SEND and Alternative Provision

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question and for meeting me when she pressed me on this issue. We will be putting lots of things in place for parents, but in particular we will be ensuring that a specialist workforce is in place, that increased funding is going into schools and that there is better communication from councils, which is one of the new standards we will be bringing in. Hopefully, all that will help give parents confidence in the system. On the particular challenge with EHCPs, we will be streamlining and digitising them, which will hopefully help parents with the bureaucracy of trying to get their children the support they need.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

Alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), I recently held a meeting with parents of children with special educational needs. They raised a number of issues, including having to wait years for support, a lack of psychologists available and a lack of specialist school places. Barnsley has one of the highest numbers of EHCP plans in the country. I therefore welcome a number of the proposals in the statement, but how many young people with SEND will have left formal education before the plans come into effect? May I press the Minister again on what resources are available to help people now?

[Claire Coutinho]

As I mentioned, we have been increasing the budget, the high needs block, for the last four years. We have also set up further funding for schools, which will be going into the system. On specialist provision, as I said we have 92 new free special schools, with 49 in the pipeline and seven opening in September. We have also announced a further 33.