Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Georgia Gould]

We recognise that the size of deficits that councils are accruing while the statutory override is in place might not be manageable with local resources alone. We will be setting out more information in the local government settlement this year.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for visiting my constituency last year, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education for visiting last week, when she came to see an expanded school nursery at Uplands primary in Sandhurst. She took the opportunity to speak to some fantastic hard-working teachers, and to hear their concerns about the level of SEND need and the need for more support. I welcome the announcement of £200 million extra funding for SEND training, which will be vital for teachers who need that extra support.

[Georgia Gould]

I was delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency and to see some brilliant work, including a new SEND resource base that means children who would otherwise have to travel for miles are instead being educated in their community. As my hon. Friend sets out, I heard from teachers who wanted to put in more support but did not always have the tools to allow them to do so. I am delighted that we are able to invest in teacher training, which will support teachers in his constituency and across the country.

Support for Dyslexic Pupils

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) for securing this important debate. He has raised the topic consistently and I know it is personally very important to him, as well as to the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Juliet Campbell).

As we have heard, dyslexia is a common, lifelong difference in how a person processes language that affects reading, writing and spelling, but not intelligence. In fact, many people with dyslexia excel at creative thinking, problem solving and seeing patterns that others miss. As we have heard, it is estimated that up to one in 10 people in the UK are dyslexic—this is not a rare condition—yet too often the system treats those strengths as an afterthought.

Families wait months, sometimes years, for an assessment; in the meantime, children are told to try harder, when what they need are simple, evidence-based adjustments. Teachers do their absolute best, but without the training and resources to confidently support different styles of learning, provision can become a postcode lottery, and school budgets that are already stretched leave little room for specialist staff, assistive tools and the protected time that inclusion requires.

For many, diagnosis comes too late. If a child is not diagnosed early, they can find they are already years behind other students when it comes to reading and writing. Early identification and practical support can change the trajectory of a child’s education and their life beyond school.

What should we do? First, we must put early identification at the heart of special educational need interventions. That means streamlining NHS processes so that families are not stuck before support need is recognised. It means investing to reduce waiting lists—constituents of mine in Frome and East Somerset struggle to get timely diagnoses. Crucially, it also means empowering schools to implement reasonable adjustments at the first signs of need, without forcing children to wait for a piece of paper before help arrives.

Secondly, we need to equip teachers and schools to include every child, every day. That starts with initial teacher training and continuous professional development that is practical, hands-on and focused on what works for dyslexia in real classrooms. It continues with a national inclusion framework, so that every school has a clear, evidence-based blueprint for inclusive practice. It includes a national parental participation strategy, recognising that families are experts in their children and must be partners from the start, not last-minute consultees.

We must also strengthen the role of the SENDCO. They should sit on senior leadership teams and have protected time to do their work. They are the bridge between strategy and practice, and they cannot do their job effectively if they spread impossibly thin. We should reform Ofsted so that inspections look seriously at inclusive provision, not just exam results. Inclusion is not a footnote: it is the mark of a great school that every learner is seen, supported and stretched.

Thirdly, we should normalise simple adjustments and assistive technology. This is not about lowering standards; it is about measuring understanding, not just handwriting speed. Coloured overlays or paper, clear fonts, chunked instructions, alternatives to copying from the board, text-to-speech and speech-to-text tools—that is incredibly difficult to say—help students to access the curriculum and express what they know.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I used to be a teacher, and I know from my own practice that many of the measures that were originally introduced to support students with special educational needs, including dyslexia, actually support all children to learn better in the classroom. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need much more focus on inclusive teaching practice, because that will support everyone in the classroom, including, most importantly, those with additional needs?

[Anna Sabine]

As a parent of children who are not dyslexic but had other ways of learning, which were well supported in schools, and as someone who recognised later in life that I had different ways of learning and would have benefited from different and inclusive practices, I totally agree. It would have helped me to say the words “text to speech” as well. As the hon. Member said, adjustments can benefit many learners, not just those with a diagnosis.

We can use artificial intelligence to help us to create text that those with dyslexia can use. A constituent of mine from Peasedown St John told me last week that she has an older child with dyslexia, who was diagnosed later in childhood and is now suffering from a lack of age-appropriate resources. He enjoys “The Legend of Zelda” computer games, so my constituent asked AI to write a story based on that for a person of his age with dyslexia with his characteristics. She said it was the first time he has been able to read something he is really interested and engaged in. AI can be a tool to allow a whole new group of people to access something they never normally would.

We must make sure there is a fair deal for families. Too many parents feel that they must fight the system to secure basic support. A parental participation strategy should set out clear points of contact, transparent timelines, and co-produced plans that follow the child through school and into further education or apprenticeships. Families should not need to be experts in bureaucracy just to get their child the help that they need.

To achieve the changes that I have set out, we need to work cross-party—I am pleased to hear the cross-party consensus today—and with families, educators and employers. The result would be a system that sees every child, supports every learner, and opens the door to a lifetime of contribution and success.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Georgia Gould]

The Government have put £1 billion into the high-needs block to support children with special educational needs, but I want to hear from Members from around the country about their ideas for reforms, and I am happy to meet the hon. Member and colleagues.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

T7. Let me first declare that I chair the all-party parliamentary group for schools, learning and assessment and the APPG on social mobility. Businesses, schools and young people in Bracknell Forest all tell me that essential skills such as financial, digital and media literacy, creative problem-solving, communication and collaboration are more important than ever, but are not formally recognised or measured. How can we help young people to succeed by developing and recognising those essential skills?

[Georgia Gould]

I look forward to working with the APPG. We agree that we need to equip young people with key knowledge and skills to adapt to a rapidly changing world, and the curriculum and assessment review will say more about the wider curriculum.

Children with SEND: Assessments and Support

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Monday 15th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Savage]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and I agree that early intervention absolutely pays dividends in the long run.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

Early intervention is exactly the issue at play here. The reality is that for many families in my constituency who have managed to acquire an EHCP, it has come only after considerable delay. Does the hon. Lady agree that we must protect legal rights and move from a system that focuses too much on later interventions to one that focuses more on earlier interventions, and that the right test will be whether the new system gets more support to more young people more quickly?

[Dr Savage]

I totally agree with the hon. Member’s intervention. Change must focus on early support, mainstream inclusion and capacity, which is exactly what the petitioners are calling for today. In the light of that evidence, the legal rights given by EHCPs are not a luxury but a necessary tool for ensuring that children get the support to fulfil their true potential. Without these legal rights intact, many families face months or years of legal challenge or delay just to obtain what should be automatic.

Early Education and Childcare

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Morgan]

As a relatively new dad, my hon. Friend has been a real champion on these issues in this House, and it was a real pleasure to meet him earlier this year to discuss some of the issues he faces. I pay tribute to those who work in the early years sector in his constituency—they are working day in, day out to ensure every child gets the best start in life.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I welcome today’s announcement that this Government are again expanding school-based nurseries. That programme is already benefiting my constituents with the expansion of Uplands school nursery in Sandhurst. This summer, I also had the real pleasure of visiting Horseshoe Lake in Sandhurst to meet children trying out sailing and paddleboarding through the holiday activities and food programme. Does my hon. Friend agree that the £600 million expansion of that programme demonstrates this Government’s commitment to every child?

[Stephen Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for visiting the HAF programme in his constituency, where he saw first-hand what a brilliant scheme it is, providing healthy meals, enriching activities and Government-funded childcare places for children from low-income families. That is exactly what this Labour Government want to invest in, and we are.

SEND Provision: South-east England

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. SEND comes up in every surgery I hold, every time I knock on doors and at every coffee morning, as it will for hon. Members on both sides of the House. I hear heartbreaking stories of parents fighting to get the support their children need. Families in Bracknell Forest have been struggling for a decade or more to access those services. When a local area SEND inspection recently highlighted gaps in provision, it did not say anything that parents and carers did not know from bitter personal experience.

During the election, I committed that this Labour Government would fix the broken SEND system that is failing families in Bracknell Forest and across the country, and I am proud that we are doing just that. I understand why parents are anxious, however, because they have been failed by the system for so long that it is understandable that trust in it is so low.

It is important that we start from the principle that we need to see more support for more children more quickly, moving from a system where a crisis point has to be reached before any support is given to one where early intervention is the priority. It is also essential that we protect parents’ legal rights to support for their children. I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for listening to families, children and the sector, because it is vital that we get this right and take families with us as we make the changes we need to make.

This Labour Government have already delivered so much. They have delivered £1 billion more into the high needs budget, including £2.2 million more for extra SEND provision in Bracknell Forest. They have funded family hubs in Bracknell Forest where the previous Government did not and empowered them to offer more early years support, particularly for SEND. They have rolled out the highly successful PINS—partnerships for inclusion of neurodiversity in schools—programme to more schools and secured £760 million in transformation funding, because reforming the SEND system will require spending more money. It is not and cannot be a cost-saving exercise.

I thank the Minister for meeting me last week to hear about the concerns of local families. She will not be surprised to hear that I will continue to raise with her and the Secretary of State the concerns of parents and carers in Bracknell Forest, so that their voices can be heard as plans are developed. She will also not be surprised to hear me raise one final issue: support for a new SEND school for students with high needs autism at Buckler’s Park, which was promised by the previous Government without a penny to pay for it. Although more children could and should be supported in mainstream education, and I was proud to open a new specialist resource provision at Sandhurst school just the other month, there will always be those who need additional support that can be provided only at a special school. I know that the Minister will consider that as part of the reforms.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for obtaining this important and very timely debate on SEND provision in the south-east. First, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am a serving Surrey county councillor. I was also a member of the Public Accounts Committee during its inquiry on support for children and young people with special educational needs.

SEND support in the south-east is in crisis. Children are not getting the support that they are legally entitled to at the right time, which is driving poorer outcomes and putting untold stress on families. My inbox, like those of many Members here, is full of examples: parents battling to secure much-needed support for their child to thrive, yet facing incompetence and fundamental misunderstandings of the law by the council; carers forced to give up work to stay at home with their child while they languish without school provision; and families driven to the brink of despair by the adversarial system. Those issues must be addressed, and fast, for the sake of our children and their loved ones.

Despite significant increases in recent years in SEND funding, to £10.7 billion, there has been no consistent improvement in outcomes for children and young people since 2019. Only half of EHCPs are issued within the 20-week statutory deadline, resulting in children having to wait too long for support. Shockingly, in about 98% of cases that go to a tribunal, the tribunal finds in favour of the family, indicating that something is going very wrong in the original decision-making process. It is clear that the overall system is not fit for purpose and is inadequately funded, making local authorities’ already difficult job in this area even harder.

Worryingly, a statutory override system has been put in place, which essentially allows the ever-growing SEND deficit on local authority books to be ignored. According to the recent Public Accounts Committee report, nearly half of all English local authorities are at risk of “effectively going bankrupt” when the statutory override ends.

[Peter Swallow]

Will the hon. Member give way?

Department for Education

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

As a former teacher, school governor and university lecturer, and as chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on schools, learning and assessment, on classics and on social mobility, may I say how proud I am to stand here as a Labour MP elected on a manifesto commitment to break down barriers to opportunity for all young people?

Bracknell Forest is an incredible place in which to grow up. We have only good and outstanding schools and a fantastic local FE college—Bracknell and Wokingham college—and leafy Berkshire is of course a very lovely corner of the world. However, it would be wrong to suggest that young people in my constituency do not face real challenges. The Sutton Trust has identified that Bracknell has below average social mobility. We have a below average number of 18-year-olds going on to higher education, and the figure is half the rate of Wokingham next door. We are one of the councils in the safety valve programme, and we are facing sustained issues in offering the vital SEND education that is so badly needed.

That is why I am so proud that this Government are working to address these educational inequalities, including giving hard-working teachers in my constituency above inflation pay rises for a second year in a row; addressing school support staff funding through re-establishing the school support staff negotiating body; extending free school meals, with over 3,000 students set to be eligible in Bracknell Forest; and the funding to support Uplands school to open a new school-based nursery. What a difference from the Tory party, which would prefer to fund a tax cut for private schools, and the Reform leader, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who believes SEND students are being massively over-diagnosed.

The SEND crisis demands real action to address it, which is why I particularly welcome the £1 billion extra for SEND in last year’s Budget, including £2.2 million more for Bracknell Forest council to expand provision. I have seen the effect of expanding provision, and I was very proud to open the new special resource provision at Sandhurst school just the other week. However, we need a full range of provision, with mainstream support as well as new special schools, and the Minister will know that I have been lobbying her hard to deliver the proposed special school for autism in Buckler’s Park in my patch. Shamefully, the previous Government promised that school, but without a penny to pay for it. I would like to take this opportunity to once again lobby my hon. Friend to deliver that much-needed service.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

Before the election, Labour said that increasing VAT would pay for more teachers. Even in December, the Chancellor said that

“every single penny of that money will go into our state schools”.

More recently, however, the Prime Minister has claimed that this will instead pay for investment in social housing. He said

“my government made the tough but fair decision to apply VAT to private schools… because of that choice, we have announced the largest investment in affordable housing in a generation.”

These statements from the Chancellor and the Prime Minister cannot both be true. They cannot spend every penny on state schools and also spend money on housing, so my first question to Ministers is this: who is not telling the truth? Is it the Prime Minister or the Chancellor? Logically, both statements cannot be true.

Either way, we are not getting the extra teachers. In fact, statistics just came out showing that there are not more teachers, but fewer. There are 400 fewer overall, including 2,900 fewer in primary. Teacher numbers went up 27,000 under the last Government. Now they are down 400 under this Government. It was at that point, when those statistics came out showing that things were going in the wrong direction, that Ministers suddenly and for the first time started saying that the loss of staff in primary schools would no longer count. Primary school teachers no longer count for this Government. They had never said this before until the statistics showed that teacher numbers were falling.

This pathetic attempt to move the goalposts is so corrosive of trust in politics. It is a bit like when the Chancellor said that she was making her unfunded pledge to reverse the disastrous cut to the winter fuel payment because things were going so well with the economy. Everyone knows that is not true. It was so brazen. Let me quote what the Office for Budget Responsibility has said:

“Since the October forecast, developments in outturn data and indicators of business, consumer and market sentiment have, on balance, been negative for the economic outlook”,

and

“borrowing is projected to be £13.1 billion higher in 2029”.

But this Government seem to think that they can say black is white and people will believe them.

In that same brazen spirit, the Secretary of State responded to the statistics showing that there were fewer teachers in our schools by saying in a chirpy tweet:

“We’re getting more teachers into our classrooms.”

Ministers now say that primary schools do not count because pupil numbers are falling, but pupil numbers in primary are now predicted to be higher than when they made that promise. On the same basis, we could equally exclude all the many areas where numbers of pupils are falling in secondary and, indeed, places where numbers in primary are still going up, as in Leicestershire. It is brilliant: if we just ignore all the teachers that are getting the sack, of course teacher numbers are going up.

[Peter Swallow]

In the spirit of saying things that are not true and making brazen statements, I wonder whether the hon. Member can get on to the bit of his speech where he pretends that the Conservative Government invested more in our schools.

[Neil O’Brien]

I am glad that the hon. Member has prompted me—he must have a copy of my speech. In the last Parliament, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, real-terms spending per pupil went up by 11%. I thank him for allowing me to make that point.

So why are so many teachers getting the sack? It is partly because that is not the only broken promise. Labour also promised that it would fully compensate schools for the cost of the national insurance increase. The Minister sighs as I say this, and schools around the country will sigh too, because Labour broke that promise. According to the Confederation of Schools Trusts and the Association of School and College Leaders, schools have been left up to 35% short in some cases. With all the broken promises that we have already mentioned, let me check in on another promise. Perhaps the Minister will tell us the answer. The Prime Minister promised two weeks of work experience for all pupils and the Labour manifesto promised £85 million to pay for it. In May the Government told schools to get on and deliver extra work experience. When exactly will schools receive that £85 million?

Schools are not the only bit of the Department for Education where the Government have broken promises. The Secretary of State’s website still says, in a chirpy way:

“Graduates, you will pay less under a Labour government.”

But Labour has increased fees, not reduced them. The spending review was strangely silent on the subject of tuition fees. I assume that silence can only imply that tuition fees are set to rise in every year of this Parliament. Let me say what that will mean. It will mean that, in 2027, fees will go above £10,000 a year for the first time. It will mean that the total amount borrowed per student taking out the full amount will increase from £59,000 now to £66,000 outside London, and from £69,000 to £77,000 in London. So much for paying less! Ironically, the gain to universities from that broken promise and from that fee hike has been entirely wiped out by yet another broken promise: the decision to increase national insurance, another thing that Labour promised not to do.

That broken promise has also hit nurseries. The Early Years Alliance has said that it is “disappointed” and “frustrated” by the spending review, and the Early Education and Childcare Coalition says that the spending review

“reiterates many promises already made”

and that

“many nurseries and other providers are…running at losses and at brink of closure”.

Meanwhile, the Institute for Fiscal Studies notes that the funding in the spending review for early years

“may not be enough to meet additional unexpected demand”.

So what does this all look like when we come down from the billions to look at it from the frontline? Sir Jon Coles is the leader of the largest school trust in the country and also a distinguished former senior official in DFE. What does he make of these estimates and this SR? He says that

“education will—for the first time in a spending review—get less growth than the average across all spending departments… The last time we had such a poor three-year cash settlement was the period 2014-2018, when average cash increases were about 1.8 per cent. But then, inflation averaged 1.5 per cent… it slightly sticks in the throat that HMT are trying to present it as good news… The claim that this is a ‘£2 billion increase in real terms’ is a version of spin I can’t remember seeing before. It relies on treating the financial year before last (pre-election) as the first year of the current spending review period.”

In fact, he says that when all that is stripped away,

“to all intents and purposes, this is a flat real-terms settlement for three years. If, as Schools Week are reporting, the £760 million ‘SEND transformation fund’ is coming out of the core schools budget, then that represents a significant real terms funding cut in school funding.”

Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether that is correct and it is coming out of core schools spending.

That brings me on to the great suppressed premises in these estimates, which is that DFE assumes that it will save substantial amounts on special needs compared with the trend implied by previous years. The hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) talked about the cuts to special needs spending. In fact, since 2016, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, spending has increased by £4 billion in real terms—a 60% increase. If that has felt like a cut to the hon. Member, he will not like what is being brewed up by the Treasury now.

The SEND plan will be out this autumn—coincidentally around the time of what looks like an increasingly difficult Budget. So far, DFE Ministers have floated two ideas for the SEND review. The first is to restrict EHCPs only to special schools. That would be a huge change. There are 271,000 children with EHCPs in non-special state schools and a further 37,800 in non-special independent schools, so 60% of the total are not in special schools. Anna Bird, chair of the Disabled Children’s Partnership—a coalition of 120 charities—has said:

“The idea of scrapping Education, Health and Care Plans will terrify families.”

Secondly, on top of that, we learned from a Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care that the Government also plan to push a lot more children from special schools into the mainstream.

There are two big questions about this plan. To say the least, there is a clear tension between these two money-saving ideas. If the Government take away EHCPs in mainstream schools, parents will be a lot less confident when the council presses them to put their child into a mainstream school rather than a special one. Given that the Government have U-turned on the winter fuel payment and now say that the coming welfare vote will, in fact, be a confidence vote in the Prime Minister, it will be interesting to see what eventually issues forth from the DFE. We know from these estimates and the SR that, as Sir Jon Cole says, unless the Government deliver these large, planned savings in special needs, the settlement for schools will become increasingly difficult.

This Government have broken a staggering number of promises incredibly quickly. Ministers seem to believe that they can just say that black is white and that they never meant any of the things they so clearly promised. This debate is about the money side of things, of course, but in terms of reform, things are also going backwards with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will lower standards and smash up 30 years of cross-party reform to appease the trade unions. Tony Blair once talked about “education, education, education.” What we are now getting is broken promises, broken promises, broken promises.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

It is only through delivering a Labour Government in Scotland next year that we will get the change that the hon. Gentleman is seeking. I agree that Scottish education used to be the envy of the world—I spent many a long day speaking to my grandfather about his experience of the Scottish system—but it is only with a Labour Government in Scotland that we will once again see the focus on standards that our disadvantaged young people badly need.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

T10. Earlier this month, I opened the Launch Pad, a new SEND provision at Sandhurst school, and I was shown around by Ben, who told me how the Launch Pad had helped him to access education. As the Government work at pace to fix the broken SEND system, what is the Minister’s message for young people like Ben?

[Catherine McKinnell]

We know that there are lots of great examples of mainstream schools delivering specialist provision, such as the one my hon. Friend recently opened, enabling children to achieve and thrive in mainstream school and providing excellent support to children with speech and language needs. We have allocated £740 million to support mainstream schools to increase their SEND provision, and we want to reassure his constituent that we will continue to prioritise that in our work.

SEND Funding

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the distribution of SEND funding.

I am delighted to have secured this debate, as it gives us an opportunity to highlight the situation we are facing in England, where children with special educational needs and disabilities are being left behind due to the inherent regional inequality in the high-needs national funding formula. There is a bigger issue. The more typical thing we talk about is the overall quantum of spending based on overall need, but too little attention is given to the distribution of the funding that exists, whether in healthcare, education, policing or otherwise. I know I am not the only Member being turned to by constituents at their wits’ end, trying to navigate what feels to be a broken system; I thank colleagues across the House for their continued advocacy on behalf of some of the most vulnerable children in all our communities.

My argument is a simple yet deeply important one: the current model of SEND funding is not only inconsistent but in too many cases profoundly unfair. It fails to account for genuine levels of need, the realities faced by families, and the systemic pressures that schools and local authorities are under. Unless that changes, we will continue to fail children who rely on Members to make their case and to get this right.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a profoundly important point. There is a real and urgent need to reform the SEND system, and that of course includes how it is funded. Does he welcome the £750 million ringfenced in yesterday’s spring statement for exactly that: to transform our SEND system to make it fairer for parents, better for young people and more sustainable for the future?

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman takes me to a point further on in my speech, but he is absolutely right. He makes the case to the Minister, exactly as I intend to: given that we have a broken distribution system and given the severity of its impact on so many children and families, will she ensure that the money in the spending review is, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, used precisely for that purpose and that we target those who are most left behind?

At the heart of this debate, I am calling on the Government to identify and commit to a clear baseline cost for delivering effective SEND support per pupil. The figure must reflect what it genuinely takes, in both urban and rural settings, to support children with complex needs across the country. Only then can we ensure that no child’s opportunity is limited by where they live.

I want to bring to the attention of the House a stark example that illustrates the postcode lottery in SEND funding: the disparity between the East Riding of Yorkshire, which covers my own constituency of Beverley and Holderness, at the lowest end of the funding spectrum—we are the lowest funded in the country—and the London borough of Camden, which happens to be the highest. Camden, by any standard, is a well-resourced inner-city borough with strong proximity to specialist services. It currently receives £3,564.95 of SEND funding for each pupil in its area. Meanwhile, in East Riding—a rural area with fewer nearby services, longer travel distances and greater challenges in recruitment and retention—per-pupil high-needs funding comes in at around £968. That is a gap of over £2,500 for every single child requiring extra support. In real terms, if East Riding’s funding was matched not with Camden but with the second most poorly funded local authority, we would have an extra £18 million per year on top of the £43 million we receive in the higher needs block—£18 million extra. If we were brought into line with Camden, we would have an extra £100 million.

Some might argue that urban areas face different pressures, and of course they do, but let us be clear: the cost of delivering quality SEND provision in rural areas is not lower. In fact, it is often significantly higher. Transport costs—colleagues across the House will be aware of children who have to be moved great distances to access their support—for children with complex needs can be astronomical. Recruiting specialist staff, such as special educational needs co-ordinators, to work in isolated schools is a constant challenge. When services such as educational psychologists or speech and language therapists are not based locally, schools and families face unacceptable delays in accessing the assessments needed to unlock further support. Why, then, is rurality not factored into the high-needs funding formula?

What that means in practice is that two children with identical needs, living in different parts of the country, will receive vastly different levels of support. One might have their education, health and care plan reviewed on time, access in-school provision, and benefit from local therapy services. The other might be left waiting months for assessment, with a school already at breaking point trying to bridge the gap. This disparity will have a long-term detriment to children’s outcomes.

This is not a criticism of any local authority—Camden, like all areas, faces its own pressures and challenges—but the system we have allows such disparities to persist without sufficient recourse or flexibility. These widely varying funding allocations create a two-tiered system in what should be a national commitment. Colleagues from across the House will be familiar with constituents whose stories lay bare the human cost of this imbalance, whether it is parents desperately trying to navigate the EHCP system, the lack of suitable school places nearby to cope with the measures required by their EHCP, or schools struggling to cope.

This is also certainly not a party political point. Successive Governments have sat over funding disparities and struggled with the politics. They have been unprepared to reallocate, perhaps for understandable reasons. The people you take money from tend to be much angrier than the people you give it to are happy: one marches on Westminster, the other grunts and says, “About time.” It is a truly difficult thing. I have been in this place for 20 years and have struggled to get Ministers to accept reallocation and reapportionment. Rather than asking for that demand, which I have so far failed in 20 years of effort to get anybody to implement, I hope to come up with something more practical, if compromised as a result.

School Teachers’ Review Body: Recommendations

Peter Swallow Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell]

It was a very long statement that managed almost entirely to look backwards, while fantasising about the future. The right hon. Member will receive the information, as will everybody else, when the statement is published at the announced time this afternoon.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I declare an interest, as I was a primary school governor right up until the election and I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for schools, learning and assessment. It is quite shocking to hear Opposition Members’ protestations about school funding, given the absolutely dire state in which they left school funding after 14 years of Conservative government. When I speak to school leaders in my constituency, they tell me about their real and lasting struggles to balance their budgets. I understand that the Minister cannot speak today about the outcome of the review until the statement, but can she give us information more broadly about conversations she has had as part of the spending review, so that we can get the funding we need to invest in schools and turn around the dire situation we inherited?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I would like to take this opportunity to put on record my thanks to school governors. My hon. Friend mentions that he was a governor up until the election. We really are grateful to school governors for everything they do on a voluntary basis to support schools to be as good as they can be. As a Government, we will always work with them and schools to support improving outcomes for children.

The Department will do everything it can within the incredibly tight fiscal constraints we inherited. As a Government, we are committed to our public services, which we know will transform the lives of children and everybody in this country. We will continue to do that.