Send and inclusion funding

WQ.119/2026

WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND LIFELONG LEARNING

BY DEPUTY V. LI OF ST. HELIER NORTH

QUESTION SUBMITTED ON MONDAY 6th JULY 2026

ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON MONDAY 13th JULY 2026

Question

"In relation to how Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and inclusion funding are structured and spent within the Children, Young People and Education and Skills (CYPES) Department, will the Minister –

1. provide a breakdown of how the additional SEND and inclusion funding has been allocated each year since its introduction in 2023, including by –
   1. early years, primary, secondary, and post-16 educational provision; and
   2. mainstream inclusion schools, special schools, and out-of-Island placements;
2. advise the split, in both full-time-equivalent posts and cost, between frontline SEND delivery and administration, monitoring and supervision within CYPES inclusion services;
3. explain what progress has been made to address the weaknesses in relation to records of need identified in the Island Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) review; and
4. detail any available data on how prevention and early identification of SEND or inclusion needs impact educational outcomes, in contrast to later intervention?"

Answer

1. Whilst badged exclusively as inclusion funding, the approved investment provided for a wider remit.  The  summary  below  sets  out  how  this  new  money  was  invested  across  the  system. Allocations are not tracked at this level beyond this initial phase, and values will have changed over time e.g. with the addition of annual pay awards.

Notes - The Central Inclusion Team has around 34 staff, including specialist teachers, education welfare officers, education psychologists and inclusion staff working across education settings.

We can however provide you with the current funding structure for inclusion across the various areas requested. As of 30th June 2026, Inclusion funding allocation is shown in the table below:

Notes

Post 16: Highlands College courses are generally designed to meet inclusion needs as an integral part of course delivery. As a result, these inclusion-related costs are embedded within each course budget and cannot be separately identified or extracted.

2. Staff are not categorised in either the finance or HR systems as administration; frontline or supervision. Standard data definitions do not exist for these terms. Estimates have therefore been made to the best of our knowledge based on the information available at a specific point in time. Assumptions are described separately for Central Inclusion service and the Other Teams in the following paragraphs.

Central inclusion teams

In practice, central inclusion teams all undertake a combination of monitoring, supervision, and frontline service delivery. For the purposes of this analysis, indicative FTEs have been allocated to each category as set out below, based on the following methodology:

Administration comprises back-office support functions for frontline teams, as well as certain frontline administrative activities.

Frontline services are delivered directly to schools to support improved outcomes for pupils and families and include teams such as Educational Psychology and Wellbeing facilitators, SEND statutory team, Outreach, Speech and Language Therapy, Education Welfare Officers, and the Virtual School, Social, Emotional and Mental Health Inclusion Team (SEMHIT) and the Autism and Social Communication Inclusion Team (ASCIT).

Other teams:

Across the wider education sector, including primary schools, secondary schools, special schools and post-16 education settings, the Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) split and costs for the requested categories are estimated as follows:

Administrative Staff:

This category includes inclusion administration support staff, attendance managers, secretaries, and other administrative roles.

Frontline:  

This category includes all inclusion service frontline delivery teams, such as teachers, learning support assistants, emotional wellbeing officers, counsellors, and other frontline staff. It also includes operational support roles that directly enable service delivery, such as caretakers, drivers, and kitchen staff at Mont à l'Abbé School.

Supervision and Monitoring:

This category includes team leaders and managers, Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs), Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs), and other staff with oversight, supervisory, or monitoring responsibilities. These posts will also have a significant amount of Frontline delivery.

Important Note

Funding for staff is tracked and reported by post rather than by the categories requested above. Consequently, the categorisation presented is an estimate that has been prepared to the best of our knowledge based on the information available at a specific point in time. It is also important to note that inclusion features as a component of many, many roles and, as with Post 16 comments above, cannot be separately identified or extracted

3. Action B3 from the immediate priorities plan, the departmental response to the SEND review, describes the action and updates for Record of Need as:

Action - Improve Records of Need (RoN) for pupils with SEND

Update (March 2026) - A new Principal Educational Psychologist has been appointed and starts next  term.  Schools  are  working  more  closely  with  CYPES  officers,  including  Educational Psychologists and SEND advisory staff. This means that panel decision making, and information sharing are becoming more consistent. RoN redesign work is in development and aligning with the Government's  strategic  financial  planning  and  our  development  of  new  Inclusive  Practice Guidance for teachers and school staff.

Since this last update the Principal Educational Psychologist has started, and the EP service is now at full capacity. Work to redesign the statutory assessment process along with a related school funding review continues. The next progress report, as will be tested by the (independent) Inclusion Executive Board, is due in the autumn term 26/27.

4. The department does not collect this data. The department subscribes to the well documented benefits of early intervention, evidenced most recently by increased funding for early years.