Department for Education

Progress towards and attainment of Level 2 maths and English is essential for helping students seize opportunities in life, learning and work. The 16 to 19 maths and English Condition of Funding ensures students have this opportunity. Students aged 16 to 19 who have not yet achieved a GCSE grade 4 in maths are required to continue studying towards Level 2 maths as part of their study programme. Under the 16 to 19 maths and English Condition of Funding, institutions are required to deliver a minimum of 100 hours in-person, whole class, standalone teaching in maths each academic year for eligible students on 16 to 19 study programmes and T Levels. Any additional support, including remote, online delivery or private tuition can be delivered in addition to the minimum teaching hours.

The department is committed to thorough performance management and has in place robust processes to ensure that those who fall below the expected standards are supported to improve in a timely manner, using performance improvement plans (PIPs) where appropriate. While data on PIPs is not held centrally, the figures below show the number of employees identified as receiving additional performance support in each financial year. Those who cannot improve their performance, despite this additional support, may be dismissed.

Young people must continue in education or training until their 18th birthday and may do so through full-time study, full-time work or volunteering combined with part-time learning, or an apprenticeship, while local authorities hold statutory duties to identify and support those needing help, including young people who are not in education, employment or training.

Apprenticeships allow young people to earn and learn. Employers receive financial support to hire young apprentices, including up to £2,000 for small and medium sized enterprises taking on 16 to 24-year-old new starters. Foundation apprenticeships were introduced in August 2025, to give young people a route into critical sectors.

Through the Careers and Enterprise Company, the department is supporting schools to deliver high quality, employer-led careers advice, giving young people clearer insight into the full range of pathways available. We are also bridging the gap between education and work with our commitment to two weeks’ worth of work experience for every secondary pupil.

The Post 16 Education and Skills White Paper set out major reforms, including new Vocational Levels alongside A Levels and T Levels, a further study pathway with a Foundation Certificate, and an occupational pathway with an Occupational Certificate to support progression into study, work or apprenticeships.

For those who want to move into work after they are 18 but cannot find work, the Department for Work and Pensions is strengthening support through the Youth Guarantee, supported by £2.5 billion of investment to create 500,000 opportunities for young people to earn and learn. This includes the delivery of eight Youth Guarantee trailblazers in England, the expansion of Youth Hubs to more than 360 areas across Great Britain, and the introduction of a new Youth Guarantee Gateway in jobcentres, providing more intensive support to 16 to 24-year-olds.

Together these measures demonstrate the government’s commitment to backing young people.

Unlike commercial loans, student loans carry significant protections for borrowers. Student loan repayments are linked to income, not to the amount borrowed or interest applied. As repayments remain income contingent, if a borrower’s salary remains the same, their monthly repayments will also stay the same.

Repayments are made at a constant rate of 9% above the earnings threshold. Borrowers earning under the earnings threshold are not required to make repayments. Any outstanding loan, including interest built up, is cancelled at the end of the loan term with no detriment to the borrower, and debt is never passed on to family members or descendants.

The government appreciates that making student loan repayments does have an impact on individuals. This is why there are unique protections for borrowers, and the finance system is heavily subsidised by taxpayers.

I refer the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire to the answer of 7 April 2026 to Question 121697.

Schools are required to offer multiple opportunities for pupils to hear directly from apprenticeship, further education and training providers.

The government has adopted updated Gatsby Benchmarks into statutory guidance. They place greater emphasis on high quality information about alternative pathways. Schools are expected to provide pupils with up-to-date labour market information and information about apprenticeships, T Levels and other technical qualifications across a range of sectors.

The government’s commitment to delivering two weeks’ worth of work experience for every young person will further support awareness of alternative pathways, giving secondary pupils practical insights into a wide range of employers and progression routes.

Through the Careers and Enterprise Company, the department is continuing to invest in support for careers leaders to embed the Gatsby Benchmarks in schools and to improve pupils’ access to meaningful encounters with employers and providers, workplace experiences and personal guidance.

Civil Servants are appointed on merit on the basis of fair and open competition and are expected to carry out their role with dedication and a commitment to the Civil Service and its core values: integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality.

The department does not hold centrally collated data on the number of breaches of the Civil Service Code.

On 17 March 2026, Pennoweth Primary School, along with all schools currently on the free breakfast clubs programme waitlist, received a notification from the department to invite them to join the free breakfast clubs programme and deliver from September 2026.

The government will provide access to NHS-funded mental health support teams (MHSTs) in every school by 2029, with around six in ten pupils expected to have access by April 2026. Data for 2024/25 is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transforming-children-and-young-peoples-mental-health-provision.

MHSTs supplement existing pastoral provision, and schools retain the freedom to determine support based on pupil need, making best use of their funding.

Alongside providing direct support to pupils, MHSTs can also work with the mental health lead in each school to introduce or develop a whole-school approach to mental health.

The department also encourages whole-school approaches to promoting children and young people's mental health and wellbeing, which includes schools equipping teachers with the skills and knowledge to recognise and respond appropriately to pupil’s mental health needs. The department’s guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/promoting-children-and-young-peoples-emotional-health-and-wellbeing.

To support education staff, the department provides a resource hub for mental health leads, and a targeted support guide and hub to help choose evidence-based targeted support for pupils.

The government will provide access to NHS-funded mental health support teams (MHSTs) in every school by 2029, with around six in ten pupils expected to have access by April 2026. Data for 2024/25 is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transforming-children-and-young-peoples-mental-health-provision.

MHSTs supplement existing pastoral provision, and schools retain the freedom to determine support based on pupil need, making best use of their funding.

Alongside providing direct support to pupils, MHSTs can also work with the mental health lead in each school to introduce or develop a whole-school approach to mental health.

The department also encourages whole-school approaches to promoting children and young people's mental health and wellbeing, which includes schools equipping teachers with the skills and knowledge to recognise and respond appropriately to pupil’s mental health needs. The department’s guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/promoting-children-and-young-peoples-emotional-health-and-wellbeing.

To support education staff, the department provides a resource hub for mental health leads, and a targeted support guide and hub to help choose evidence-based targeted support for pupils.

Since 2022, the department has invested around £33 million in supported internships to provide more opportunities for young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) to transition into sustained, paid employment.

As set out in the SEND Code of Practice, local authorities must keep their educational and training provision under review, including the sufficiency of provision, and each local authority’s local offer must include information on supported internships.

The availability of apprenticeships is determined by employers choosing to offer apprenticeship opportunities. The ‘Find an Apprenticeship’ service allows people to identify opportunities from Disability Confident employers.

The government is working to ensure that a learning difficulty or disability is not a barrier to people who want to realise the benefits of an apprenticeship. Additional Learning Support funding is available to training providers to make reasonable adjustments to support apprentices with learning difficulties and disabilities. The government also pays £1,000 to both employers and providers for apprentices aged 16 to 18 and for apprentices aged 19 to 24 who have an education, health and care plan, or have been, or are, in local authority care.

The early years workforce is at the heart of our mission to give every child the best start in life and deliver the Plan for Change. This is why the department is supporting the sector to attract talented staff and childminders by creating conditions for improved recruitment, alongside programmes to better utilise the skills of the existing workforce and make early years careers as accessible as possible.

The department is attracting new people into the early years sector through initiatives like our national recruitment campaign and financial incentives programmes. We are also ensuring there is a career path for everyone who wants to become an early years teacher, through increasing places on our existing teacher training programmes and introducing a new early years teacher degree apprenticeship route.

The department is confident that through our Best Start in Life Strategy, we can lay the foundations for long-term change. We will give early years educators the status they deserve, creating more opportunities to enter the profession, gain higher qualifications, and build fulfilling careers.

It is our ambition that all families have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, giving every child the best start in life and delivering on our Plan for Change.

Children become eligible for the working parent entitlement from 1 September, 1 January or 1 April, the term after they reach the relevant age and meet relevant eligibility criteria.

Depending on when a child is born and when the eligibility criteria are met, there will be differing periods to wait until the relevant termly date.

Termly deadlines enable local authorities and childcare providers to better plan and ensure sufficient early years places are available for parents each term, as there are clear periods for when children are likely to enter into a place.

The department uses the early years national funding formulae (EYNFF) to allocate early years entitlement funding to local authorities in a fair and transparent way.

The formulae ensure each area receives a base rate for each age group individually, regardless of location or individual need. On top of this, additional needs funding is allocated to reflect the proportion of children in each area who are disadvantaged, have English as an additional language, or have more complex special educational needs, recognising the higher costs of supporting these groups. An area cost adjustment is also applied to account for local variations in staffing and premises costs.

Through this approach, the department aims to ensure funding reflects children’s needs and local cost pressures throughout England, including in Sheffield.

We have committed to reviewing early years funding, including the national funding formulae, to ensure funding continues to match needs. We will consult the sector on changes by summer 2026.

In the recent consultation ‘SEND reform: putting children and young people first’, the government proposed holding schools to account on how they will take meaningful steps to invest in inclusion through a published Inclusion Strategy.

On 25 March 2026, the department published the inclusive mainstream fund (IMF) methodology alongside best practice for schools. These documents provided detail on the requirement on schools to produce an Inclusion Strategy, along with information on how the IMF will be allocated to support schools’ inclusive practice. More information on how to produce an effective and ambitious Inclusion Strategy will be published soon.

On 23 February, the government published its ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ White Paper where we announced new investment of over £200 million over three years to strengthen the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) offer in Best Start Family Hubs. This includes funding for a family-facing practitioner in every hub to support children with additional needs and their families from the earliest stages.

Our reforms to the SEND system will give families a more joined up local offer, with Best Start Family Hubs, early years settings, local authorities and health partners working together to ensure children with SEND and their families get the support they need. Portage services play an important role in supporting children with additional needs and Best Start Family Hubs will join up local services and build capacity through partnership working in every community.

Best Start Family Hubs guidance was published on 30 March and is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/every-child-achieving-and-thriving.

In the past year, we have committed in Parliament to undertake the required post-legislative scrutiny of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. This will include considering the coming into force of measures, where not yet commenced.

The department will, as part of its usual process, continue to periodically review legislation within its area of responsibility as part of policy development.

On Monday 23 February, we launched a full 12-week consultation on our special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reforms because we want to hear directly from people across the country who have an interest in these reforms and build on our national conversation.

There are three ways that we are ensuring we capture the views of those who are part of the SEND community. First, we are hosting a series of online and in-person events throughout the consultation period, including sessions delivered in partnership with the Council for Disabled Children. More information on these sessions will be advertised in the coming weeks.

Second, we are engaging with a range of SEND organisations, including autism organisations, and representatives of those organisations will also be on ministerial engagement groups. Members of our Expert Advisory Group for Inclusion, SEND Development Group, and Complex Needs Group have autism expertise, and we also plan to engage with representatives from other organisations that specialise in autism at our planned deep dives. We are also engaging with academics in this space. Finally, we continue to engage with young people, including those with autism, on the consultation as we did pre-publication.

Third, the department has a dedicated mailbox for SEND reform consultation responses and is accepting non-written as well as written responses to consultation questions. The mailbox is available at: SENDreform.CONSULTATION@education.gov.uk.

The consultation, including accessible versions, can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/send-reform-putting-children-and-young-people-first.

Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we are strengthening the role of education and childcare in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements to better protect children from abuse, neglect, and exploitation.

All schools must also have regard to the ‘Keeping children safe in education’ statutory guidance when carrying out their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Part one of this guidance sets out what all staff need to know and do if they have any concerns about a child, including the process for making referrals to local authority children’s social care and for statutory assessments.

Information on the rate at which boys move from children in need status to becoming looked after children is not readily available, nor has the department undertaken any analysis of the specific support needs of boys who experience this escalation.

The latest children in need statistics were published in October 2025 and show that there were 220,210 male children in need as at 31 March 2025. This figure includes the 46,040 boys who were looked after on the same date. These statistics are available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-in-need/2025.

The latest children looked after statistics were published in November 2025, and can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoptions/2025.

The department collects different categories of data for different cohorts of individuals depending on their interaction with the education and children’s services system in England. These data are collected through statutory data collections with categories including:

• Identifiers such as name and address.
• Characteristics such as sex or ethnicity.
• Details of any special educational needs.
• Details of schools attended.
• Information on absence and exclusions.
• Information relating to academic performance.
• Information relating to any contact with children’s services.
• Information relating to destinations after finishing school.

This data provides a robust evidence base that enables the department to understand how well the education and children’s services sectors are functioning and ensure policy interventions are effectively targeted. The data also supports essential functions such as allocating school funding fairly and enabling parents, Parliament and the wider public to access clear information about educational outcomes and system performance.

Student loans are not like commercial loans, as they carry significant protections for borrowers, and repayments are linked to income, not to the amount borrowed or interest applied. As repayments remain income-contingent, if a borrower’s salary remains the same, their monthly repayments will also stay the same.

Repayments are made at a fixed rate above the earnings threshold and borrowers earning under the earnings threshold are not required to make repayments. Any outstanding loan, including interest built up, is cancelled at the end of the loan term with no detriment to the borrower, and debt is never passed on to family members or descendants.

The government appreciates that making student loan repayments does have an impact on individuals. This is why there are unique protections for borrowers, and the finance system is heavily subsidised by taxpayers.

As set out in the final Local Government Finance Settlement, all local authorities with a special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) related High Needs deficit will be eligible in 2026/27 to receive a High Needs Stability Grant that will cover 90% of their accumulated High Needs‑related DSG deficit up to the end of 2025/26. This is conditional on each local authority securing my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education’s approval of their Local SEND Reform Plan, as confirmed in the government’s announcement on managing accumulated SEND deficits.

Each local area will be required to set out credible and deliverable actions that support a more inclusive and financially sustainable system, consistent with the vision for earlier intervention, stronger mainstream inclusion and improved outcomes for children and young people as set out in the Schools White Paper.

The department publishes information on the number of education, health and care (EHC) plans that are issued within the statutory 20-week timeframe. Excluding cases where exceptions apply, the number and percentage of plans issued within this timeframe for both Cambridgeshire and England are available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/b46a4968-aafd-4bd6-948a-08de4155ee12.

Information on EHC plans maintained by local authorities, including requests for an EHC needs assessment, the number of assessments carried out, the number where a decision is made to assess, and the number of plans issued within 20 weeks, are included in the annual statistical release. The latest January 2025 statistics were published in June 2025 here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-health-and-care-plans/2025.

The department monitors Cambridgeshire’s EHC plan timeliness through regular monitoring meetings. The information shared at these meetings is not published but informs the support and challenge that the department provides.

Furthermore, as set out in the recent Schools White Paper and its associated consultation, the department is consulting on proposals to reform the special educational needs and disabilities system, including to ensure that the information, advice and guidance provided offers effective support for children, young people and their families, and promotes greater fairness across the system. The consultation can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/send-reform-putting-children-and-young-people-first.

Despite the efforts of dedicated staff, our school system is not serving all children well, with unacceptable disparities in attainment existing across all phases of education and all areas of the country.

Disadvantaged children, especially white working-class children, and those with special educational needs and disabilities are not succeeding as they should.

The attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and all other pupils remains high and persistent at both primary and secondary.

The ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ white paper establishes the department’s plan to improve the outcomes of all children and young people.

When children born under this government finish secondary school, it is our ambition that all children achieve higher standards and the disadvantage gap will be halved, equating to 30,000 more disadvantaged young people passing their English and maths GCSEs than today.

To deliver this we will provide family support to help more disadvantaged children arrive at reception school ready, strengthen teacher recruitment and retention, broaden the curriculum and offer high-quality enrichment opportunities.

I refer my hon. Friend, the Member for Poole to the answer of 24 March 2026 to Question 121419.

Too many children are held back by their background. That is why, through the Opportunity Mission, we will break the link between background and future success.

The ‘Every child achieving and thriving’ White Paper establishes the department’s plan to improve the outcomes of all children, building on support at home with a stretching, enriching and inclusive school experience. Our ambition is that all children achieve higher standards and the disadvantage gap is halved. This equates to 30,000 more disadvantaged young people passing their English and maths GCSEs than today.

Additionally, we are driving standards through new RISE teams, a refreshed high-quality curriculum and assessment system and recruiting 6,500 additional teachers - as well as taking action to address barriers to learning.

Alongside this, around £3.2 billion is being provided in the 2026/27 financial year to state-funded schools in England through the pupil premium, to support disadvantaged pupils so they achieve and thrive in education.

'Giving every child the best start in life' sets out the immediate steps to deliver on our commitment to make early education and childcare more accessible and affordable. We have rolled out the expansion of government funded hours so that working parents can now access 30 hours per week from the term after their child turns nine months. We’ve also announced Best Start Family Hubs, backed by £500 million, and launched the Better Futures Fund, a new £500 million fund to break down barriers to opportunity for up to 200,000 vulnerable children and young people.

Finally, our Child Poverty Strategy will lift 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030. This includes the expansion of free school meals. Providing over half a million disadvantaged children with a free lunchtime meal will lead to higher attainment, improved behaviour and better outcomes.

The department has issued guidance relevant to special school expansion in high needs provision capital allocations. This sets out how councils should assess need, plan delivery routes for new capacity, and, where appropriate, expand or refurbish existing special schools, while also strengthening mainstream inclusion through inclusion bases.

Guidance on Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) deficits has also been published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government as part of the Local Government Finance Settlement. The explanatory note confirms that High Needs Stability Grant payments, covering up to ninety per cent of high needs related DSG deficits accrued up to the end of the 2025/26 financial year, will only be released once a Local Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Reform Plan has been approved. This requirement was reiterated in the material circulated alongside the Local SEND Reform Plan commission.

All documents are available on GOV.UK.

The department recognises the issues faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children and young people, and how schools and others can make a positive difference.

We are currently reviewing the report’s findings alongside existing evidence on school exclusions and ethnic disparities. This assessment will inform our ongoing work to ensure that behaviour and attendance policies are applied fairly and that schools are supported to meet the needs of all pupils, including Roma communities.

Under the Equality Act 2010, schools must not discriminate against pupils on the basis of their ethnic background. We have already published guidance for schools on complying with this duty.

The number of student loan borrowers who are not UK Nationals and withdrew from their latest recorded course in 2024/25 was 15,000 (to the nearest 500).

The department and the Student Loans Company have strengthened the quality and consistency of data in this area and now hold reliable information on borrowers’ UK national status and nationality.

The number of student loan borrowers who are not UK Nationals and withdrew from their latest recorded course in 2024/25 was 15,000 (to the nearest 500).

The department and the Student Loans Company have strengthened the quality and consistency of data in this area and now hold reliable information on borrowers’ UK national status and nationality.

Decisions about which languages to offer at GCSE in England are taken by four independent awarding organisations – AQA, OCR, Pearson Edexcel and WJEC – rather than by central government. These organisations have the freedom to create a Tamil GCSE based on the subject content for modern foreign languages set by the department. This decision would be informed by several factors, including the level of demand from schools and the proportion of the population in the UK speaking the language.

The Schools White Paper sets out unequivocal expectations for every local authority on the quality and timeliness of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support, including planning school places effectively and providing the expert support that schools and families need, with significant investment in local authorities to transform SEND support.

In March 2026 we commissioned local authorities, together with their integrated care boards, to develop SEND reform plans by June 2026.

The department will use these plans to hold them accountable to deliver strong outcomes for children and young people with SEND and will act decisively where progress does not materialise. Where failure is persistent, we will not hesitate to use the full range of intervention powers including removing the licence to deliver SEND services.

The government has received the School Teachers’ Review Body’s 36^th Report. As is the case each year once the report is received, the government is now in the process of discussing the recommendations and will publish the report, in addition to the government’s response, and launch the statutory consultation as soon as those discussions have concluded, making every effort to give schools as much notice of the impact on school budgets as is possible.

Recruiting and retaining expert teachers is at the heart of the government’s Plan for Change, with good progress already being made: the teaching workforce has grown by 2,346 FTE between 2023/24 and 2024/25, in secondary and special schools; the schools where they are needed most.

We are investing £200 million in special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) training to upskill staff in every school, college and nursery over the course of this Parliament. This training will cover children with SEND in their earliest years, through to age 25.

We are providing around £1.8 billion over the next three years for local area partnerships, including local authorities and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), to work together to develop a new ‘Experts at Hand’ offer, which will give schools direct access to support, advice, training and specialist expertise from professionals such as speech and language therapists (SaLTs), educational psychologists (EPs) and specialist teachers.

We are investing £15 million to establish new speech and language therapist advanced practitioners in every ICB geographical area, to get more SaLTs working in educational settings.

​In addition, we will continue to train at least 200 EPs per year in 2026 and 2027, backed by £26m.

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In every year of this Parliament, core funding for schools and special educational needs and disabilities is expected to increase, subject to future spending reviews. The government is committed to prioritising early intervention and is making a major increase in investment, with £4 billion over the three years of the Spending Review. This will reverse the trend of late intervention and escalation in needs.

Within this total, the Inclusive Mainstream Fund will provide over £500 million per financial year, over three years, to schools, colleges and early years settings to develop and embed improved inclusion practice. On Wednesday 25 March, the department published methodology documents explaining how funding will be allocated for the Inclusive Mainstream Fund. Details on the funding for schools and mainstream 16-19 provision are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inclusive-mainstream-fund-2026-to-2027. Details on the Inclusive Early Years Fund are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inclusive-early-years-fund-2026-to-2027. Funding from 2029 to 2030 onwards is subject to future spending reviews.

Also on 25 March, we announced further details on the allocation of £860 million of high needs capital funding as part of the landmark £3.7 billion announced to deliver 60,000 more specialist places. This funding will drive a transformative expansion of inclusion bases across the country, as well as adaptations to improve the inclusivity and accessibility of mainstream settings as well as supporting special school place creation where needed.

The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 limits the size of an infant class to 30 pupils per teacher. An infant class is one in which the majority of children will reach the age of 5, 6 or 7 during the school year, i.e. Reception, Year 1 and Year 2.

Through the reforms outlined in the Schools White Paper, we will ensure that children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) get the right support at every stage of their education.

We are also committed to supporting local areas to create high-quality places that are suitable to meet the needs of children and young people with SEND, by investing at least £3.7 billion in high needs capital funding between 2025/26 and 2029/30. This is to support local authorities to provide places for children and young people with SEND, or who require alternative provision, across early years settings, schools, and colleges.

As well as this, we are providing around £1.8 billion over the next three years for local area partnerships, including local authorities and Integrated Care Boards, to work together to develop a new ‘Experts at Hand’ offer. This is designed to strengthen the capability of mainstream education settings by providing access to professionals such as educational psychologists and speech and language or occupational therapists, providing earlier intervention and support for young people.

The special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) code of practice sets out the importance of information sharing across education, health and social care to support effective needs assessments and planning processes.

The department is determined to restore confidence in the system of support for children and young people with SEND and ensure they get the chance to achieve and thrive in their education and beyond, as set out in the recently published SEND reform consultation document, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/send-reform-putting-children-and-young-people-first.

We are committed to co-designing the future needs assessment process with parents, local authorities and experts to make sure we get it right. We continue to monitor and work closely with local authorities that have issues with their education, health and care plan processes. Where there are concerns about a local authority’s capacity to make the required improvements, we help the local authority to identify the problems and put in place an effective recovery plan.

The department has already consulted with colleagues in the Welsh government on analysis published in the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) consultation document comparing rates of special education needs across both nations. The use of data to assess the efficacy of the Welsh SEND reforms introduced in 2021 was not feasible due to variation at school and local authority level.

We will continue to work with the devolved governments as we progress the proposals set out in the SEND consultation document, as well as preparations for future legislation, to ensure that legislative impacts are fully understood and addressed.

The government set out its proposals for reforming the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) Tribunal in its ‘SEND Reform: Putting Children and Young People First’ consultation document.

The department proposes that the SEND Tribunal will make binding judgments on local authority decisions to not undertake an education, health and care (EHC) needs assessment, whether a child or young person meets the threshold for a specialist provision package or whether the package(s) offered is suitable. The Tribunal will also consider whether a local authority’s decision about the placement named in an EHC plan is reasonable and, if they find against the local authority, it will have the power to require the decision to be retaken.

The SEND reform proposals are subject to consultation and further details will be set out in the government’s response to the consultation.

It is our ambition that all families have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, giving every child the best start in life and delivering on our Plan for Change.

Parents of students are eligible for the universal 15 hours of free early education which is available to all three and four-year-olds regardless of family circumstances.

Students who work in addition to studying may be eligible for 30 hours free childcare if they meet the income requirements. PhD stipends are non-taxable income and therefore do not count towards the income requirements of the 30 hours childcare entitlement.

The government recognises the value of parents continuing in education and provides a range of support for students in higher education to assist them with childcare.

Through the Student Loans Company, the department offers a specific Childcare Grant (CCG) to support students with the costs of childcare whilst they are in study. The CCG offers parents support of up to 85% of their childcare costs up to a maximum of £183.75 a week for one child and £315.03 for two children. CCG support is provided to individuals where both parents are students, the student is a lone parent, or the student parent’s partner is on a low income. The government has no plans to extend CCG to postgraduate research students.

The Resilience Action Plan sets out the government’s strategic approach to how we will strengthen our domestic resilience and invest to protect the nation. Officials from the department regularly attend meetings to discuss the implementation of the Resilience Action Plan as well as matters of national security and defence.

The department is actively supporting this work. Officials in the department are in regular discussions with the Ministry of Defence and other government departments about the critical role children and young people play.

I refer the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell to the answer of 23 March 2026 to Question 117074.

The department currently sponsors 28 individuals on a Skilled Worker visa through a Certificate of Sponsorship.