Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will publish an update on the recruitment of specialists needed to deliver the Experts at Hand model.

We have invested £429 million in the first year of Experts at Hand to enable local authorities and integrated care boards to develop and deliver an offer that reflects local needs. Local areas will determine the specialist workforce needed to deliver their offer, taking account of existing capacity, and use this funding to support recruitment where additional expertise is required.

Alongside this locally led approach, the department is considering the workforce implications of Experts at Hand as part of wider, long‑term workforce planning, including joint work with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England on wider priorities such as the 10 Year Workforce Plan.

To help build specialist capacity needed for delivery, we are investing over £40 million in the specialist workforce. Of this funding, £26 million will go towards training at least 200 educational psychologists per year in 2026 and 2027. This will be followed by further investment to train more from 2028, subject to future spending review decisions. The remaining £15 million will be invested to establish new speech and language therapist advanced practitioners in every integrated care board geographical area, to get more speech and language therapists working in education settings.