Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what criteria will determine whether a child or young person receives support through an Individual Support Plan; and what steps she will take to ensure consistency in access to that support between local areas.

Under the department’s proposals, settings would have a duty to produce an Individual Support Plan for any child or young person with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The intention is that where a child needs Targeted, Targeted Plus or Specialist layers of support, there is a clear plan setting out their needs, provision and intended outcomes. These layers will be guided by the National Inclusion Standards, which will establish national consistency around the support that children and young people should ordinarily expect to receive across the 0 to 25 system, regardless of where they live or which setting they attend. To support consistency, the standards will include evidence-based tools, strategies and approaches for educators to draw on to identify and support children and young people with SEND. The department has recently consulted on our proposed SEND reforms. 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 and will set out our response in due course.