Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to improve the skills of and training for school staff working with autistic children.

The Department has a contract with the Autism Education Trust (2015-16) to deliver autism training to education professionals. The Trust has trained almost 80,000 education staff since 2012. The Department is also providing grant funding for two additional projects (2015-16): specifically, £160,965 for a project by the National Autistic Society to provide information and advice to parents and professionals on exclusion; and £239,502 for a project by Ambitious about Autism on strategies for supporting transition from school to college. Information about each of the grants is available on GOV.UK at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/25-million-injection-to-help-life-changing-childrens-services

In 2015-16, the Department is also funding Nasen to develop a free universal offer of SEN Continuous Professional Development for teachers and to extend the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Gateway, which offers education professionals free, easy access to high quality information, resources, and training for meeting the needs of children with SEND, including those with autism. More information about the SEND Gateway is available at: www.sendgateway.org.uk.

The National College for Teaching and Leadership has produced a series of specialist online courses, one of which focuses on autism. The training materials are designed to support teachers in mainstream schools who want to improve their skills in teaching pupils with SEND. The training materials can be found at: www.education.gov.uk/lamb.

In order to be awarded qualified teacher status, trainees must satisfy the Teachers’ Standards. These standards include a requirement that they have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils, including those with SEND, and are able to use and evaluate distinctive teaching approaches to engage and support them.

Following Sir Andrew Carter’s independent review of the quality and effectiveness of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) courses, the Secretary of State appointed an independent working group made up of expert representatives from the sector to develop a framework of core ITT content. This includes considering Sir Andrew’s recommendations around the SEND content of the proposed framework.