An average-sized primary school will receive around £14,000 next year through a fund aimed at making mainstream education more inclusive for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.

Under plans set out by the government in its schools White Paper, the Inclusive Mainstream Fund will provide £1.6 billion over three years to support pupils with SEND in mainstream settings.

Tonight the Department for Education revealed how much mainstream schools are set to receive on average.

The average secondary school will receive around £48,000 in 2026-27 on top of its core funding allocations, the DfE said.

For an average-sized primary school of 275 pupils, the funding is equivalent to £51 per pupil, and for an average-sized secondary school of 1,000 students, it is £48 per student.

The £14,000 for a primary is also equivalent to around half of a teaching assistant’s salary, and for the average secondary school, the £48,000 funding could cover the salary of two teaching assistants.

Julia Harnden, deputy director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said the inclusive mainstream funding is “clearly not adequate to deliver the scale of change that is envisaged”.

“We recognise that there are other funding streams to support the SEND reforms - such as the capital allocations for inclusion bases - but delivery ultimately comes down to having sufficient numbers of trained staff to provide the support set out in the government’s white paper and needed by these children,” she added.

Leaders have previously told Tes that the Inclusive Mainstream Fund, which is worth £500 million a year across the whole system, “won’t go very far at all”.

The government says the fund, which starts next month, will “empower” schools to “deliver for children and young people with SEND”; for example, through small-group assistance in literacy and numeracy, and early interventions.

Councils to prioritise mainstream places

The DfE has also announced that councils will be expected to sign a written agreement to prioritise increasing specialist places in mainstream schools.

Tomorrow it will set out how £860 million will be allocated across every council in England next year through its high-needs capital allocation to provide more specialist places.

This fund is part of £3 billion aimed at creating 60,000 new specialist places, including inclusion bases and new special-school places.

The DfE said that councils will be required to sign a written agreement to prioritise increasing places in mainstream schools, and they will not receive future funding unless this is signed.

The DfE also expects councils to “adopt inclusive strategies”, such as reducing the number of children with SEND who need to travel long distances to school, and ensuring that every child who needs a place in an inclusion base can access one.

Councils can use their allocation to ensure sufficient special-school and alternative provision places for children and young people with the most complex needs, the DfE said.

But councils will be expected to give “evidence-based” justifications for why they have chosen to spend their funding on special-school places, rather than inclusive mainstream places.

The funding through the high-needs capital allocation can also be used to make schools environments more inclusive.

The DfE said this can include “providing a more comfortable sensory environment by enhancing ventilation, acoustics and lighting”.

Councillor Amanda Hopgood, chairwoman of the Local Government Association’s Children, Young People and Families Committee, said: “It is vitally important that inclusion is at the heart of reforming the SEND system, so it is good that government is investing in creating specialist places in mainstream schools, so children are able to attend their local school with their friends in their local area.”

Thousands more specialist places

In December, the DfE announced that up to 77 new special and AP free schools in the pipeline could be halted, with funding instead being given to councils to “more flexibly and quickly” deliver equivalent places.

Councils were told to decide whether to continue with plans to set up new free schools or opt to receive funding for places instead.

Tonight the DfE has said that £235 million will be allocated over the next two years to 32 local authorities that have chosen to receive equivalent per-pupil funding instead of a free school to create more specialist places.

This will create over 4,000 more specialist places, the DfE said.

An additional £2.1 billion will be allocated in capital maintenance funding for the financial year 2026-27 to improve the condition of school estates, such as by replacing roofs and heating systems.

The outcomes of schools’ applications to the Condition Improvement Fund will be announced later in the spring, the DfE said.