Special Educational Needs

(asked on 9th September 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he will make additional support available for SEND pupils from September 2021 to assist with (a) closing the attainment gap in accordance with their projected attainment and (b) wellbeing and mental health support.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 15th September 2021

I refer the hon. Member for York Central to the answer I gave on 14 September 2021 to Question 43696.

Mental health and wellbeing are a priority for the government. Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, we have prioritised keeping schools open above all else, as long as it was safe to do so, because it is vital for children and young people’s wellbeing, as well as their education.

In May, as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, we announced more than £17 million of mental health funding to improve mental health and wellbeing support in schools and colleges. This includes £7 million additional funding for local authorities to deliver the Wellbeing for Education Recovery programme. This builds on our £8 million funding for the Wellbeing for Education Return programme in the 2020-21 financial year, which provided free expert training, support and resources for staff dealing with children and young people experiencing additional pressures from the last year – including trauma, anxiety, or grief. Wellbeing for Education Return has been used by more than 90% of councils since its launch last summer.

The £17 million funding will also support up to 7,800 schools and colleges in England, who will be offered funding worth £9.5 million to train a senior mental health lead from their staff in the next academic year, and is part of the Government’s commitment to offering this training to all state schools and colleges by 2025. More information on this can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/senior-mental-health-lead-training#which-staff-can-get-the-training.

Additionally, our Mental Health in Education Action Group, has worked to identify and put in place further specific help to education settings to provide support for children and young people’s mental wellbeing at this critical time, and in the longer term.

This support for practice in schools is in addition to the £79 million boost to children and young people’s mental health support we announced in March, which will include increasing the number of Mental Health Support Teams. The support teams, which provide early intervention on mental health and emotional wellbeing issues in schools and colleges, will grow from the 59 set up by last March to around 400 by April 2023, supporting nearly 3 million children. This increase means that millions of children and young people will have access to significantly expanded mental health services.

The department has brought together all of its sources of advice for schools and colleges into a single site, which includes signposting to external sources of mental health and wellbeing support for teachers, school staff and school leaders. This is available here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mental-health-and-wellbeing-support-in-schools-and-colleges#mental-health-and-wellbeing-resources.

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