Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to improve support for children and young people in secondary schools who have speech, language and communication needs.

We believe that schools should be able to offer effective support to all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). We will be investing over £700 million in additional high needs funding to support children with complex needs. This will bring the total high needs funding budget to over £7 billion.

Although this additional funding will help, we recognise that more needs to be done to ensure this investment works well for all children and young people with SEND. The government recently announced a review of SEND which aims to improve the services available. Further information can be found at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-review-into-support-for-children-with-special-educational-needs.

We have also recently undertaken a call for evidence on the financial arrangements that underpin provision for children and young people with SEND and those who need alternative provision. We will make sure that the evidence gathered and views expressed are fed into the department’s SEND review.

In addition to this, the department has provided £3.9 million funding to the National Association for Special Educational Needs, on behalf of the Whole School SEND consortium, for a 2-year programme of work to embed SEND into school improvement practice and equip the workforce to deliver high quality teaching across all types of SEND. A SEND regional leader and deputy SEND leader has been appointed in each of the 8 Regional School Commissioner areas to build a Community of Practice and engage with local networks, including local champions in speech, language and communication needs, to enable the identification and sharing of good practice.