Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how her Department is supporting schools to meet SEND needs where specialist placements are unavailable or inappropriate.

From September, the government is providing upfront investment for schools, colleges and early years providers to intervene early in meeting the needs of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), through our inclusive mainstream fund worth £1.6 billion over three years. Over time this will be supported through the development of National Inclusion Standards, enabling teachers to draw on evidence-based strategies to identify and support children and young people with additional needs.

In addition, every local area is being funded to create a new Experts at Hand service, providing mainstream education settings with access to healthcare professionals like speech and language therapists and education experts such as educational psychologists to work directly with children and support staff to put in place appropriate support and interventions.

We will roll out a new national training programme supporting educators to identify and respond to children’s needs backed by £200 million investment, to train staff across nurseries, schools and colleges with the first wave of training materials coming online from September.

This is supported by investment to create an additional 60,000 school places for children with SEND through inclusion bases, new special or alternative provision school places and adaptations to mainstream, ensuring appropriate education facilities for all our children.