Education Minister has announced a £1.2million
Pre-School Education Inclusion Support Fund to support young
children with special educational needs (SEN).
The pilot Fund will provide resourcing to pre-school education
settings with at least one child undergoing statutory assessment
of their educational needs. Settings will receive a payment of
£750 per month, per class to help them meet the needs of children
with SEN.
The Minister said: “Pre-school education settings are facing
challenges in supporting increasing numbers of children with
additional needs in their pre-school year. This additional
funding will help settings to support those needs.
“Settings will have flexibility on how they use the funding,
which can be used to resource additional staff hours, buy in
therapeutic interventions or specialist equipment, resources or
training. This pilot programme will test the impact of additional
resource on children with SEN in our pre-school settings.”
The Fund is part of the Minister's £25million Early Learning and
Childcare package and aims to begin addressing the needs
identified by pre-school settings through the End-to-End Review
of SEN.
The Minister continued: “We are working closely with the
Education Authority (EA) to identify settings who have children
undergoing statutory assessment. We have written to over 200
eligible settings this week and will work with the EA to get
payment issued in the coming days.
“As children are referred for statutory assessment throughout the
year, further payment tranches will be made in December 2024,
January and February 2025.”
The Minister concluded: “I hope this fund is welcome news and I
will continue to develop solutions and seek funding opportunities
to address the range of challenges identified by pre-school
settings through the End-to-End Review of SEN.”
Notes to editors:
- The End-to-End Review of SEN included a workstream focusing
on Early Intervention which included early years. Findings from
this workstream identified particular challenges for pre-school
education settings in meeting the needs of children with SEN/D or
emerging SEN/D.
- The Fund does not pre-empt the outcome of the statutory
assessment process and is not intended to be assigned to
individual children, but rather recognises there are additional
support needs within the class and that funding may be necessary
to provide that support.
- The funding is secured until March 2025; continuation of the
Fund will be prioritised within any future Early Learning and
Childcare budget.
