Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I know how hard parents fight to get the right support for their children. Sometimes that takes too long, and I am determined to make that easier, which is why we are simplifying and standardising the EHCP process. However, to deliver that support, we need our fantastic teachers, teaching assistants and specialist SEND teachers; without them, we could not provide children with the support they require. That is why we are boosting training opportunities through a new national professional qualification for special educational needs co-ordinators, which will be launched in autumn 2024, and investing a further £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists. We are also training up to 7,000 early years specialists, over 5,000 of whom have begun their training. We now have 280,000 teaching assistants in our schools, an increase of over 60,000 since we have been in office.

[Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

One in 10 children in education in my constituency receives special educational needs support. Thanks to the Department for Education, we have had a new special school, the Austen Academy—that is a free school—and significant increases in budgets, but can we also ensure that teaching children with special needs is a mainstream part of teacher education? Supporting children with special educational needs every day is now a mainstream part of school.

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. That is exactly why we are developing a new NPQ for SENCOs, which will launch in autumn 2024, and are inputting into the standards for teacher training to ensure that everybody has an understanding of how best to support children. There are now a lot of children with special educational needs, and we all need to know how to support them better.