Asked by: Baroness King of Bow (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether there have been any cases where an academy has refused to admit a Special Educational Needs pupil owing to budgetary constraints; and, if so, how many.
Answered by Lord Nash
On behalf of the Secretary of State, the Education Funding Agency (EFA) deals with academy special educational needs (SEN) admission determination requests involving pupils in receipt of a statement of SEN or Education, Health and Care plan. Between January 2013 and November 2014 the EFA handled 56 admission determination requests.
The EFA does not categorise complaints about the teaching of children with SEN by academy schools, or whether a request for an SEN admission determination was received because an academy refused to admit a child owing to budgetary constraints.
Asked by: Baroness King of Bow (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many complaints they have received regarding (1) the admission decisions in relation to children with Special Educational Needs (SEN), and (2) the teaching of children with SEN, by academy schools.
Answered by Lord Nash
On behalf of the Secretary of State, the Education Funding Agency (EFA) deals with academy special educational needs (SEN) admission determination requests involving pupils in receipt of a statement of SEN or Education, Health and Care plan. Between January 2013 and November 2014 the EFA handled 56 admission determination requests.
The EFA does not categorise complaints about the teaching of children with SEN by academy schools, or whether a request for an SEN admission determination was received because an academy refused to admit a child owing to budgetary constraints.
Asked by: Baroness King of Bow (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many applications to establish a free school with a focus on inclusion of disabled learners, with or without Special Educational Needs, have been agreed to, and how many refused, by the Secretary of State.
Answered by Lord Nash
Since 2010 we have received over 1500 applications to open a free school, all of which will have had some focus on the inclusion of disabled learners. Within this number we have received 89 applications to establish special free schools, 22 of which have been approved to proceed to the pre-opening stage and 67 rejected. The 67 applications were rejected because they failed to meet our quality threshold.
Three of the 11 open special free schools have been inspected by Ofsted, (with two being rated as ‘Good’ and one as ‘Outstanding’). Once open, all free schools have a statutory duty to make sure disabled students are not discriminated against and to promote their interests.
Asked by: Baroness King of Bow (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, for each year since 2010 what was the average time for (1) a permanently excluded disabled pupil with a Special Educational Need (SEN), and (2) a permanently excluded disabled pupil without SEN, to be accepted at another school.
Answered by Lord Nash
The Department for Education does not collect information regarding the length of time it takes for an excluded pupil to be accepted at another school.
Asked by: Baroness King of Bow (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, for each year since 2010, what percentage of exclusions from (1) maintained schools, and (2) academy schools, related to disabled pupils with or without statements.
Answered by Lord Nash
The Department for Education does not publish information on exclusions of pupils with special education needs (SEN) for academies.
Information for state-funded schools is published in the “Permanent and fixed-period exclusions in England: 2012 to 2013” Statistical First Release. This information is published online at:
www.gov.uk/government/statistics/permanent-and-fixed-period-exclusions-in-england-2012-to-2013
Table 9 gives a time series of the number of permanent exclusions of pupils with SEN. Tables 10a and 10b show the number of fixed-period exclusions of pupils with SEN and the number of pupils with SEN with one or more fixed- period exclusion, respectively. Data for earlier years can be found in the “Statistics: exclusions” series. This information is published online at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-exclusions