Special Educational Needs: Sheffield

(asked on 10th March 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the availability special educational needs and disability services in schools in Sheffield.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 13th March 2020

Our ambition is for every local authority and Clinical Commissioning Group to deliver a high quality service for every child or young person with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) conduct inspections of SEND services in local areas. Their inspection of Sheffield, published in 2019, required a Written Statement of Action (WSoA) to improve a number of areas of significant concern. Some of these concerns directly relate to SEND provision in schools and weaknesses in commissioning arrangements. Where we have concerns with performance, as there are in Sheffield, the department works with partners, including National Health Service (NHS) England, to support and challenge local areas to improve. This includes regular advice and monitoring from the department and NHS England advisers, as well as access to funded training opportunities and resources. A revisit from Ofsted and CQC then follows, usually around 18 months after publication of a WSoA.

We recently announced £780 million additional high needs funding, for the next financial year, and every local authority will see an increase in high needs funding, of at least 8% per head of population aged 2 to 18. Sheffield will be receiving £66.7 million next year.

We have also invested a total of £365 million through the Special Provision Capital Fund to help local authorities to create new places and improve facilities for pupils with SEND. Sheffield has been allocated a total of £2.5 million from 2018-19 to 2020-21 through this fund.

In September 2019, we announced a cross-Government SEND Review to improve how children and young people with SEND are supported in a way which is consistent, high quality, and integrated across education, health and care.

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