Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase the level of (a) funding and (b) school staffing for children with (i) special educational needs and disability and (ii) autism.

In December 2018 my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education announced an increase of £250 million in the level of funding up to 2020, for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). This brings the total level of high needs funding to £6.3 billion in this financial year 2019-20. The level of high needs funding in future years will depend on the next Spending Review. Decisions taken locally determine how much of this funding is spent on children with autism and other types of special educational needs (SEN). Information from local authorities or schools on how much of their funding is spent on children with autism is not held centrally.

We believe that all teachers should be teachers of children with SEN. We have provided £3.4 million funding over 2018-2020, for the SEND schools’ workforce contract, which will be delivered by the Whole School SEND consortium, led by National Association of Special Educational Needs. The SEND schools’ workforce contract’s aim is to embed SEND into school improvement in order to equip the workforce to deliver high quality teaching across all types of SEND, including children and young people with autism.

We recognise that some schools, including special schools, are facing challenges in recruiting and retaining teachers. That is why in January 2019 we launched the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy.

Designed collaboratively with the sector, the centrepiece of the strategy is the Early Career Framework, which will underpin a fully-funded, 2 year package of structured support for all early career teachers. The strategy can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-recruitment-and-retention-strategy.