Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the number of training places required to supply the proposed Experts at Hand offer in Surrey.

The department is investing around £1.8 billion over the next three years for local area partnerships, including local authorities and integrated care boards, to develop a new Experts at Hand offer. This includes approximately £8.3 million for Surrey.

Local areas have outlined milestones and delivery trajectories within their local area special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reform plans, reflecting different starting points, local needs and workforce capacity. The department has not made an estimate of the number of training places required specifically for Surrey. Workforce planning is led locally, and local areas determine how best to meet need through a range of approaches, including recruitment, workforce development and different staffing models. Local area partnerships are responsible for planning and delivering their local Experts at Hand offer, taking account of local need, existing services and workforce capacity.

To support delivery overall, we are investing over £40 million in the specialist workforce, including £26 million to train more educational psychologists and £15 million over three years to support more speech and language therapists to work in education settings. This new offer is designed to strengthen the capability of mainstream education settings so that more specialist expertise can be accessed by mainstream settings to support all children and young people to thrive.

The department will continue to monitor data on the growth of the relevant health and education specialist workforces and are considering workforce implications as part of wider long-term planning with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, including through work on the 10 Year Workforce Plan.