Local Government and Schools: Autism

(asked on 18th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities on working strategically across schools and local authorities to help ensure that all staff receive autism training.


Answered by
Robin Walker Portrait
Robin Walker
This question was answered on 26th January 2022

All teachers are teachers of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and the department is committed to ensuring that all children and young people, particularly those with SEND receive high quality teaching that will enable them to reach their full potential at school.

That is why the revised Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Core Content Framework (CCF), that all new entrants to the profession benefit from, has been designed around how to support all pupils to succeed, including those pupils identified within the four areas of need set out in the SEND code of practice.

When developing the framework, there were a range of views from stakeholders and SEND experts about things that could or should be included in the framework. However, there was consensus that our approach of ‘quality-first teaching’, would be the best way to improve outcomes for all children, particularly those with special educational needs. The framework, therefore, deliberately does not detail approaches specific to particular additional needs, such as autism, but what makes the most effective teaching.

In addition to the mandated minimum set out in the ITT CCF, we expect ITT providers and their partners to continue to tailor their curricula to the needs of their trainees and the children in the schools where they train and will work. However, ITT courses must be designed so that trainee teachers can demonstrate that they meet the Teachers’ Standards at the appropriate level. This includes the requirement in Standard 5, that all teachers must have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils, including those with special educational needs.

Within the new autism strategy, published in July 2021 and extended to children and young people for the first time, we set out how we will continue our programme of developing training and resources for education staff. We also committed to working in collaboration across government, with autistic people and their families, the NHS, local government, and the voluntary sector, to implement the strategy, and we are continuing to do so.

£600,000 of the strategy’s first year of funding has gone towards the department’s contract with the Autism Education Trust (AET) for the 2021/22 academic year. The department has funded the AET since 2011 to deliver autism awareness training to education staff in early years, schools, and further education settings. It has so far reached more than 305,000 people across the country. This includes not only teachers and teaching assistants, but also support staff such as receptionists, dining hall staff and caretakers, encouraging a 'whole school' approach to supporting autistic pupils.

The department has also provided £2 million of funding for the Whole School SEND consortium in 2021/22, through our contract with nasen. This will continue their wider programme of work to equip the workforce to deliver high quality teaching for all children and young people with SEND, including autism, this year.

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