Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to work with (a) schools and (b) local authorities to help (i) ensure adequate funding for SEND provision and (ii) promote inclusion in mainstream schools in London.

Mainstream schools in London are being allocated a total of £7.15 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. Of that, local authorities have identified £869 million as notional budgets, which act as a guide to how much schools might need to spend on their pupils with special educational needs (SEN). Where SEN support costs for an individual pupil are in excess of £6,000, schools can additionally access local authorities' high needs budgets, which are for children and young people with more complex needs. Local authorities in London have been allocated high needs funding amounting to £1.9 billion in 2023/24. This is set to increase to £2 billion in the 2024/25 financial year, meaning a cumulative increase of 29% per head over the three years from the 2021/22 allocations. By 2024/25, high needs funding will have increased by 60% over the five years since 2019/20, to a total of over £10.5 billion nationally.

As of March 2024, the department has published just under £850 million of further investment in places for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or who require alternative provision. Spread over the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years, it forms part of the £2.6 billion the department has committed to investing in high needs capital between 2022 and 2025 and represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision. Between 2021/22 and 2024/25, London has been allocated just over £542 million. This is 20% of the total funding provided to local councils to support the provision of new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities or requiring alternative provision.

In the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan, published in March 2023 following extensive consultation with schools and local authorities, the department set out its mission for more children and young people to have their needs met effectively in mainstream settings. To bring together local authorities, health and education partners across local systems to strategically plan and commission support for children and young people with SEND, the department is working with local authorities to create or strengthen local SEND and AP partnerships. To support authorities, the department is investing £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists and introducing a National Professional Qualification (NPQ) for special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) at leadership level.

School and multi-academy trust leaders should promote collaborative working and drive inclusive practices across local areas. The department’s expectations for high-quality, inclusive education are set out in the ‘High Quality Trust Framework’ and enforced through the inspections under Ofsted’s 2019 Education Inspection Framework.

The department is also investing in specific programmes designed to help schools develop their inclusive practice. For example, the Universal Services Programme helps the school and FE workforce to identify and meet the needs of children and young people with SEND, earlier and more effectively. As part of the Programme, over 135,000 professionals have undertaken autism awareness training. And to support schools to create calm, safe and supportive environments for all pupils, the department has invested £10 million in the Behaviour Hubs programme.

Supporting children and young people with SEND is embedded in Initial Teacher Training (ITT) and the professional standards that teachers are expected to adhere to throughout their careers. The Teachers' standards define the minimum level of practice expected of all teachers This includes Teachers Standard 5, which requires all teachers to adapt teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils, including those with SEND.

The government does not prescribe the curriculum of ITT courses. However, the mandatory ITT Core Content Framework (CCF) (2019) sets out the minimum entitlement of knowledge, skills and experiences that all trainees need to enter the profession in the best position possible to teach and support their pupils. This core content must be covered in full for all ITT courses leading to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS).

Once they have been awarded QTS at the end of their ITT course, all early career teachers are entitled to a new two-year induction underpinned by the Early Career Framework (ECF).

Following the ITT CCF and Early Career Framework (ECF) review in 2023, the Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework (ITTECF), which was published in January 2024, contains significantly more content related to adaptive teaching and supporting pupils with SEND. The adaptive teaching content includes, for example, developing an understanding of different pupil needs, and learning how to provide opportunities for success for all pupils.