Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Johnston and Daniel Zeichner

Monday 11th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

4. What steps she is taking to improve support for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

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

Our SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, published last March, includes the development of new national standards to improve provision in mainstream settings for children with special educational needs. As for children requiring special school places, last week we announced funding for an additional wave of 15 special free schools, which comes on top of the 108 that we have opened since 2010 and the 77 whose opening has been approved.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I visit schools in my constituency virtually every week, and I see more and more of them struggling financially, and in terms of staff, with the number of SEND pupils. Moreover, too many staff members are having to go out and fetch children to bring them to school in the mornings, and needing to have social workers based in their schools. This is not about individual schools; it is a systemic problem. What are the Government doing about it?

[David Johnston]

In Cambridgeshire, there has been a 27% increase in funding per head for special educational needs since 2021-22 and a special free school is in the pipeline, along with two local authority special competition free schools. Cambridgeshire is also part of our safety valve programme, which helps authorities to run a sustainable special educational needs system.