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Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members not to rise to catch my eye unless they have the permission of both Mr Jermy and the Minister to speak.
Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered SEND provision in rural communities.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Desmond, and I am delighted to have secured this debate. Discussing this subject in detail will be hard in a 30-minute debate, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for her positive engagement with it. Given the time constraints, I will be able to accept only a few brief interventions, largely from those hon. Members who indicated in advance that they will intervene.
I will begin by thanking the parents, carers and families of children with special educational needs and disabilities who have contacted my office and shared their experience of the realities of SEND provision in rural communities. Many of the conversations I have had with those constituents in South West Norfolk have been incredibly difficult. The same themes arise time and again: frustration, exhaustion and a profound fear for their child’s future.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate. Travelling long distances to attend schools creates anxiety, distress and sensory overload, potentially affecting children’s ability to engage in learning when in school. Does he agree that we must invest in developing SEND provision in mainstream schools to ensure that children can access appropriate support closer to home, with less travelling, less anxiety and fewer problems?
Terry Jermy
I entirely agree, and I am sure the Minister will speak about that.
Prior to serving as a Member of Parliament, I spent many years as a county councillor in Norfolk, so I was aware of the SEND system and its difficulties from my councillor casework, but nothing could have prepared me for the avalanche of SEND-related cries for help that have arrived from right across my constituency. Since I was elected in 2024, more than 250 families have contacted my office to express serious concerns about the way their children’s needs are being assessed and met by schools and local authorities.
Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)
Access to assistive technology is another huge issue. Only 18% of young people surveyed by the British Dyslexia Association had access to assistive technology. Does the hon. Member agree that, just like diagnosis support, assistive technology should be available not just for those lucky enough to be in well-off urban areas or for those who can afford to pay private providers huge sums?
Terry Jermy
The hon. Member is right that investment in technology can make a significant difference to children and young people. Many of the conversations I have had with children and their families describe lengthy consultation processes to find a suitable school, daily battles to secure even the most basic provision, and periods of extreme distress as they struggle to navigate a system that often feels stacked against them.
I was keen to secure a debate on this motion because it is clear that children and young people with SEND in rural areas face a distinct set of structural challenges that affect access, equity and outcomes. Those challenges arise not necessarily from higher levels of need but from the complexity and cost of delivering education, health and care services across geographically dispersed communities.
Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)
The hon. Member is making a most informed speech. In North Norfolk I have heard from several families whose children cannot get, or have struggled to get, access to specialist settings. Children must travel further from home in rural areas, which is tougher for them and increases the transport bill. Does the hon. Member agree we need to do much more to ensure that children and families in rural communities can access specialist support when they need it?
Terry Jermy
I thank the hon. Member, my county colleague from Norfolk, for raising that point, and I entirely agree.
I want to explain and give information to the Minister about the experiences I have documented in my rural constituency. I have produced a SEND report, “Rural Realities”, and I have shared a draft with her. Through in-person group sessions, questionnaires and our detailed casework, we have gathered data about what is happening on the ground. At the first SEND roundtable in the market town of Downham Market, it was clear that many of the parents and carers from the local villages did not know one another. They arrived individually but soon discovered that their experiences were remarkably similar. They spoke of not receiving much support in their child’s early years. Health visitors came less frequently, and in many cases an in-person visit did not happen at all. Warning signs and opportunities for support were ignored at primary school, and when their child entered high school, often some distance away in a rural setting, the impact of having little to no support was further compounded. From our own assessments, it is clear that rural areas typically have a limited range of local SEND provision.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
I thank my fellow co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on farming for giving way. The bottom line is that SEND provision in rural areas is only as good as a child’s ability to reach it. Would the hon. Member agree?
Terry Jermy
Absolutely. A key theme of my contribution is the impact of distance and geography, so I entirely agree with. Lower population density restricts the viability of specialist settings and enhanced mainstream provision, resulting in reduced parental choice and greater reliance on out-of-area placements.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
That is a particular problem in Cornwall, because we are on a peninsula. Numerous children had no specialist place at all by September, because the options simply were not there. Going out of county is just too far for many people.
Terry Jermy
Absolutely. I can relate to many of those points, as I know of children and young people travelling significant distances to access suitable provision, affecting their wellbeing, attendance and readiness to learn. It is not uncommon for children my team and I have worked with to travel for an hour and a half in each direction every single day. At a system level, home-to-school transport costs are substantially higher, placing sustained pressure on higher needs budgets and limiting the resources available for early intervention and in-school support.
Workforce capacity presents a further challenge. Rural areas experience ongoing difficulties recruiting and retaining specialist staff, including special educational needs co-ordinators, educational psychologists and therapists. That contributes to delays in assessment, inconsistent access to specialist advice and slower delivery of support. When I visit schools across South West Norfolk, the variety in approach is stark. The Government are right to put additional SEND training and capital funding at the forefront of their decision making. Schools can do more to accommodate pupils with additional needs. I have seen that opportunity myself. More must be done to ensure that schools and local authorities embrace that responsibility and are held to account.
Specialist support, however, will always be needed. Areas like mine, with historical specialist gaps, should not be overlooked. The trends are clear: a lack of early intervention, rising travel costs and an increase in the number of children requiring specialist support. For too many families, the SEND system no longer provides what it should, instead becoming a source of additional stress and anxiety.
When I became an MP, I was determined to help families navigate that system, which is why I became one of only two MPs in the country to employ a dedicated SEND specialist caseworker. I am incredibly proud of the work my casework team have done to help families secure education, health and care plans, progress tribunal cases and, most importantly, obtain the support that children need and deserve. Those experiences have shown me that, despite the challenges facing SEND provision, positive change is possible, but only when local need is recognised and acted on.
Earlier this year, I campaigned strongly for a new specialist SEND school in Downham Market, and I was delighted when the Government approved the project and committed £20 million towards the new school at Ryston End. Once completed, it will transform opportunities for children and young people across a large part of Norfolk, bringing specialist provision closer to home.
Although I welcome that success, one school alone will not resolve the wider challenges facing SEND provision in rural communities. There are 32,000 children and young people identified as having SEND in Norfolk, including more than 13,000 with an education, health and care plan. Since 2016, the number of EHCPs has risen by 217%. That is placing increased pressure on schools, families and local authorities alike.
For rural communities, those pressures are often intensified by distance. Evidence shows that pupils attending special schools in rural areas travel an average of 10 miles each way, compared with approximately 4 miles in urban areas. In the most rural parts of England, one in 10 pupils travels more than 23 miles each way to their appropriate school. Families told me repeatedly that they feel like they have less choice, fewer local services and more barriers to accessing support than families in urban areas.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
What I found talking to people in places like Pyecombe and Warninglid is that this issue has a wider implication for parents’ capacity to get into work and stay in work. There are certainly parents in my constituency who have had to step back from the workforce. Did the hon. Gentleman also hear that when talking to families in his constituency?
Terry Jermy
Absolutely. The hon. Member makes a really important point about the impact on the wider family. For SEND parents with more than one child, it is incredibly difficult to navigate the logistics of getting to different schools in different locations. We have certainly experienced that in South West Norfolk.
Rurality also creates additional layers of bureaucracy because parents are often required to navigate multiple agencies spread across large geographical areas and to repeatedly explain their child’s needs to different professionals. They have to travel long distances to appointments and spend months, and sometimes years, pursuing assessments, reviews and support.
The pressures are being felt not only by families but by schools. Three quarters of schools that responded to my survey said they did not feel able to provide adequate support for pupils with SEND using their current resources. Many reported receiving insufficient support from the local authority with SEND and EHCP casework. Worst of all, 46% of parents who responded reported that their child had spent significant time out of school because their needs were not being met. Some families describe children being out of education for months, and sometimes years, and the story is always one of years of disruption with no suitable placement available.
Education is not a privilege in this country; it is a right, yet too many children with SEND are being denied that right, not because their potential is lacking but because the system around them is struggling to provide the support they need. For children in rural communities, the challenges are often even greater. That is why I hope the Government will fully consider the added impact of rurality, which I have highlighted through my South West Norfolk SEND report. They must consider the added pressures as part of their wider reforms to the SEND system, so that families across constituencies like mine and those of other hon. Members who have spoken can finally feel heard, supported and confident that their children will receive the education they deserve.
The Minister for School Standards (Georgia Gould)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy) for his speech and for all his work on this issue. I have his report with me; it is a deep and thoughtful reflection on the challenges in his area and also reflects some of the challenges that, as we heard from other Members, are common to rural communities.
I understand that my hon. Friend spoke to more than 300 parents. The themes that came through—the need to battle for support, children being out of education, and the huge stress this issue puts on families—are sadly ones I have heard from many parts of the country. It is incredibly important that he has brought those voices to us, and I want to assure him that the voices of the parents and teachers in his constituency are being taken seriously as we work through the consultation on the SEND reform plans.
My hon. Friend also took the time to sit down with me to discuss some of these issues in detail, which I really appreciate. He raised critical issues and common pressures, but some of those common pressures are exacerbated in rural communities by difficulties with recruitment, the long distances needing to be travelled and the availability of provision.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Ind)
The Minister recognises the difficulties in rural areas. I must stress that in Cornwall we have seen a 300% increase in the cost of home-to-school transport in the last seven years. In addition, two thirds of Cornish families waiting for an EHCP have to wait for more than 20 weeks. Does she agree that SEND provision is particularly difficult and costly in remote peninsula communities such as Cornwall, and that budgets and support need to recognise those geographical factors?
Georgia Gould
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for raising these issues. I absolutely recognise the additional pressures that exist in rural and more remote communities. I will go on to discuss some of the things that we are doing to address those pressures, and I will come on to home-to-school transport when I go through that list.
One of the first things that I want to highlight is the new Experts at Hand service, through which £1.8 billion is going in nationally, not only to deliver more occupational therapists, educational psychologists and speech and language therapists, but to provide support from special schools and alternative provision into mainstream schools. We have just started rolling that service out and we are working with local authorities around the country. Every local authority has been asked to deliver a SEND reform plan and we are getting quarterly feedback on the data on how that is going, including the Experts at Hand service, so we will have a much clearer view of the gaps that sit around the country. As we build out the service, there will be the ability to work with those areas that are struggling to recruit and that see real gaps, in order to try and improve their provision in those areas. We will also be working with MPs to share some of the data that is coming through that national picture, which we have not previously had access to.
The second thing that I wanted to flag is access to teacher training. We are investing £200 million into teacher training. The first set of resources has gone out into the system and those resources can be used by schools on their inset days. A host of different resources are coming out across the year, making it easier for schools in more remote locations to implement training. We will also develop a set of courses, starting from next year, which will be a mix of online teaching and live teaching for teaching assistants, school leaders and teachers. Where it is not possible for teachers to attend courses in person, it will be possible for them to take those courses online, if that is what they want. I also want to flag the investment that is going directly into schools through the inclusive mainstream fund, alongside the existing funding in the system.
As we move forward on SEND reform and respond to the consultation, one of the big parts of that process is asking schools to come together in clusters. Some of the extra funding that will go into schools will go through clusters; some of it will go directly to schools and some of it will go through clusters. One of the things that we are really considering is how we can ensure that those clusters work in rural communities. We want to do a test and learn process in a mix of different contexts. I am really keen to talk to Norfolk MPs about this, to see whether it is something we can work on.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
The Isle of Axholme in my constituency is a big rural area. Many children have to travel long distances for EHCP assessments, but also to receive specialist support for special educational needs. At the Axholme school in Crowle, we have historically had a higher number of children with SEND than the national average. Of course, that is a concern, because I want to ensure that there is no postcode lottery when the SEND reforms are being made. Will the Minister absolutely and categorically reassure me that if someone lives in a rural community, they will get support equitable to that given anywhere else in the country?
Georgia Gould
As we move into this new system, we will be looking at all the funding going into it, whether that is through the local funding formula or the high needs funding.
The thinking behind the cluster approach is that in the new system we want every school to be inclusive, and to take and support students with a range of needs but who do not need to be in specialist provision. Within that, some schools might have higher need and the cluster approach is to ensure that we can move money to where the need is highest. However, we must ensure that that works in different contexts, which is why we are committed to testing and learning within rural contexts.
I also want to flag capital investment. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk mentioned the new special school, and said that that alone is not enough, which I agree with. We are investing £3.7 billion into capital investment to deliver a range of changes. Some are to mainstream schools to make them more accessible, but the funding can be used for new special schools. We are clear that it should drive an expansion of inclusion bases, which are really important because they bring SEND provision to more remote communities and closer to families. I have seen many examples where children were out of school and really struggling to get an education, and having that inclusion base on their doorstep has been completely transformative in opening up that access and reducing the need to travel. The high-needs capital funding that is going into Norfolk is £13 million in 2025-26 and £15.8 million in 2026-27, so there is significant investment going in to help that capital challenge and deliver inclusion bases.
Adam Dance
The Government are currently piloting assistive technology lending libraries. Will the Minister update us on that trial and whether it can expanded to more rural areas such as Somerset that do not have mayors so that kids do not have to miss out and schools are not ripped off on assistive technology by private companies?
Georgia Gould
We absolutely recognise the importance of assistive technology in the system. The hon. Member has raised and championed that, and I will follow up and give him a proper update on how it is going and our plans.
My next point is about the importance of partnership. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk talked about how parents have to navigate myriad different services and are bouncing between them. One key thing we want to deliver in the immediate term is asking local areas to strengthen their partnership arrangements across health, education and local authorities but critically also with parents and young people. In the long term we aim to have much stronger partnership arrangements in place so that whichever stage a child is at, whether they need early intervention or more specialist support, that comes in a timely manner and without a fight.
Anna Gelderd (South East Cornwall) (Lab)
In my rural community of South East Cornwall, I had the honour of visiting the Learning Paddocks, which is a specialist provision that worked very hard to get set up but faced many barriers to being a specialist provider of care. In areas such as mine with huge transport problems and when mainstream education is not the right choice, how are the Government going to work with providers to support specialist provision such as the Learning Paddocks?
Georgia Gould
We have an expert panel that is developing a set of specialist provision packages, which will set out what we expect from settings to meet a whole range of needs that will be consulted on. The expectation is that local authorities will need to commission against all of those specialist provision packages so the full range of need should be met within a local area. That will make it much easier for providers and local authorities to understand what is expected of them and to provide those packages. Critically, when a child requires that support, they will not have to wait for it because it is commissioned and available in that area. At the moment, there is a huge postcode lottery with some support available in some areas while in others it is completely absent—that is why we see some of the long distances that we have heard about.
Steff Aquarone
To go back to the Minister’s point about partnership working, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy) talked about health visitors, rurality, schools, transport and the impact on work—those are five Departments. In a previous life, she and I met and discussed the need to shake things up in Westminster and rewire Government so that it works for people and not within silos. Does she agree that this is a classic example of how the Government need to change the way they work so that they can serve humans and not processes?
Georgia Gould
I agree. In a previous life I led a council, and I used to sit in frustration, asking, “Does anyone in Government talk to each other?” because we often saw very siloed decisions. People’s lives are not split into different Government Departments: they live in communities, travel, need healthcare, and work, and all those things come together. It is critical that we work together, and SEND is an area where there was a promise of greater integration in the 2014 reforms, but the experience, as we have heard, is that that promise has not been delivered. Working closely across Government, particularly with colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Care, we are determined to drive integration, so that families get a seamless experience. That is a really important point.
I also want to respond to the points made about distance travelled. There are two important things to say. First, one way to reduce that is to ensure the right provision is available in local areas. Whether that is the greater roll-out of inclusion bases, or the development of specialist provision packages, which make clear what should be available locally, we expect to see a much greater range of local provision. We also recognise that the nature of rural communities means that travel distances are greater. That is why, in the changes to home-to-school transport, there is now a separate formula that includes distance travelled, and that is a key part of the system.
I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate; I know how important these issues are. Our aim is to ensure everyone gets early intervention, without a postcode lottery. People will get the support they need, wherever they live. That requires a focus on rural communities to understand the specific challenges.
We are committed to testing and learning, looking at those challenges, understanding the data and disparities, and working alongside local authorities to ensure that the national vision is felt by families and communities everywhere. I encourage hon. Members to stay involved in that conversation, to keep working with us by sharing feedback on the challenges in their areas, as Experts at Hand, the inclusion mainstream fund and teacher training roll out, so that we can respond.
Alison Bennett
Has the Minister considered the role of parent-carers and the assessment of their needs? Access to mental health services is worse in rural areas. Siobhan O’Dwyer said that 41% of parent-carers have had suicidal thoughts, which will be more acute in a rural area. Is that a consideration for the Government’s work?
Georgia Gould
Absolutely. That is why we have said that every Best Start hub needs a lead SEND practitioner. We are investing £200 million in the roll-out of SEND support through Best Start hubs, working closely with parent-carer forums on support for parents.
We have talked about integration. Another big programme we are rolling out is the Family First Partnership, to rebuild early help and support for parents. We want to ensure those partnerships are working with Experts at Hand and schools, so that parents and families get the support they need at the same time as young people. That is an important part of bringing it all together, looking at all the investments to ensure they work on the ground. I thank everyone for the debate and you, Sir Desmond, for your chairship.
Question put and agreed to.