Schools and Colleges: Special Educational Needs Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBaroness Bull
Main Page: Baroness Bull (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Bull's debates with the Department for Education
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberThe national funding formula is structured, as the noble Baroness is aware, to make sure that funding is targeted towards pupils who need additional support. In 2024-25, over £4.5 billion, or about 10% of the formula, is allocated according to deprivation factors, and £7.8 billion, almost 18%, will be allocated for additional needs factors. Both those elements correlate with the prevalence of SEND.
My Lords, the Minister will know that there are many thousands of individual special needs teachers who go that extra mile in meeting the very individual needs of young people with special needs. What is the department doing to ensure that, where people have come up with innovative ways to address needs, learning is both retained within the institution, as in the original Question, and shared with other schools across the sector?
That is precisely what we are aiming to do through our practitioner standards. The noble Baroness will be aware that we are starting with the biggest areas of additional needs: speech, language and communication; autism; and mental health and well-being. We have a twin approach; we partly have academic researchers looking at the evidence base, but we are also working very closely with practitioners to make sure we capture the best practice, and then publish and share it.