Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that teacher training and continuing professional development programmes include awareness of the specific needs of the children of armed forces personnel, particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities.

As part of our consultation on special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reforms, I attended a roundtable hosted by the Armed Forces Community All-Party Parliamentary Group, to hear first-hand from armed forces families about the challenges they face.

The ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ White Paper set out proposals for a package of professional development on SEND, backed by over £200 million of funding.

This includes a new requirement in the SEND Code of Practice that will ensure all mainstream staff receive high‑quality SEND and inclusion training.

We have reformed the Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework to include more content on adaptive teaching. From 2027, teaching staff can sign up to new courses that enhance their knowledge of adaptive teaching styles to meet the special educational needs of a wide range of pupils, which could include those from armed forces’ families.

We are 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.