Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what percentage of participants in the supported internship program have an Education, Health and Care Plan.

The department is committed to providing all young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) with good opportunities to allow them to transition from education into a fulfilling adult life.

On 2 March 2023, we published the SEND and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan, in response to the SEND and AP Green Paper published in March 2022. This outlines the government’s mission for the SEND and AP system to fulfil children and young people’s potential, build parents’ trust, and provide financial sustainability.

In the Improvement Plan, the department committed to developing good practice guidance to support consistent, timely, high-quality transitions for children and young people with SEND and in AP. This will ultimately look at transitions between all stages of education and will focus initially on transitions into and out of post-16 settings, including into employment.

We are also supporting the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to develop and pilot an Adjustments Passport that will help to smooth the transition into employment and support people changing jobs.

Schools and colleges are expected to develop and improve their careers provision for young people in line with the world-class Gatsby Benchmarks, addressing the individual needs of each pupil, and seeking to raise the career aspirations of students with SEND.

Supported internships are a study programme for young people aged 16 to 24 who have an education, health and care (EHC) plan, want to move into employment and need extra support to do so. All young people completing a supported internship have an EHC plan. We are investing approximately £18 million until 2025 to build capacity in the Supported Internships Programme and support more young people with EHC plans into employment.

The department also wants to ensure people of all ages and backgrounds can undertake apprenticeships that offer excellent career development and progression opportunities. In recent years, we have seen an improved representation of learners who have declared a Learning Difficulty or Disability (LDD) starting apprenticeships. We have improved our ‘Find an Apprenticeship’ service to allow people to identify Disability Confident Employers offering opportunities. Training providers will conduct an assessment for people with an LDD to identify if they require a reasonable adjustment to undertake and continue with their apprenticeship.

To ensure that employers are supported to create new apprenticeship opportunities, the department provides targeted financial support directly to training providers to help remove barriers for people with a LDD. Employers could receive £1,000 towards the costs of workplace support when they take on an apprentice aged 16-18 or 19-25 with an EHC plan, as well as help to cover the extra costs working individuals may have because of their disability, through the DWP’s Access to Work scheme.