Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to evaluate the effect of the introduction of education, health and care plans.

The department will draw on evidence from a wide range of sources to determine whether the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) provisions of the Children and Families Act have improved outcomes for children with SEND.

The department published details in March 2015 of our intention to use a combination of local accountability measures, data and analysis and independent inspection to evaluate how the SEND system is performing, which parts are working well and whether outcomes are improving for children and young people. The publication can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/416347/Accountability_Publication.pdf

In May, Ofsted and CQC will begin inspecting local area effectiveness in meeting their responsibilities towards children and young people who are disabled and/or have special educational needs. Inspections will include education, health and care plans.

We will draw on a wide range of statistics on pupils with SEND, including information on educational attainment, absence and exclusions and research into families and young people’s experience of the new system. Statistics on pupils with SEND can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-special-educational-needs-sen