Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of SEND support for children without education, health and care plans.

This government’s ambition is that every child or young person receives the best possible educational experience, one that is academically stretching, where every child or young person feels like they belong, and that sets them up for life and work.

As part of our Plan for Change, we are determined to fix the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system and restore parents’ trust by ensuring schools have the tools to better identify and support children before issues escalate.

We will build a better system which is grounded in evidence, identifies and supports need at the earliest opportunity, and ensures families can secure support swiftly without a fight. There will always be a legal right to the additional support that children with SEND need.

Our new regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) teams will work with mainstream schools to help them become more inclusive places as one of four priority areas for improvement.

The newly published RISE Inclusive Mainstream webpage provides schools with programmes and resources to help mainstream schools improve inclusivity and support for those with SEND, and is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rise-support-for-inclusive-mainstream-education/rise-support-for-inclusive-mainstream-education.