SEND Provision and Funding

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) on securing the debate. I know how passionate he is about ensuring that his constituents get what they should from the SEND system and ensuring that his granddaughter, Chloe, gets the support she needs. He made a powerful case for both. Before I go any further, I formally congratulate him on the announcement of his knighthood, which is a well-deserved honour for his decades of public service.

By way of background, I am an MP in an f40 area, so I am familiar with the case the organisation makes and I met the group towards the end of last year. I have been children’s Minister since the end of August, but in the two years before being appointed to that position, the issue of parents and teachers being unable to get the support they need for children with SEND was already in the top two items in my casework and surgery appointments. I pay my own tribute to all the staff supporting children with special educational needs in schools, colleges and alternative provision, both locally and nationally.

The issues raised in the debate are very familiar to me. In previous debates, I have talked about parents having what they feel is a war of attrition with the system to try to get the support they need for their children. That is a war that any parent would wage, but no parent should have to. We know the system is not delivering consistent support and outcomes and that there are significant financial pressures on it, despite considerable Government investment.

I will begin with investment and funding, as that has been the biggest issue discussed this afternoon. As has been touched on, the Government have increased the higher needs budget considerably. In 2024-25, it will be £10.5 billion, which is 60% higher than the figure in 2020. In the past two years, there has been a 32% increase in per head funding in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden. Most Members would agree that that is a considerable amount of money, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) said in his speech. Some Members may only agree with that privately, but not many Government budgets, under any Government or in any area, have increased by 60%, which demonstrates the Government’s considerable support for and commitment to the area.

We have two programmes supporting local authorities that face financial pressure in their SEND system, and a number of Members in the Chamber have local authorities involved in those programmes. First, the safety valve programme, which includes 34 local authorities with the highest percentage deficit, helps local authorities pay down accumulated deficits and reform their systems. By March 2025, the Department will have allocated nearly £900 million through that programme, and if what we are trying to deliver is delivered, those deficits will be eradicated.

Secondly, we have the delivering better value programme for those with substantial but less severe deficits, which involves 55 local authorities, including East Riding of Yorkshire in the area of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden. That is helping to deliver high-quality outcomes with sustainable costs. Under that programme, each area develops a reform plan and receives £1 million to support its delivery.

As has been touched on, the high needs budget has doubled since 2015, but even if a Government were able to triple or quadruple it, that would not by itself deliver the outcomes we all want to see. Parents and teachers know that and frequently say that the issue is not just about money. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) made that point well in his speech, and I intend to pick up with him the discussion about conflicting priorities.

The system needs reform, which is why we published our SEND and alternative provision improvement plan last year, with the aim of getting children and young people the right support, in the right place, at the right time. There is a lot within the plan, but I wish to draw out three key areas briefly, because they are the ones that have come up most this afternoon and are in the petitions attached to this debate.

First, on special school provision and capital funding, which was raised by the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) and others, we are making a £2.6 billion investment, £1.5 billion of which has already been allocated. That is on top of our delivery of new special and alternative provision free schools. There are currently 106 special free schools open and a further 78 have been approved to open in the future.

Secondly, on combatting regional variations, the plan will move us towards a national system with national standards, which we have never previously had. Across the country, we now have nine change programme partnerships, which each have between two and four local areas, together with local schools, health services and parents. What they are doing is, for example, testing an EHCP template that we hope can be used nationally, which will improve the timeliness and quality of EHCPs. We are developing national standards of support for special educational needs, beginning with one for speech and language, which will be released later this year. We are also publishing a local and national inclusion dashboard, which parents will be able to access. They will be able to see how their local area is doing, which will drive accountability.

Thirdly, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) asked about the skills and knowledge of staff in mainstream schools. Our teacher standards already include clear expectations that teachers must understand the needs of all pupils, including those with special educational needs, but we are reviewing the core content framework and the early careers framework to improve their confidence in this area. We have a universal SEND services programme, which more than 11,000 staff have already accessed to improve their knowledge and skills. We are also funding the training of 7,000 early years staff with a level 3 SENCO qualification, as my hon. Friend the Chair of the Education Committee said. Some 5,200 staff have begun that training, so we are on track with that target.

There are many other points that I wanted to respond to, but I have only eight minutes, so I will just say to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) and my hon. Friends the Members for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), for Gedling (Tom Randall), for Waveney (Peter Aldous), for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) and others that I understand their point about regional variations. It is based partly on deprivation and other factors and partly on the historical spend factors that have been referred to. I am happy to sit down with anybody to talk about those things.

To the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), I say that it is already the case that a school has to be outstanding in all areas to receive an outstanding grade from Ofsted, and it is not the case that we have a 20% target for reducing EHCPs, or indeed any other such target.

In conclusion, I reiterate my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden for securing this debate and to all Members who have contributed to it. We may disagree on certain aspects of how to achieve this, but we are united in our desire to ensure that the SEND system provides excellent outcomes to all children and young people, and that is what this Government are determined to deliver.