Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has undertaken an impact assessment of the potential reduction in enforceable rights for families arising from restricting EHCPs to only the most complex needs.

Our ambition is to provide more opportunities for health and education professionals to support the needs of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) more effectively and inclusively. This is why we are investing £1.8 billion over the next three years to improve access to professionals for mainstream settings, including local authorities and Integrated Care Board working together to develop a new ‘Experts at Hand’ offer.

We are also developing National Inclusion Standards supported by an expert panel, to set out evidence-informed tools, strategies and approaches for educators to draw on to identify and support children and young people with additional needs.

We have carefully assessed the impact of all our proposals, and this is included in our published ‘SEND reform: equalities impact assessment’ and ‘SEND reform child's rights impact assessment’ which include projections on how children and young people will be impacted by the proposals. The equalities impact assessment can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69985b33047739fe61889ebd/SEND_reform_equalities_impact_assessment_.pdf.

The child’s rights impact assessment is available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69985b75047739fe61889ebe/SEND_reform_child_s_rights_impact_assessment.pdf.

The responses to the consultation will help inform our policy development and assessments of impact of the final reforms.