Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure equitable standards of SEND provision in (a) urban and (b) rural communities.

In the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan, published in March 2023, the department set out plans to build a consistent national SEND and AP system which parents and carers can trust, easily navigate, and have confidence in, whether they live in an urban or rural area.

The foundation for the new nationally consistent SEND and AP system will be new evidenced-based National Standards for early and accurate identification of need, and timely access to support to meet those needs. The standards will include clarifying the types of support that should be ordinarily available in mainstream settings and who is responsible for securing the support.

This will help families, practitioners and providers understand what support every child or young person should be receiving from early years through to further education, no matter where they live or what their needs are. By the end of 2025 the department will publish a significant proportion of the National Standards.

New local SEND and AP partnerships will support this work by bringing together Education, Health and Care partners with local government to produce evidence-based Local Area Inclusion Plans setting out how to meet the needs of children and young people with SEND and in AP in the local area, in line with National Standards.

The department is testing and refining reforms through the £70 million Change Programme to collect evidence about what works for children and young people with SEND and their families at a local level. The department is working with 32 local authorities and their local areas in each of the nine regions. To form a Change Programme Partnership, in the majority of cases, a lead local authority will work in partnership with up to three neighbouring local authorities which will ensure impact is spread across a range of local areas, with differing levels of performance and demographics.