Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect of the academisation of schools on the ability of schools to deliver high-quality SEND provision.

The provisions of the Children and Families Act (2014), together with the associated statutory regulations and Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Code of Practice, apply to academies and free schools as well as to schools maintained by local authorities. All schools are required to use their best endeavours to identify and address the special educational needs of pupils and to apply the ‘graduated approach’ to support, which is outlined in Chapter 6 of the SEND Code of Practice, which can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/send-code-of-practice-0-to-25.

Academies and free schools are inspected by Ofsted under the same framework as local authority maintained schools. The quality of education and support for pupils with SEND is taken into account by inspectors when making a judgement on the performance of a school.

The new Ofsted common inspection framework for education settings, which will be in force from September 2019, places more emphasis on the quality of SEND provision through the ‘quality of education’ judgement, with a clear focus on curriculum.

Academies are under a duty through the Children and Families Act (2014) to co-operate with the local authority on their SEND provision. Where maintained schools and academies are acting unreasonably or unlawfully, the department has the power to direct them to put matters right, if it would be expedient to do so. The Department of Education and the Education and Skills Funding Agency have a direct role here to investigate complaints.