MNI INTERVIEW: GBP6 Bn UK Budget Gap Without School Reform

The UK government is likely to top up its education budget into 2028 to cover some or all of a GBP6 billion spending gap for attending pupils with special educational needs unless it finds a way to overhaul allocations to the fast-growing category, a think tank researcher told MNI.

Covering the shortfall on SEND would require the government to either raise education spending or reallocate 11% of the budget currently intended for mainstream schools, the Institute for Fiscal Studies' Luke Sibieta said in a phone interview. 

"We know that the government has had to squeeze mainstream school budgets to pay for ever-increasing spending on special needs," Sibieta said, adding "I don't think there's any likelihood the government is going to cut mainstream school budgets by 11%."

"The room for a six billion pound increase in the education budget is limited, to put it mildly. And so it then comes back to whether they can still slow the growth in spending on special educational needs, and that will depend on the extent of the reforms they publish in an upcoming white paper." (See MNI INTERVIEW: BOE Dec Cut Chances Overestimated - Saunders)

The Office for Fiscal Responsibility, the UK's fiscal watchdog, identified a GBP six billion gap between expended funding and spending in 2028 on SEND, which it described as a "key [risk] to the medium-term fiscal forecast" in its Economic and Fiscal Outlook published alongside the Nov 26 budget. (See MNI INTERVIEW: UK Fiscal Gap Needs Simple Tax Hikes - King)

The government will outline reforms to reform the SEND system in a white paper published later this year. A Department for Education spokesman told MNI "we have been totally clear that any SEND deficit will be absorbed within the whole government budget."