Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support schools experiencing staffing challenges in implementing SEND provision in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Recruiting and retaining expert teachers is critical to the government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child. This is why the government’s Plan for Change is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across secondary and special schools, and colleges over the course of this parliament.
In May 2025, the department announced a 4% pay award to school teachers and leaders, which, combined with the previous year’s 5.5% award, will mean school teachers will see an increase in their pay of almost 10% over two years.
The department’s interventions are having impact, with 2,346 more teachers across secondary and special schools in 2024/25. The latest census reported one of the lowest leaver rates since 2010, with 1,300 fewer teachers leaving the state-funded sector, and more teachers are returning to state schools than at any point in the last ten years. The latest data showed 17,274 teachers returned to the classroom.
There is significant work underway to ensure there is an appropriate training offer in place to support teachers and school leaders to create an inclusive school environment.
Our core teacher training offer includes significantly more content on adaptive teaching and supporting pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and this is supplemented by further SEND-specific training that is easy to access at any point in a teacher’s career through the Universal SEND Services contract. This programme aims to support the school and further education workforce, particularly in mainstream settings, to identify and meet the needs of children and young people with SEND earlier and more effectively.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of classroom support ratios in mainstream schools in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
School support staff, including classroom support staff, play a vital role in children’s education.
Headteachers are responsible for recruitment and deployment in their schools as they are best placed to understand the specific needs of their pupils and make staffing decisions accordingly.
The Education Endowment Foundation’s guidance report ‘Deployment of Teaching Assistants’ makes a number of recommendations to help schools make decisions about how to deploy their teaching assistants to ensure they are used effectively.
In October 2024 the department released the new Financial Benchmarking & Insights Tool to support schools. This service helps schools view and improve their spending, provision and deployment of staff by making comparisons to similar schools.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of funding levels for early intervention support for children in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The government aims to set up every child, regardless of their background, to have the best start in life. As announced in our strategy ‘Giving every child the best start in life’, our Best Start Family Hubs will have a dedicated staff member supporting early identification of additional needs and providing support and guidance to families.
Local authorities should distribute special educational needs inclusion funding for children with low and emerging needs. Disability access funding is designed to support disabled children's access. For children with complex needs, funding is available from local authorities’ high needs budgets.
In the 2025 Spending Review, we announced that funding for schools is increasing by £4.2 billion by 2028/29 compared to 2025/26. This will take per-pupil funding to its highest ever level and enable us to transform the SEND system for all children, from their early years and into school. We are continuing to develop plans to ensure all children get the outcomes and life chances they deserve.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of increased SEND responsibilities on (a) teacher and (b) headteacher retention in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
This government’s ambition is that all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or in alternative provision receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.
For 2025/26, we announced a Targeted Retention Incentive (TRI) worth up to £6,000 after tax for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who work in disadvantaged schools. Three schools in Surrey Heath constituency are eligible for the TRI.
In 2024, the department began delivery of the mandatory National Professional Qualification for Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators. Participants will develop the essential skills needed to set the strategic direction and conditions to support pupils with SEND to thrive.
To ensure that there are sufficient, high quality teachers and headteachers, the department has increased the core schools budget by £3.7 billion in 2025/26, totalling £65.3 billion. This is alongside the near 10% pay award for teachers over the last two years to ensure teaching is once again a respected and attractive profession.
The department is already seeing positive signs that the investment is delivering. The workforce has grown by 2,346 teachers full-time equivalent between 2023/24 and 2024/25 in secondary and special schools, the schools where they are needed most. This year also has one of the lowest leaver rates since 2010, with 1,300 fewer teachers leaving the state-funded sector.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support schools to (a) deliver inclusive education and (b) promote understanding of diverse backgrounds in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department is committed to improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools, including those in Surrey Heath, as well as ensuring special and alternative provision schools cater to those with the most complex needs.
The Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) programme tests a new model, providing health and education specialist support to upskill mainstream primary schools to better meet the needs of neurodivergent pupils at whole-school level. Schools in Surrey Heath have participated in this programme.
Our new regional improvement for standards and excellence teams will work with mainstream schools to help them become more inclusive places as one of four priority areas for improvement.
Ofsted will be holding leaders to account for inclusion. For the first time they have set out an explicit focus on inclusion in their new framework, which includes gathering evidence on how well schools understand disadvantaged pupils' needs.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support mainstream schools managing high-needs SEND pupils in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department is committed to improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools, including those in Surrey Heath, as well as ensuring special and alternative provision schools cater to those with the most complex needs.
The Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) programme tests a new model, providing health and education specialist support to upskill mainstream primary schools to better meet the needs of neurodivergent pupils at whole-school level. Schools in Surrey Heath have participated in this programme.
Our new regional improvement for standards and excellence teams will work with mainstream schools to help them become more inclusive places as one of four priority areas for improvement.
Ofsted will be holding leaders to account for inclusion. For the first time they have set out an explicit focus on inclusion in their new framework, which includes gathering evidence on how well schools understand disadvantaged pupils' needs.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions her Department has had with Surrey County Council on improving early intervention services for families in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department will fund Best Start Family Hubs in every local authority to ensure that children and families who need support the most can access it. Local authorities not currently funded through government Family Hubs programmes, which includes Surrey, will receive a development grant in 2025/26 to plan and begin setting up services to ensure national rollout from April 2026 when full funding is awarded. The role of local authorities will include identifying family hub sites. Services will vary depending on local needs. Surrey received £351,991 in October 2025.
In addition, last year the national rollout of Family Help, multi-agency child protection and family group decision making reforms through the Families First Partnership programme was confirmed. In 2025/26 the reforms are backed nationally by £541 million. Surrey received around £2.5 million in additional funding. The programme team have received and reviewed Surrey’s draft delivery plan and will be discussing shortly.
Surrey has already established a strong Early Help Partnership Board to analyse the needs of their communities and the Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership executive has endorsed plans to form a partnership project team to lead community engagement, develop shared data insights, and coordinate reform implementation. This team will feed into the Board.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of investing in early support services in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department will fund Best Start Family Hubs in every local authority to ensure that children and families who need support the most can access it. Local authorities not currently funded through government Family Hubs programmes, which includes Surrey, will receive a development grant in 2025/26 to plan and begin setting up services to ensure national rollout from April 2026 when full funding is awarded. The role of local authorities will include identifying family hub sites. Services will vary depending on local needs. Surrey received £351,991 in October 2025.
In addition, last year the national rollout of Family Help, multi-agency child protection and family group decision making reforms through the Families First Partnership programme was confirmed. In 2025/26 the reforms are backed nationally by £541 million. Surrey received around £2.5 million in additional funding. The programme team have received and reviewed Surrey’s draft delivery plan and will be discussing shortly.
Surrey has already established a strong Early Help Partnership Board to analyse the needs of their communities and the Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership executive has endorsed plans to form a partnership project team to lead community engagement, develop shared data insights, and coordinate reform implementation. This team will feed into the Board.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the number of specialist SEND school places that would be required to meet demand in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
For the first time in 2023, the School Capacity Survey (SCAP) asked local authorities to provide data on the capacity of special schools and the capacity of special educational needs units and resourced provision in mainstream schools.
The department now have a second year’s worth of data which tells us approximately how many places local authorities think were available on 1 May 2024. This is only approximate at the moment as it is the second year of data collection, and the data are still being developed in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.
The survey also asked local authorities to submit forecasts for the number of pupils with education, health and care plans resident in their local authority who are expected to need a place in specialist provision.
Specialist capacity and forecast data for all local authorities can be accessed on GOV.UK here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity/2023-24.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of SEND transport provision in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department’s home-to-school travel policy aims to make sure no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport. Local authorities must arrange free home-to-school travel for children of compulsory school age, 5 to 16, who attend their nearest school and would not be able to walk there because of the distance, their special educational needs, disability or mobility problem, or because the nature of the route means it would be unsafe for them to do so. There are extended rights to free travel for children from low-income families.
We have committed to improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools so fewer children need to travel long distances to a school that can meet their needs and will bring forward a White Paper with plans to improve the special educational needs and disabilities system.