Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that training on Down's syndrome for (a) education and (b) healthcare professionals is Down's syndrome-specific.

From September 2020, all new teachers will benefit from at least three years of evidence-based professional development and support, starting with Initial Teacher Training (ITT) based on the new ITT Core Content Framework (CCF), and followed by a new two-year induction underpinned by the Early Career Framework (ECF).

The Government does not prescribe the curriculum of ITT courses, it is for individual providers to design courses that incorporate the CCF and are appropriate to the needs of trainees so that they can support all pupils, including those with Down syndrome. To be awarded Qualified Teacher Status, trainees must demonstrate that they meet all the Teachers’ Standards at the appropriate level. The Department for Education will be conducting a review this year of the CCF and ECF to identify how the frameworks can equip new teachers to be more confident in meeting the needs of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, including those with Down syndrome.

For registered healthcare professionals, standards for training are set by the healthcare independent statutory regulatory bodies. Training programmes must meet these standards. The regulatory bodies also approve higher education institutions to develop and teach the curricula content which is designed to enable students to meet the desired standards.

Whilst not all curricula may necessarily highlight a specific condition, they all emphasise the skills and approaches a healthcare professional must develop in order to ensure accurate and timely diagnoses and treatment plans for their patients, including people with Down syndrome.