Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans her Department has to evaluate the effect of the implementation of the new national curriculum on (a) teacher workload, (b) Special and Educational Needs and Disability inclusion and (c) school budgets.

As schools embed the new National Curriculum we are monitoring the effect of implementation on teacher workload, pupils with special educational needs and disability and school budgets in a number of ways.

We introduced the Department for Education (DfE) Protocol in 2015 giving schools a minimum lead in time for significant changes to policy in accountability, curriculum and qualifications; to help us manage the impact of reforms on schools.

We will shortly publish the results of the first biennial survey into teacher workload, a commitment from the 2014 Workload Challenge, which will help us track teacher workload so that so that further action can be taken if needed.

Through our careful management of the economy, we have protected the core schools budget in real terms. That means that in 2017-18, schools will have more funding than ever before for children’s education, totalling over £40 billion.

We will continue to support schools to improve their financial health and efficiency, to maximise the amount of resources they can direct to improving outcomes for pupils.

The Department regularly collects and publishes data about schools in the Teacher Voice surveys; the most recently published report includes information about the progress of pupils with special educational needs: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/584503/Teacher_Voice_Summer_2016_Report_Final.pdf.

The National Curriculum framework inclusion statement sets out that lessons should be planned to ensure that there are no barriers to every pupil achieving. In many cases, such planning will mean that pupils with special educational needs and disability will be able to study the full National Curriculum. Where the full National Curriculum is not the most appropriate route to maximising pupils' education, disapplication of all or part of the National Curriculum may be considered for an individual or a group of pupils.