Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help (a) recruit and (b) retain special educational needs and disabilities specialist staff in schools.

All teachers are teachers of Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND). The department is committed to ensuring that all pupils can reach their potential and receive excellent support from their teachers.

The number of teachers remains high, with over 465,500 full-time equivalent teachers working in state-funded schools across the country. This is over 24,000 more than in 2010.

The department’s priority is to ensure that we continue to attract, retain, and develop highly skilled teachers. This is why we are taking action to improve teacher supply and quality by transforming the training and support we provide for teachers to attract more people to teaching and enable them to succeed.

The Teachers’ Standards sets clear expectations that teachers must understand the needs of all pupils. All trainees who achieve Qualified Teacher Status must demonstrate that they can adapt teaching to respond to the needs of all pupils, including those with SEND.

To support all teachers in meeting these standards, the department is implementing a golden thread of high-quality teacher training reforms, which begins with initial teacher training and continues throughout their career progression.

Once teachers qualify and are employed in schools, headteachers use their professional judgement to identify any further training, including specific specialisms, for individual staff that is relevant to them, the school, and its pupils.

To teach a class of pupils with sensory impairments, a teacher is required to hold the mandatory qualification in sensory impairment approved by my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education. The department has developed a new approval process to determine providers of Mandatory Qualifications in Sensory Impairments from the start of the 2023/24 academic year. Our aim is to ensure a steady supply of teachers of children with visual, hearing, and multi-sensory impairments, in both specialist and mainstream settings.

The school teachers’ pay and conditions document for 2022 sets out that an additional SEND allowance must be paid to teachers in a SEND post that requires a mandatory SEND qualification and involves teaching pupils with SEND. It is for schools to determine the specific amount, but this must be between £2,384 and £4,703 per annum.