Special Educational Needs

(asked on 29th January 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the progress across all local authorities in England in transferring Statements of Special Educational Need to Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs); and, based on that assessment, how many Statements they expect to miss the deadline for transition to an EHCP of 31 March.


Answered by
 Portrait
Lord Agnew of Oulton
This question was answered on 12th February 2018

The government has commissioned several pieces of research on user satisfaction with the Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan process since the 2014 Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) reforms were introduced. ‘Experiences of Education, Health and Care plans: a survey of parents and young people’, attached, asked young people and parents/carers of children and young people about their experiences of and satisfaction with the EHC plan process. Over two-thirds of respondents (67%) agreed that the help and support outlined in the EHC plan had improved the child/young person’s experience of education.

We are also using other sources of evidence to inform our assessment including the findings from Ofsted / Care Quality Commission SEND local area inspections to understand progress and quality at a local and national level, as well as feedback from our team of professional SEND advisers, from lead tribunal judges and parents.

Local authorities are working hard to complete the transfer of all Statements of special educational need (SEN) to EHC plans by the statutory deadline of 31 March and we are monitoring progress closely and providing support and challenge. The latest published data shows that there were 287,290 statements of SEN or EHC plans maintained by local authorities as at January 2017, of which 61% were EHC plans. The data is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statements-of-sen-and-ehc-plans-england-2017.

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