Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sarah Green and Gillian Keegan

Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)]

8. What steps her Department is taking to support pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

We want all children to receive the right support to reach their full potential. That is why, since March, we have opened 14 new special free schools, with 78 more approved; we have launched our £70 million change programme, benefiting every region in England and testing key SEND and alternative provision, including innovative approaches to speech and language therapy; and, to help young people with special educational needs into work, we are doubling the number of supported internships to 4,500 by 2025. By next year, we will have increased high-needs funding by 60%, to over £10.5 billion, in just five years.

[Sarah Green]

Last year in Buckinghamshire, one in three education, health and care plans were issued outside the legally required 20-week timeframe. Will the Secretary of State outline what concrete steps the Department is taking to improve access to educational psychologists and reduce waiting times for EHCPs?

[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.