Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help schools identify children who need SEND education within the school system.

The department knows that children’s early years are crucial to their development, health and life chances, and we recognise the importance of the early identification of needs to ensure the right support is put in place as early as possible to ensure children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and emerging special educational needs can get the best start in life.

The department is working as quickly as possible to ensure every child has the best chance in life, by prioritising early intervention and inclusive provision in mainstream settings.

The department knows that early intervention prevents unmet needs from escalating, and that it supports children and young people to achieve their goals alongside their peers. That is why we are currently funding three specific early intervention programmes:

• The Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) programme.
• The Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme.
• The Early Language and Support for Every Child (ELSEC) pathfinders.

The PINS programme deploys specialists from both health and education workforces to strengthen training and resources for school staff to identify and meet the needs of neurodiverse children. It will upskill around 1,600 (10%) mainstream primary schools by March 2025.

11,100 schools are registered for the NELI programme, which has improved the speech and language skills of an estimated 211,700 children aged 4 to 5 between September 2020 and July 2024.

Over 640,000 primary school children have been screened to identify those with language development difficulties.

Evaluation of NELI shows the programme improved the development of oral language skills by 4 months’ progress for pupils receiving the intervention. Children eligible for free school meals (FSM) made 7 months additional progress compared to children eligible for FSM that did not receive the intervention.

In partnership with NHS England, we are funding the ELSEC pathfinders within our SEND and alternative provision Change Programme.

When a child is aged between two and three, educators must review their progress and provide parents and / or carers with a short, written summary of their child’s development in the prime areas, known as the EYFS progress check at age 2. It highlights areas in which a child is progressing well, where additional support might be needed and describes the strategies the educator intends to adopt to address any concerns.

The progress check at age two and the Healthy Child Programme review both offer opportunities to identify additional needs for children aged two to three and to work in partnership with parents or carers and relevant professionals.

This is funding nine joint Integrated Care Boards and local area partnerships within each of our Change Programme Partnerships to trial new ways of working to better identify and support children with speech, language and communication needs in early years and primary schools, utilising pre-qualification Therapy Support Assistants. The interim report is due in February 2025, but areas like Barnet have already supported over 1000 children through their ELSEC universal and targeted offer.