Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many young people have not been admitted to the school named in their education, health and care plan in each of the last five years.

The department does not have access to individual Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans and, as a result, we are unable to make an assessment of how many young people are not admitted to the school named in their plan.

Starting from summer 2023, the department plans to collect data from local authorities on the capacity of special schools and Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) units and resourced provision in mainstream schools, as well as forecasts of the numbers of specialist placements local authorities expect to make in SEND units and resourced provision, special schools (of all types) and alternative provision (AP). We expect this to be an annual data collection forming part of the existing School Capacity Survey, which will support local authorities in managing their specialist provision.

The department is investing £2.6 billion between now and 2025 to fund new special and AP places and improve existing provision, including opening 33 new special free schools, with a further 48 in the pipeline.

In the SEND and AP Improvement Plan of March 2023, we set out our proposal to require local authorities to provide families with a tailored list of settings as part of an amended process for naming a placement in an EHC plan.

A tailored list would allow local authorities to give clear choices to families and better meet the needs of children and young people, while supporting them to manage placements in a way that ensures financial sustainability for the future.