will get stuck behind an EHCP application that exists mainly to unlock funding rather than to describe genuine need. That's a reasonable diagnosis of a real problem.

But the mechanism the DfE has reached for is a striking one. It wants to move a portion of high-needs funding away from following the individual pupil and towards following the cohort. As Special Needs Jungle's Matt Keer points out, that's the part of the international evidence base, largely drawn from systems very different to England's, that tends to show identified need and offered provision both falling when funding shifts from a per-pupil to a per-cohort basis. Nobody currently knows how much mainstream schools already spend on SEND from their core budgets. Nobody is proposing to measure that as part of this pilot, either.

And because this is an opt-in scheme, every participating Local Authority will design its own formula, subject to its own Schools Forum, its own executive, and DfE sign-off. That means potentially dozens of different local formulas nationally. For a single-academy-trust SENCO, that's manageable. For a multi-academy trust with schools spanning several Local Authority boundaries, or for a family whose child moves between areas, that's a genuinely difficult landscape to navigate consistently.

“Nothing in this consultation changes a Local Authority's statutory duties. What it changes is the paper trail that used to justify funding decisions automatically, because that paper trail was tied to an individual child and an individual assessment.”

Dan Howard, CEO & Co-founder — ProvisionIQ

Where the Risk Actually Sits

To be clear about what doesn't change: a school or trust that opts into a local SEND inclusion formula remains fully bound by the Children and Families Act 2014. The Local Authority must still consider every EHC needs assessment request on its merits, still issue EHCPs where the criteria are met, and still secure the provision an EHCP specifies. The DfE has said schools will experience “a smooth funding transition.” It has not said how it will hold individual Local Authorities to that promise, and the consultation is silent on what happens to special schools and alternative provision, which draw on the same High Needs Block and have no other funding pot to fall back on if a slice of it is carved off for mainstream use.

The practical risk is this. Right now, when a school seeks Element 3 top-up for a child, the request itself creates a record: the need, the evidence, the ask, the amount, tied to that child. Under a cohort-based formula, that individual trigger disappears for the money a school receives upfront. The statutory duty to identify, assess and provide for that child is completely unchanged. But the administrative habit that used to generate the evidence of it, almost as a side effect of chasing the funding, is gone.

The Part That Falls to Schools Regardless of How the Consultation Lands

Whatever DfE decides after 18th September, and whichever Local Authorities choose to opt in, one obligation doesn't move: a school still has to be able to show, for any individual child, what their needs are, what's being provided, and whether it's working. Under Element 3 as it stands today, chasing the funding forced that record to exist. Under a cohort-based formula, nothing forces it. The record has to be kept on purpose.

That's not a reason to oppose the reform, and it isn't the argument I'm making here. It's a reason schools shouldn't wait to find out whether their Local Authority opts in before getting their own house in order.

What I Keep Coming Back To

I've said before that the diagnosis-first model in SEND has been creaking for years, and that the answer isn't to wait for a label before support begins. This consultation is, in its own way, trying to solve the same problem from the funding side: stop making an EHC needs assessment the price of admission for a child getting help. I think that's the right instinct.

But removing the individual trigger for funding only works if something else takes its place to keep the individual child visible. Right now, the consultation doesn't say what that something else is. Until it does, the safest assumption for any school is that the paper trail has to be built deliberately, because the system that used to build it automatically is being redesigned to do something else. That's exactly the gap ProvisionIQ exists to close: a living, per-child record of need and provision that doesn't depend on which funding element happens to be paying for it this year.