Local Government Services: Children and Young People

(asked on 21st January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the impact of local authority funding reductions on the availability of specialist services and support commissioned and provided by local authorities in England for children and young people with a vision impairment.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 31st January 2022

The department is firmly committed to ensuring that children with special education needs and disabilities (SEND), including those with visual impairments, receive the support they need to achieve in their early years, at school and at college.

Information on the availability of specialist services and support commissioned and provided by local authorities in England for children and young people with SEND, including those with a visual impairment can be found in a Local Offer, which each local authority is required to publish. Local authorities are required to work with children, young people, and their families to develop their local offer so that it responds to local need.

It is a legal requirement for qualified teachers of classes of pupils who have sensory impairments to hold the relevant mandatory qualification, referred to as an MQSI. To offer MQSIs, providers must be approved by the Secretary of State for Education.

We intend to develop a new approval process to determine providers of MQSIs from the start of the 2023/2024 academic year. Our aim is to ensure a steady supply of teachers of children with visual, hearing, and multi-sensory impairment, in both specialist and mainstream settings.

High needs funding, which is specifically for supporting children with more complex SEND, including those with vision impairment, will be increasing by £1 billion in the 2022-23 financial year and will bring the overall total of funding for high needs to £9.1 billion. This unprecedented increase of 13% comes on top of the £1.5 billion increase over the last two years.

Decisions about how funding is used locally, including for the employment of specialist teachers for visually impaired children and other specialist services, are made by local authorities and schools.

The government has recognised that the current SEND system, established through the Children and Families Act 2014, does not consistently deliver for children and young people with SEND, their families or the people and services who support them. The SEND Review is seeking to improve the outcomes and experience of all children and young people with SEND, within a sustainable system. The Review will publish as a Green Paper for full public consultation in the first three months of this year.

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