SEND Provision

Debate between James Wild and David Johnston

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for opening this important debate. I know how important it is to him that our investment in education gives children and young people the very best start in life, and his work on these issues both as Chair of the Education Committee and as an excellent former Schools Minister is well recognised across the House. I, too, pay tribute to all the staff and parents doing all they can to support children with special educational needs.

Before I turn to the substance of the debate, may I say what an excellent maiden speech the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Gen Kitchen) gave? It is nice to see someone else from the charity sector join the House. Her speech was a great advert for visiting Wellingborough, and specifically her office, where she seems to keep all of its best products. She said that she would like to make her family proud, but I have no doubt that she has already done that and will continue to do so a great deal more in the coming years.

This Government are making record investment in education, with total schools revenue funding reaching over £60.7 billion this coming year. That is the highest level in real terms per pupil in history. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) said—a great champion for children with special educational needs—within the total funding amount, high needs funding is increasing to more than £10.5 billion in the coming financial year, which is an increase of over 60% compared with 2019-20.

The Department is also making a transformational investment in capital funding. We have published over £1.5 billion of high needs provision capital allocations for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 financial years to support local authorities to deliver new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND or who require alternative provision.

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way so early in his speech. I am grateful that there will be two special schools in Norfolk, including one in west Norfolk, but at the moment Norfolk County Council spends £40 million a year moving children with special needs to special schools rather than on their education itself. Will he look at the urgent funding need for counties like Norfolk that face those very high costs?

[David Johnston]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The amount being spent on transport rather than provision is too high. The solution is both to create more provision and to meet children’s needs in mainstream schools at an early enough stage wherever possible, though that is not always possible.

The investment is on top of our ongoing delivery of new special and alternative provision for free schools. Currently, 108 special free schools are open, with a further 77 approved to open in future. Last week, we announced funding for an additional wave of 15 special free schools. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester asked some questions about that investment. I can confirm that it is intended to provide 30,000 additional specialist places and that we remain on course to deliver that. I can also confirm that we will still be spending £2.6 billion in this area.

Despite our investment in education funding, it is right to acknowledge that the SEND and alternative provision system continues to face challenges. The SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, which we published in March 2023, seeks to move us to a national system where every child gets the right support in the right place at the right time. We have already begun the process of testing our reforms. In September last year, we launched the SEND and AP change programme, which is delivering some of the things we talked about in the plan, including standardising and digitising the EHCP process, testing advisory tailored lists, and strengthening mediation.

On financial pressures, as has been touched on, the Department for Education has two main programmes—the safety valve programme and the delivering better value programme—to support and stabilise local authority expenditure. The programmes are designed to improve SEND services by helping local authorities to make the very best use of their resources. The local authorities with the highest percentage deficits are invited to join the safety valve programme, and there are now 34 local authorities with safety valve agreements. By March 2025, the Department will have allocated nearly £900 million through the programme to help local authorities to eliminate their historic deficits while continuing to deliver high-quality provision.

Local authorities with substantial but less severe deficits have been invited to join the delivering better value programme—an £85 million programme launched in 2022 that helps selected authorities to structure and deliver their SEND services so young people get the support they need at the right time. The authorities work out the causes of their challenges and develop action plans. They are given £1 million to support the implementation of the plan. We have published some of the learnings and insights from the programme so far, and will continue to find and share examples of good practice in local areas. That is, in part, to address the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester, the Chair of the Education Committee, about helping local authorities to plan appropriately.

Turning to other areas of funding to support children with special educational needs, we are investing £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists by September 2024. We are investing £18 million between 2022 and 2025 to double the capacity of our supported internships programme. We have a new programme called PINS— partnerships for inclusion of neurodiversity—which is a £13 million investment that will deploy specialists from both health and education workforces to train more than 1,600 mainstream primary schools to better meet the needs of children with autism and other neurodiverse needs. There is plenty more I can say, but I want to address some of the questions raised.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) said, we know that effective early intervention can reduce the impact that a special educational need or disability may have. I commend him on his continued campaigning in that area. On childcare, we are working with every local authority to ensure they have the places available for all children, as part of our childcare roll-out.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester asked me to review the correspondence relating to the location of Fort Royal. I give him that commitment. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk asked me to look at what the Ministry of Justice has done on passporting information; I will do that. On exclusions, we do not recognise the figures he quoted, but the proportion of children with special educational needs within the exclusion figures has been falling—although it is still too high.

The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) asked about EHCP passporting between home nations. We would expect English local authorities to accept the evidence they have been given, but I will discuss that further with the team. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) has been a consistent champion for children with special educational needs since we arrived here and served together on the Education Committee. We recently reviewed the frameworks for teacher training and there is now significantly more content on supporting children with special educational needs, but I am very happy to have a further discussion with him separately.