Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her department has considered the potential merits of introducing a statutory requirement for all local authorities to appoint a lead officer for children from Armed Forces families, including those with special educational needs or disabilities.

We recognise that Armed Forces life may present particular challenges for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and their families, particularly because of the need to move regularly. As part of our consultation on reforms of the SEND system, I attended a roundtable hosted by the Armed Forces Community All-Party Parliamentary Group, to hear first-hand from armed forces families their powerful testimony about these challenges.

Our proposed SEND reforms aim to end the postcode lottery and improve quality of support for Service children with SEND, for example, through new National Inclusion Standards, a nationally consistent set of Specialist Provision Packages and digital Individual Support and education, health and care plans that support transitions between settings. Updating the SEND Code of Practice will be essential to ensure children’s needs are met early and flexibly.

We are carefully reviewing and taking into account all responses submitted to the consultation, alongside feedback from over 200 engagement events we held over 12 weeks. We will set out our response in due course.

Local authorities are required, in line with the Armed Forces Covenant 'due regard' duty, to consider the needs of Service personnel, veterans and their families in planning and delivering aspects of education provision. Some local authorities have proactively decided to deliver this through appointing a lead officer for children from Armed Forces families.