Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to ensure that where there are concerns about a child or young person's behaviour in school an assessment is carried out to determine whether there are any causal factors such as difficulties with speech, language, and communication.

We expect schools to have clear processes to support pupils who present challenging behaviour, including how they will manage the effect of any disruptive behaviour so it does not adversely affect other pupils.

With some pupils, such challenging behaviour may reflect a wide range of social and emotional difficulties, including underlying mental health difficulties or disorders or special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) such as difficulties with speech, language or communication. The SEND Code of Practice sets out the approach we would expect schools to take in relation to SEND, including requesting education, health and care (EHC) needs assessments.

The government has taken steps to improve access to support for speech, language and communication needs. For example, the Children and Families Act 2014 aims to ensure improvements to early identification of children with speech and language communication needs. There is ongoing work between the Department for Education and Public Health England to target early years professionals for involvement in this early identification.

To provide further support to school practice, we are reviewing our existing mental health and behaviour in schools guidance. This is to ensure it reflects the changing context for support with the implementation of the SEND reforms and changes that are happening in children and young people’s mental health following the ‘Future in Mind’ report (attached) and the mental health Green Paper: ‘Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision’ (attached).

We are also reforming training so that all teachers will be shown how to effectively manage behaviour in their first two years in the profession and have recently announced a £10 million investment to support schools to share best practice in behaviour management.