Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how SEND reforms will balance wellbeing and emotional safety with attendance and academic attainment.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The government’s Schools White Paper set out our vision for children to achieve and thrive. It makes clear that our ambition for children to achieve academically goes hand in hand with our work on inclusion, belonging, attendance and engagement.
The department is introducing a new universal offer that is inclusive by design to allow pupils to achieve and thrive throughout education in mainstream settings. To support the new universal offer, we will develop new evidence-based teaching resources to support effective curriculum adaptation for children and young people.
We have committed to publish a new Pupil Engagement Framework to enable all schools to measure the key factors that determine their children’s engagement in education, including their sense of belonging, and make improvements.
We are also rolling out specialist mental health professionals in every school and college by expanding Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs). As of March 2026, 60% of pupils in schools and learners in further education in England are covered by an MHST, up from 52% in March 2025. By March 2027, we estimate 66% of pupils and learners will be covered.
Our statutory guidance, ‘Working together to improve school attendance’, is clear that schools should take a support first approach identifying barriers to attendance, including any special educational needs and disabilities needs, and working with families and other local services to get support in place which enables children to be in school.
Our recent consultation on key stage 4 performance measures included proposals for a possible new progress measure to recognise the progress of children who start secondary school significantly behind their peers. We are analysing responses from the consultation currently and will publish our response in summer 2026.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether proposed SEND reforms will provide funding for the SEND workforce including teaching assistants and specialist professionals.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department is investing around £1.8 billion over the next three years for local area partnerships, including local authorities and Integrated Care Boards, to develop a new Experts at Hand offer. This offer is designed to strengthen the capability of mainstream education settings by providing access to support from health and specialist education practitioners, including speech and language therapists and support workers or assistants, occupational therapists and support workers or assistants, educational psychologists and trainees, and specialist teachers, both local authority-based and those based in specialist or alternative provision settings.
To support delivery, over £40 million is being invested in the specialist workforce, including £26 million to train more educational psychologists and £15 million to support more speech and language therapists to work with education settings. In addition, we are investing over £200 million during the course of this Parliament ensuring all staff in every school, college and nursery are trained to support pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
We are further investing £1.6 billion in an Inclusive Mainstream Fund to support the development of a more inclusive education system. Funding will be provided to early years, schools and colleges to boost their existing core funding for SEND, with over £500 million per year over the next three years to help schools strengthen their inclusive offer. This represents the beginning of a deliberate tilt in funding towards mainstream inclusion, enabling settings to invest in their workforce alongside their core funding.
This funding will support schools to invest in the SEND workforce, alongside their existing core funding for SEND, which will help equip schools to invest in high quality, adaptive teaching, inclusive pedagogy and decision-making, and in creating safe, calm and accessible learning environments.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of the cuts to funding for PE and sports in schools on children's health and activity levels.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
We are investing over £1 billion for PE and school sport over three years. This includes £580 million for a new PE and School Sport Partnerships Network alongside investment in facilities which schools have been calling for and transitional support for primary schools.
Despite over a decade of PE and sport premium funding, less than half of children meet the Chief Medical Officer’s recommendation of 60 active minutes a day, with persistent inequalities among groups including girls and those from disadvantaged and ethnically diverse backgrounds.
The Network will combine both a universal offer to all primary and secondary schools, plus targeted direct support for those schools and pupils who will benefit from it the most. This includes coaching, swimming provision and support to open facilities, as well as stronger links to extra‑curricular sport and local clubs. Schools will also receive funding to test and share effective practice, alongside more accessible programmes from National Governing Bodies and clearer pathways into community sport. Support will align more closely with wider programmes and include competitive sport opportunities and inclusive events for less‑active pupils. Provision will be informed by baseline and ongoing needs assessments led by a national delivery partner.
A National Delivery Partner will be appointed through a fair, open process, with detailed design confirmed through the procurement, but the approach will focus on supporting those most in need.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of SEND reform proposals on parents' statutory rights to request assessment, access independent experts and appeal decisions through to tribunal.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
In the department’s recent special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) consultation, we proposed to preserve key legal safeguards for parents, including the continued right to request an assessment of whether their child needs an education, health and care (EHC) plan and to appeal decisions through to tribunal.
Our proposals include strengthening mediation services so that more disputes can be resolved quickly while retaining the SEND Tribunal as an important legal backstop for families.
We are proposing that parents and carers will continue to be able to appeal to the SEND tribunal on key decisions relating to EHC needs assessments, specialist provision package eligibility, which package their child receives, and review outcomes. Parents will also continue to be able to appeal to the tribunal if they disagree with a local authority’s placement decision. Under our proposed approach the tribunal will consider whether the local authority’s decision is reasonable and may quash the decision and order the local authority to reconsider.
Area SEND inspections provide independent evaluation of local arrangements, and the department, alongside NHS England, provides support and challenge to local area partnerships, including through the use of intervention, which we propose to strengthen, where the quality of local provision is not acceptable.
We will consider feedback from the consultation exercise carefully before making any final decisions.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of SEND reform proposals on the availability of ECHPs for children whose difficulties are (a) high-masking and (b) not immediately visible.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Our reformed system will focus on earlier, more accurate identification of need, ensuring children and young people receive the right support at the earliest possible point without relying on diagnosis. The National Inclusion Standards will include whole school, universal approaches, as well as tools and approaches to identify and respond to needs through the targeted/targeted plus layers of support. These new Standards will support teachers to notice and identify where children or young people may be experiencing barriers to their learning, and suggest evidence-based approaches to support them.
Experts at Hand will also provide expert advice direct into settings to support staff to identify needs, without the need for bureaucratic hurdles.
The proposal is for Individual Support Plans (ISPs) to provide a record of need and provision for any child or young person receiving targeted, targeted plus or specialist support in school or college developed with children and parents/carers.
We have carefully assessed the impact of all our proposals and this is included in our published SEND reform: equalities impact assessment and SEND reform: child’s rights impact assessment.
Under our proposed reforms, Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) will continue to exist, guaranteeing statutory entitlements to education and health provision, with content agreed in consultation with young people and parents. Children and young people will be eligible for an EHC plan in the reformed system, if they need the support set out in a specialist provision package which will provide comprehensive, evidence-based support.
After a 12 week consultation period including over 200 engagement events, meetings and roundtables, the consultation has now closed and we are carefully considering responses.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of moving SEND children onto Individual Support Plans on legal rights, risk to harm and recognisability of hidden disability.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Our reformed system will focus on earlier, more accurate identification of need, ensuring children and young people receive the right support at the earliest possible point without relying on diagnosis. The National Inclusion Standards will include whole school, universal approaches, as well as tools and approaches to identify and respond to needs through the targeted/targeted plus layers of support. These new Standards will support teachers to notice and identify where children or young people may be experiencing barriers to their learning, and suggest evidence-based approaches to support them.
Experts at Hand will also provide expert advice direct into settings to support staff to identify needs, without the need for bureaucratic hurdles.
The proposal is for Individual Support Plans (ISPs) to provide a record of need and provision for any child or young person receiving targeted, targeted plus or specialist support in school or college developed with children and parents/carers.
We have carefully assessed the impact of all our proposals and this is included in our published SEND reform: equalities impact assessment and SEND reform: child’s rights impact assessment.
Under our proposed reforms, Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) will continue to exist, guaranteeing statutory entitlements to education and health provision, with content agreed in consultation with young people and parents. Children and young people will be eligible for an EHC plan in the reformed system, if they need the support set out in a specialist provision package which will provide comprehensive, evidence-based support.
After a 12 week consultation period including over 200 engagement events, meetings and roundtables, the consultation has now closed and we are carefully considering responses.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how SEND reforms will ensure that local authorities are held accountable for statutory duties, including meeting deadlines and appropriately assessing need.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The Schools White Paper sets clear expectations for the quality and timeliness of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision delivered by local authorities, supported by significant investment to drive system transformation.
In March 2026, the department commissioned local authorities, working with Integrated Care Boards, to develop SEND reform plans and will hold them to account for delivering strong outcomes for children and young people with SEND, intervening decisively where progress stalls and using our full intervention powers where failure persists.
Area SEND inspections provide independent evaluation of local arrangements. The department, alongside NHS England, provides support and challenge to local area partnerships. Where concerns are identified, we will draw on the full range of support and challenge levers to drive improvements.
The department publishes annual SEN2 data on education, health and care plans and assessments, including timeliness, which informs performance monitoring. Where a local authority fails to meet statutory duties, we can take action that prioritises children’s needs, including the issuing of Improvement Notices or Statutory Directions to drive urgent improvements.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase the number of education psychologists.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department is investing around £1.8 billion over the next three years for local area partnerships, including local authorities and Integrated Care Boards, to develop a new ‘Experts at Hand’ offer, strengthening mainstream education through access to health and specialist education support, including from educational psychologists (EPs).
By setting clear national expectations alongside locally delivered support, the offer will help ensure children and young people can receive timely, high‑quality specialist support regardless of locality, reducing variation and improving equity of access.
The department is also investing £26 million to train at least 200 EPs per year from 2026/2027, followed by additional funding from 2028 to train more EPs than we currently do, subject to the future Spending Review. This is in addition to the £31 million already invested to train EPs since 2023.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to improve data sharing between schools, local authorities and safeguarding agencies to support the identification of children at risk of going missing.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government takes the issue of any child going missing, from home or care, extremely seriously and has provided clear guidance about responsibilities for all children who go missing. When a child is found, they must be offered an independent Return Home Interview and local authorities, police and voluntary services should also work together to understand why the child went missing and what support they may need, including with their mental health, in the future to prevent them from going missing again.
The department has announced a £7 million funding boost to early support hubs across England providing drop-in mental health support for young people aged 11 to 25. Alongside this, we are investing an extra £688 million in mental health services this year and are recruiting 8,500 additional mental health workers across children’s and adult services.
Measures from the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and Crime and Policing Bill, reforms being delivered through the Families First Partnership Programme, supported by £2.4 billion, updates to the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance, and oversight from the Keeping Children Safe ministerial board will ensure that we better respond when children go missing and intervene earlier to tackle the underlying drivers.
Measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill aim to put an end to misconceptions about legal barriers to sharing information, through introducing an Information Sharing Duty and making provision for a Single Unique Identifier to improve information sharing between agencies.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of mental health support available to children who are at risk of going missing.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government takes the issue of any child going missing, from home or care, extremely seriously and has provided clear guidance about responsibilities for all children who go missing. When a child is found, they must be offered an independent Return Home Interview and local authorities, police and voluntary services should also work together to understand why the child went missing and what support they may need, including with their mental health, in the future to prevent them from going missing again.
The department has announced a £7 million funding boost to early support hubs across England providing drop-in mental health support for young people aged 11 to 25. Alongside this, we are investing an extra £688 million in mental health services this year and are recruiting 8,500 additional mental health workers across children’s and adult services.
Measures from the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and Crime and Policing Bill, reforms being delivered through the Families First Partnership Programme, supported by £2.4 billion, updates to the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance, and oversight from the Keeping Children Safe ministerial board will ensure that we better respond when children go missing and intervene earlier to tackle the underlying drivers.
Measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill aim to put an end to misconceptions about legal barriers to sharing information, through introducing an Information Sharing Duty and making provision for a Single Unique Identifier to improve information sharing between agencies.