Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to recruit more private applied behaviour analysis tutors nationally.

Autism is a spectrum condition where children have a range of strengths and difficulties. There is no well-founded research to show that any one intervention for children with autism (such as Applied Behaviour Analysis) is more effective than all the other interventions or which interventions are best for which children on the spectrum. The government believes that intervention decisions should be taken by professionals locally, in consultation with parents and young people, after a thorough assessment of the child or young person’s needs.

All schools are required to identify and address the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) of the pupils they support and to use their best endeavours to make sure that a child or young person gets the support they need.

High needs funding, which is specifically for supporting children with SEND, will be increasing by £1 billion in financial year 2022-23 and will bring the overall total of funding for high needs to £9.1 billion. This unprecedented increase of 13% comes on top of the £1.5 billion increase over the last two years. Decisions about how funding is used, including for the employment of specialist tutors or the use of specific interventions, are made by local authorities and schools.