Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of ensuring that all teachers are trained to support children who meet the criteria for oppositional defiant disorder.

All teachers need to be equipped to teach pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). High quality teaching is the single most important factor within school in improving outcomes for all pupils, including those with oppositional defiant disorder.

Training and development to support children with SEND begins at the beginning of a teacher’s career journey, through their Initial Teacher Training (ITT), and is embedded throughout the Early Career Framework (ECF). ITT courses are designed so that trainee teachers can demonstrate that they meet the Teachers’ Standards at the appropriate level. This includes the requirement in Standard 5 that all teachers must have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils. Careful consideration has been given to the needs of trainee teachers in relation to supporting pupils with SEND, and the ECF builds on that learning for early career teachers once qualified. Both the ITT Core Content Framework (CCF) and ECF were designed in consultation with the education sector, including SEND specialists.

Once teachers qualify and are employed in schools, head teachers also use their professional judgement to identify any further training, including specific specialisms, for individual staff that is relevant to them, the school, and its pupils.

The Department also funds the Universal Services programme, worth £12 million, which offers online training, professional development groups, bespoke school and college improvement projects, sector led research, autism awareness training and an embedded focus on preparation for adulthood, including employer led webinars. The programme commenced in May 2022 and will run until Spring 2025.

So far, 6,600 school and college staff have accessed free online training modules, and 81 schools and over 135 colleges have identified and led their own SEND focused school improvement project. These projects focussed on SEND governance, teaching assistant deployment, early identification of SEND and the curriculum.