Special Educational Needs

(asked on 2nd September 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what criteria he will use in deciding whether to use his powers of intervention where a local authority has failed to make sufficient progress in improving its provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities.


Answered by
Kemi Badenoch Portrait
Kemi Badenoch
President of the Board of Trade
This question was answered on 6th September 2019

If a local area has failed to make sufficient progress following a special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) revisit by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission, local area leaders must, as a minimum, submit an updated action plan to the Department for Education, NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care. The action plan must be co-produced with partners and state how the local area will report on progress and impact, as well as how partners, including families, will be kept fully aware and informed of progress. The action plan will be published and a formal progress review meeting will take place within six months of the revisit report being published. The key partners involved, including the Parent Carer Forum, will be invited to attend this meeting.

My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, makes a case-by-case assessment regarding which actions to take following a local area SEND inspection. The outcomes of inspection reports – and particularly where local areas have not made sufficient progress following their revisit by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission - are key criteria in the Secretary of State’s consideration of the use of intervention powers.

The Secretary of State has asked Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission to design a programme of further local area SEND inspections to follow the current 5-year round. Discussions around the design and delivery of a possible second cycle are underway but no final decisions have yet been made.

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