Janet Daby
Main Page: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)Department Debates - View all Janet Daby's debates with the Department for Education
(3 days ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) on securing this debate on this important subject. I know he has a strong interest in special educational needs and disability, and I commend him for his 20 years of advocating for change. He spoke widely about many areas, but especially about distribution. I also thank the many Members across this Chamber for their passionate and sincere speeches, which all advocated for their constituents and the children they care about.
Among the many Members who have spoken, my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Harpreet Uppal) talked about the difficulties for parents navigating SEND. The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) spoke about the challenges involving EHCPs. My hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (David Taylor) gave some case studies, and like other Members mentioned these precious children and their experiences, which were all very vital and pertinent to this debate. I thank them for those case studies about Grace, Olivia, Hermione and others, which I really appreciate and acknowledge. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) spoke about the Government investing in early years, and that is absolutely what we are doing.
I will seek to address as many as possible of the issues and challenges that have been raised and brought to my attention, but I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) for his strong advocacy for SEN provision in his area, which has been noted. However, I will push back against the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey), who raised many issues to be addressed. I gently say to her that, given the past 14 years, we did not need to be in this position with SEND—we did not need to be here—and this Government have been left to fix the foundations. We do have a plan for change, and I will mention as many of the areas as I can.
The Government are committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity and giving every child the best start in life. That means ensuring that all children and young people receive the right support to succeed in their education and to lead happy, healthy and productive adult lives.
Janet Daby
I would like to make some progress before I begin to give way.
Members from across the House will be aware of the challenges facing the SEND system—a system that is difficult for parents, carers and young people to navigate, and where outcomes for children are often poor. That has been mentioned by many Members. The Education Committee has undertaken its own inquiry aimed at solving the SEND crisis, which underscores the significant challenges we face. Improving the SEND system is a priority for this Government. We want all children to receive the right support to succeed in their education, and to lead happy, healthy and productive adult lives. The hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) quoted Hermione, who said that SEND needs to work for all, and I just wanted to acknowledge that.
Graham Stuart
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. She will be aware that the title of this debate, despite what it says on the screen, is “Distribution of SEND Funding”. I hope, therefore, that she will focus primarily on that particular technical point. The distribution of SEND funding across the country is, according to f40 and campaigners across the House, unfair, broken and needs to change. Is that the Government’s view and the Minister’s view? That is the first answer, and then we can turn to how it can best be fixed. The most important thing is to recognise whether it is broken or not. I feel it is unfair and broken, and I would like to hear the Minister say so, if she agrees.
Janet Daby
I hear the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but he does need to allow me time to proceed. It would be wrong of me not to also respond to other Members from across the Chamber who have mentioned concerns with regard to the reason we are here.
Members across the House will be aware of the challenges facing the SEND system. Improving the SEND system is a priority for this Government. As I said, we want all children to receive the right support. We are prioritising early intervention and inclusive provision in mainstream settings. We know that early intervention prevents unmet needs from escalating, and that it supports all children and young people to achieve their goals alongside their peers.
These are complex issues that need a considered approach to deliver sustainable change, and we have already begun that work. We launched new training resources to support early years educators to meet emerging needs, and announced 1,000 further funded training places for early years special educational needs co-ordinators in the 2025-26 financial year, which will be targeted at settings in the most disadvantaged areas. We have extended the partnerships for inclusion of neurodiversity in schools programme to support an additional 1,200 mainstream primary schools to better meet the needs of neurodiverse children in the financial year 2025-26. That investment builds on the success of the programme, which was delivered to over 1,650 primary schools last year. We have already established an expert advisory group for inclusion to improve the mainstream educational outcomes and experiences of those with SEND.
All that work forms part of the Government’s opportunity mission, which will break down the unfair link between background and opportunity. We will continue to work with the sector as essential and valued partners to deliver our shared mission and to respect parents’ trust. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) mentioned, parents need to be respected, not exhausted.
The Department is providing an increase of £1 billion for the high needs budget in England in the 2025-26 financial year. Total high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND is over £12 billion for the year 2025-26. Returning to the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness, of that total, East Riding of Yorkshire council is being allocated over £42 million through the high needs funding block of the dedicated schools grant—an increase of £3.5 million on 2024-25. The high needs block is calculated using the high needs national funding formula. The NFF allocation is a 9.1% increase per head for the two to 18-year-old population on the equivalent 2024-25 NFF allocation.
I will turn to the many issues raised by other Members. We know that families face issues with education, health and care plans, and that even after fighting to secure the entitlement, support is not always delivered quickly enough. EHC plans should be issued within 20 weeks and are quality assured for a combination of statutory requirements, local authority frameworks and best practice guidelines, but the latest publication data showed that just half of new EHC plans were issued within the time limit in 2023. Where a local authority does not meet its duty on timeliness and quality of plans, we can take action that prioritises children’s needs and supports local areas to bring about rapid improvement.
This Government believe that a complex legal process should not be necessary to access good, early support for children and young people, which is why we need to focus on addressing the overall systemic issues to make SEND support easier to access. We are continuing to develop the ways in which we protect support for the children who will always need specialist placements and make accessing that support less bureaucratic and adversarial.
Mr Adnan Hussain
Does the Minister acknowledge that early support must be given to children when they are at nursery? If we identify those needs at that point, we could save money in the long run.
Janet Daby
The Government are very much committed to early intervention and prevention work.
Ben Obese-Jecty
It was strongly suggested the other day that the Government were going to look at changing EHCPs and possibly even scrapping them completely. Can the Minister give some reassurance to the House, and to constituents who may be watching this debate, that EHCPs will remain extant and will be worked on?
Janet Daby
As far as I am aware, EHC plans will continue.
We know that children’s earliest years make the biggest difference to their life chances. As I have already said, we believe in early intervention and recognise the importance of high-quality early years education and care, which can lead to better outcomes for children. Having access to a formal childcare setting allows children’s needs to be identified at the earliest opportunity, so that the appropriate support and intervention can be put in place to allow children with SEND to thrive.
Arrangements are in place to support children with SEND to access Government funding in early education, including funding for disability access and special educational needs inclusion and the high needs NFF allocations to support local authorities. We are reviewing early years SEND funding arrangements to assess how suitable the current arrangements are for supporting the needs of children with SEND.
The additional funding for schools of more than £4 billion a year over the next three years announced in the spending review will provide an above real-terms per-pupil increase in the core schools budget, taking per-pupil funding to its highest ever level and enabling us to transform the SEND system. We will improve support for children, stop parents having to fight for support and protect the support that is currently in place. Details of the Government’s intended approach to SEND reform will be set out in the schools White Paper in the autumn. The Government will also set out further details on supporting local authorities as we transition to a reformed system as part of the upcoming local authority funding reform consultation.
Sir John Hayes
The point was made earlier about rural areas. My county of Lincolnshire has a sparsely distributed population, which makes travel and access difficult for parents of children with special needs. Will the Minister address that in the new funding formula to ensure that rural areas do not lose out?
Janet Daby
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. As I have already said, the Government intend to set out our SEND reforms in the schools White Paper in the autumn. I will make sure that a further response is also provided to the right hon. Gentleman on that point.
The investment in the spending review is a critical step forward in our mission to support all children and young people to achieve and thrive, and to support teachers and leaders to deliver high and rising standards across every school for every pupil.
On travel, which has been raised by many Members across the Chamber, local authorities must arrange free travel for children of compulsory school age who attend their nearest school and cannot walk there because of the distance, their SEND or a mobility problem, or because the route is not safe. There are additional rights to free travel for low-income households to help them exercise school choice.
Where a child has an EHCP, the school named in the plan will usually be considered their nearest to home for school travel purposes. We know how challenging home-to-school travel is for local authorities at the moment. That is due in large part to the pressures in the SEND system itself.
Central Government funding for home-to-school travel is provided through the local government finance settlement, administered by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The final settlement for 2025-26 makes available over £69 billion for local government, which is a 6.8% cash-terms increase in councils’ core spending power for 2024-25.
We have committed to improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools, so that more children can attend a local school with their peers. This will mean that fewer children will need to travel long distances to a school that can meet their needs, which will reduce pressure on home-to-school travel over time, meaning that we will be better able to meet the needs of those who still need to rely on it.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure you want me to draw to a close. I reiterate that the Government are urgently looking at reforming the SEND system, so that it better serves children and young people and their families. We have noted all the contributions that have been made this afternoon. This will take time, but we are working at pace and will be setting out our plans to do that in the White Paper in the autumn. Members can rest assured that our approach is rooted in partnership, and that all our work will be guided by what children, their families, experts, leaders and frontline professionals tell us. We can transform the outcomes of young people with SEND only if we listen and work together on solutions.
