Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the provision of services available for SEND children of school age.

The department published the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan in March 2023, in which we set out our plans to improve the SEND and AP system. The Plan includes the steps we are taking to strengthen accountability across the system to improve the quality of services for children with SEND and in AP. This includes the new Ofsted and Care Quality Commission Area SEND Inspection Framework, the emphasis on SEND pupils in the Ofsted Education Inspection Framework, and the local and national inclusion dashboards launching later this year, which will give parents the opportunity to monitor the performance of their local SEND and AP system.