Mentions:
1: Baroness Barran (Con - Life peer) The noble Baroness is right that our focus needs to be on those disadvantaged children. - Speech Link
2: Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham (Bshp - Bishops) needs of SEN children, and what more can be done to mitigate this? - Speech Link
3: Baroness Barran (Con - Life peer) Children with special educational needs and disabilities were of course greatly impacted during the pandemic - Speech Link
Mentions:
1: None : their educational, support and pastoral needs. - Speech Link
2: None —spiritual needs and the transitionss into adulthood and into retirement. - Speech Link
3: None approach that addresses the employment needs of people with autism and learning disabilities. - Speech Link
4: Whittle, Brian (Con - South Scotland) an individual approach being needed, which is generally true for any person, let alone somebody with special - Speech Link
Report May. 22 2024
Committee: Education Committee (Department: Department for Education)Found: There needs to be clear signposting.
Asked by: Rachel Maclean (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much was spent on (a) education places and (b) home to school transport for SEND (i) children and (ii) adults by local authority in 2023.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Total high needs funding for children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is over £10.5 billion in the 2024/25 financial year, which is an increase of over 60% from the 2019/20 allocations. Of this, Worcestershire County Council is due to receive a high needs funding allocation of £90.2 million in 2024/25, which is a cumulative increase of 32% per head over the three years from 2021/22. This funding will help local authorities and schools with the increasing costs of supporting children and young people with SEND.
Local authorities spent £7.9 billion on education for children and young people with complex SEND in the 2022/23 financial year, the latest year for which actual expenditure is available. The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) allocated a further £1.0 billion on high needs funding for SEND places in that financial year. The outturn data for expenditure in the 2023/24 financial year is not yet available, but is due to be published in late 2024. Planned expenditure reported by local authorities for that year was £9.4 billion and the ESFA’s expenditure was £1.1 billion. The data does not enable differentiation between children aged 0 to 18 and adults aged 19 to 25. Individual local authority expenditure information is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-local-authority-school-finance-data.
In the 2023/2024 academic year, a further £592 million of disadvantage funding was allocated through the 16 to 19 funding formula for young people aged 16 to 19, or those aged 19 to 24 and who have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan. Institutions are free to choose the best ways to use this additional funding and use this, in part, to support disadvantaged students including those with learning difficulties and disabilities.
Local authorities publish information about their expenditure on home-to-school travel for children with special educational needs (SEN) and on post-16 transport for both young people aged 16 to 18 and adults aged 19 to 25 with SEN, learning difficulties or disabilities, but they are not required to specify whether each child, young person, or adult has an EHC plan.
The information collected from local authorities is published on GOV.UK and can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/la-and-school-expenditure. Local authority gross expenditure on SEN transport covering the 2022/23 financial year is set out in the attached table.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
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 provision in schools in (a) Suffolk and (b) Suffolk Coastal constituency.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department shares the ambition that children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) should receive the vital support they need.
Where local authorities are failing to deliver consistent outcomes for children and young people with SEND, the department works with them using a set of improvement programmes and SEND specialist advisors to address weaknesses.
In March 2024, the department announced Unity Schools Partnership would run a new special education free school in Suffolk for pupils with severe learning difficulties. This is in addition to the six open special free schools in Suffolk already.
The department is opening over 200 special free schools and, in total, providing over 21,000 places for pupils with special educational needs. Over 10,000 of these places have already been delivered.
A joint local area SEND inspection was undertaken by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission in November 2023. The local area partnership received an outcome of ‘widespread and/or systemic failings leading to significant concerns’. The inspection report was published on 30 January 2024. The Local Area Partnership has since produced a Priority Action Plan which sets out how they will address the two Areas for Priority Action and has also updated its strategic SEND Improvement Plan.
Total high needs funding for children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is over £10.5 billion in the 2024/25 financial year, which represents an increase of over 60% from the 2019/20 allocations. Of this, Suffolk County Council is due to receive a high needs funding allocation of £113.9 million in the 2024/25 financial year, which is a cumulative increase of 31% per head over the three years from 2021/22. This funding will help local authorities and schools with the increasing costs of supporting children and young people with SEND.
Asked by: Rachel Maclean (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average cost was to educate (a) a child and (b) an adult with SEN in each of the last 20 years.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Children and young people with special educational needs are educated in a broad range of settings, most of which do not report their costs in a way that enables the department to isolate the costs of their education. Due to this, the department does not hold the information requested on the average cost.
Through the department’s special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and alternative provision (AP) Improvement Plan, the department is reforming the SEND system so that when a child or young person requires specialist provision, they get access to the support they need, and parents do not face an adversarial system to secure this. To support this, the department have increased the high needs budget to £10.54 billion, which is 60% more than in 2019/20. The department is also investing £2.6 billion to deliver new specialist and AP places and improve existing provision.
Oral Evidence May. 21 2024
Committee: Education Committee (Department: Department for Education)Found: Severn Arts, Dynamics Medway, Bolton Music Service, and Durham Music Service Oral Evidence
Mentions:
1: Lennon, Monica (Lab - Central Scotland) next baby who needs them. - Speech Link
2: Golden, Maurice (Con - North East Scotland) In the case of special waste, there should be pre-notification of fridges, say, and other designated - Speech Link
3: Ruskell, Mark (Green - Mid Scotland and Fife) It needs to be applied proportionately and in a way that recognises that communities are different and - Speech Link
4: Golden, Maurice (Con - North East Scotland) , and you might be looking at special waste. - Speech Link
Report May. 21 2024
Committee: Women and Equalities CommitteeFound: Sixth Report - Inequalities in healthcare and employment for people with a learning disability and autistic
Report May. 21 2024
Committee: Women and Equalities CommitteeFound: Large Print - Inequalities in healthcare and employment for people with a learning disability and autistic