Oral Answers to Questions

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

1. If her Department will provide additional financial support to special educational needs providers in rural areas.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

I pay tribute to the life of the noble Baroness Boothroyd, who has sadly passed away. As the first and only woman Speaker, she blazed a trail for women, showing us that a woman’s place is not only in the House of Commons but at the top. Her legacy will live on and long be remembered in this place.

I know my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) is passionate about ensuring that people with special educational needs and disabilities get the support they need. I completely understand the complexities of a rural constituency, as I represent one myself, and it is why this Government introduced additional payments for small and remote mainstream schools, which are currently benefiting 23 schools in Rutland and Melton. More recently, in the autumn statement, we announced an extra £2 billion pounds for schools next year and the year after, meaning we will be spending more on schools than ever before, including £400 million to support high needs budgets from next April.

[Alicia Kearns]

I thank the Government for that investment in 23 schools in my constituency. However, the families my team and I support are sometimes waiting 40 weeks for a special educational needs assessment, which is a far beyond the six-week statutory period. So may I invite the Secretary of State to meet my local councils and schools in order to understand why we have so many difficulties in rural and small councils?

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. All of us will be aware of the huge impacts that long waiting times for diagnosis for autism and for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can have on children in our communities; many of us will see such cases in our surgeries. To address this, last year we invested £13 million, with a further £2.5 million this year, to improve autism assessment pathways. NHS England is developing national guidance to improve access to autism assessments and we are also committed to looking at improving data on ADHD assessment waiting times to help improve access. I am sure that she will join me in welcoming my Department’s SEND—special educational needs and disabilities—and alternative provision improvement plan, which we will be publishing within the next week.