Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how she plans to measure the effectiveness of the SEND change programme.

In March 2023, the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan committed to testing a suite of SEND and AP policy proposals. The Change Programme is a vehicle for testing these proposals. Since the Change Programme launched in September 2023, the department has been working with the Change Programme authorities, including Bedford which is the lead local authority for the East of England Change Programme Partnership (CPP).

The effectiveness of the Change Programme will be measured through a formal independent evaluation for which the department has appointed an independent evaluator to conduct a process and implementation evaluation of the SEND and AP Change Programme as a whole. The evaluation will help the department understand which elements of the change programme are working well or less well and help shape suitable recommendations for improving ongoing delivery and future policy and practice.

As the Change Programme partnerships test the reforms they will feedback as to what is and is not working.

This feedback loop, led by the department and the change programme delivery partner, REACh, will not only help understand effectiveness but will also allow the department to share any early insights into the effectivity of reforms more widely. Feedback is received through the department’s frequent meetings with REACh.