Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with (a) the Education and Skills Funding Agency and (b) Ofsted on the recommendations of the I CAN and Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists’ report of 20 March 2018, Bercow: Ten Years On.

Officials from the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) are in regular contact and are working together to implement the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reforms underpinned by the Children and Families Act 2014. Effective joint working between DHSC and DfE is at the heart of these reforms, at national and local level.

The recommendations of the ‘Bercow: Ten Years On’ report are very timely. They come at a time when we are considering the All Party Parliamentary Group on Autism’s report ‘Autism and education in England 2017’; and considering our response to Dame Christine Lenehan’s review of residential special schools, ‘Good Intentions, Good Enough?’

We shall consider all of these reports carefully and are committed to responding to Dame Christine Lenehan’s review. We will take that opportunity to set out how the government will continue working to achieve the vision of a reformed SEND system, underpinned by the Children and Families Act 2014.

As part of this we are engaging with the appropriate agencies including the Education and Skills Funding Agency and Ofsted.