Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure that the proposed Education for All Bill does not adversely impact (a) parents and (b) guardians’ legal recourse to challenge the number of hours of speech and language therapy provided for their child.

After a 12-week consultation period including over 200 engagement events, meetings and roundtables, the department’s consultation ‘SEND reform: putting children and young people first‘ has now closed. We are carefully reviewing and taking into account all responses submitted to the consultation and continuing to engage widely on our proposals.

We proposed that the information about a child or young person’s special educational needs (SEN) or special educational provision (SEP) can be considered as part of appeals to the SEND Tribunal about Specialist Provision Packages or placements as appropriate, rather than being separate.

We want the Tribunal to focus on the key questions of the child or young person’s package or placement, recognising that SEN and SEP can frequently be a central part of the evidence for these appeals. At present, the great majority of appeals relating to SEN or SEP are combined with an appeal about the child or young person’s placement. Moreover, detailed information about the child or young person’s specific special educational provision will in future be included in new setting-led Individual Support Plans that are developed following a child being placed on a package and worked-up with the teachers and staff working with the child day-to-day, so are not part of the education, health and care (EHC) plan. For these reasons, the consultation proposed that special educational provision should be included in other appeals to the Tribunal rather than kept separate.