Department for Education

Jen Craft Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I very much welcome the Government’s investment in education, as demonstrated through the estimates that have come out today. In particular, I want to touch briefly on the increased investment in SEND and high-needs provision to the tune of £1 billion—something I am sure Members are aware is very close to my heart. However, I would like to sound a note of caution and echo some of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and I thank her for her work on the Select Committee on this matter.

Investment alone will not solve the SEND crisis. It is the biggest issue facing schools. It is one of the biggest issues facing councils. Dare I say it, it is one of the biggest issues facing local healthcare authorities—not to get ahead of the next estimates debate. Money alone will not solve it. We need institutional root and branch reform of how the SEND system works. I have said it before and I will say it again: if we fix the SEND system, we fix the education system for every single child. What we need is investment in early years provision.

Every time I visit a primary school, I am confronted by headteachers who say that the level of high-needs SEND provision in key stage 1 has skyrocketed in recent years. We can discuss the reasons behind that. The covid pandemic proved the value of early years intervention in that, by and large, it did not take place for four to five years and we have seen the impact that that has had on young people coming through. So, we need early and quick intervention and investment in early years services. I take umbrage with Members, unfortunately on both sides of the House, who have spoken about over-diagnosis of conditions such as ADHD and autism. We need quick and accurate diagnosis and a treatment pathway to conditions that are on the rise primarily because of historical under-diagnosis. Finding out who the children are who struggle with those conditions and putting in early interventions as quickly as possible, such as speech and language therapy, will save us money in the long run. If we are able to identify children who are in need of additional support in early years, that will save an awful lot of money overall. It will save money in education, health and local authorities.

I very much support the Government’s direction of travel in trying to get as many children in mainstream as possible. I firmly believe that early exposure to children who are different from yourself can only be better for society, by and large. However, I would like to press the Minister for a timescale on when the SEND White Paper will come out. I would welcome her assurances that parents, carers and young people themselves will be meaningfully involved in it. I would also welcome her thoughts on how we ensure all schools share an equal load when it comes to SEND provision.

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[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

Every child deserves the opportunity to achieve and thrive in education. That is why this Government have—as Labour Governments always do—prioritised education, with the Department’s budget for day-to-day cash spending increasing by almost £6 billion compared with the last financial year. Within that, we have increased the overall core schools budget by £3.7 billion in 2025-26 compared with last year. This real-terms increase in funding per pupil helps underpin our ambition of achieving high and rising standards for all children in all our schools. This investment of £3.7 billion in 2025-26 includes both the £2.3 billion announced at the October Budget, and the £1.4 billion in additional funding being provided to support schools with staff pay awards and with the increases to employer national insurance contributions from April 2025.

The majority of school funding is allocated through the schools national funding formula. In 2025-26, £5.1 billion of the schools NFF has been allocated through deprivation factors, and £8.6 billion will be allocated for additional needs overall—that is, over £1 in every £6 of total core funding through the formula being directed towards the schools facing the most challenging cohorts. The spending review builds on this investment in schools. Across the spending review period, core schools funding—including SEND investment, which I know is a big issue for many Members who have spoken —will increase from £65.3 billion in 2025-26 to £69.5 billion by 2028-29.

I turn to the SEND system, which many Members have spoken passionately about. It is, and has been for too long, on its knees. This Government are determined to face up to the facts: too many families and children are simply not receiving the quality of SEND services and provision that they should expect; they are having to fight for those services; and they are having to wait too long before those services are made available. It is this Government’s ambition for all children and young people with SEND to receive the right support at the right time, so that they can succeed in their education and in moving into adult life. To help us achieve that, we have invested £1 billion more in funding for high needs in 2025-26 than in 2024-25.

We are also providing £740 million of high-needs capital funding in 2025-26, so that local authorities can adapt schools to be more accessible and can build new places, including in specialist facilities within mainstream schools. More than 1.7 million children and young people in England have special educational needs, and the vast majority of those are educated in mainstream settings. We are committed to improving inclusivity, to bringing a new focus on expertise in mainstream settings, and to an inclusive curriculum, so that the vast majority of children can be well supported in mainstream settings, with specialist settings catering to those with the most complex needs.

[Jen Craft]

I would like the Minister to clarify that the additional support and ambition that she is talking about is to improve the SEN side. For Members who are not aware, the statutory bit is the SEND side, and there will obviously be improvements in that; but if we improve the SEN side, which is the bit that children do not need an EHCP for, parents will not need to go through that adversarial legal battle, and there will be fewer reasons for people to have to go through what can at times be a truly horrific system.

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point, and I was about to respond to a question that she raised in her very good contribution to this debate. We will set out the details of our approach to SEND reform in a schools White Paper, which we intend to publish in the autumn.

We recognise that we need to support mainstream schools in providing much greater inclusion for children with SEND. We need to commence a phased transition process, which will include working with local authorities to manage their SEND system, including deficits. There will also be an extension to the dedicated schools grant statutory override until the end of 2027-28—an issue that many Members have raised on behalf of their local authorities. We will provide more details by the end of the year, including a plan for supporting local authorities with both historical and accruing deficits.

I turn to teacher training. I was very sorry to hear about the experience of the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance). He is incredibly brave, and it is important that he has shared that. To respond to his question, high-quality teaching is central to ensuring that all pupils are given the best possible opportunities to achieve. To support all teachers, the Department is implementing a range of teacher training reforms that will ensure that teachers have the skills to help all pupils to succeed.

We are determined to make sure that every family is a stable, loving home, and that no child grows up in poverty, lacks food or warmth or is denied success due to their background. We are determined to turn things around, tackle child poverty and spread growth and opportunity to every family in every corner of the country. The Labour Government have announced that we are extending free school meals to all children from households in receipt of universal credit from September 2026. That will lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty and put £500 back in families’ pockets. We are supporting parents through that decisive action, which will improve lives—and that is before the child poverty strategy comes out later this year. Providing over half a million children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a free, nutritious lunch time meal, every school day, will also lead to higher attainment, improved behaviour and better outcomes, which means that children will get the best possible education and chance to succeed in work and life.

We will provide more detail in due course, but decisions such as expanding free school meals do not happen by accident, nor are they simply the outcome of hard work by campaigners outside this place. They are decisions about who we put first in our national life, and who has the first call on our country’s resources. Our Government put children first. Expanding free school meal eligibility is a choice made by this Government, who are determined to secure a brighter tomorrow for our children and ensure excellence everywhere, for all our young people. This Government know that delivering the most equal society—something that we Government Members are determined to make real—is a choice, not something achieved by chance.

On the points hon. Members raised about children’s social care, we are putting children first. This Government are committed to delivering children’s social care reform, to break the cycle of late intervention, and to help more children and families thrive and stay safely together. For 2025-26, the Department has allocated £380 million to deliver children’s social care reform, including £44 million of new investment to support children in kinship and foster care, as announced at the autumn Budget.

Because this Government are determined to ensure that all children have the best start in life, by 2028 we aim for 75% of children to reach a good level of development by the end of reception, which means that approximately 45,000 more children each year will start school ready to learn, thrive and succeed. That is ambitious. No progress has been made on this measure in many years. We are creating 6,000 nursery places in schools across the country through the first wave of 300 school-based nurseries; that is backed by £37 million.