BACKGROUND INFORMATION
- Better support for children and young people with special
educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is at the heart of a
new national plan to level up opportunities, with a key focus on
ending the postcode lottery that leaves too many with worse
outcomes than their peers.
- The Government’s SEND and alternative provision green paper,
published today (Tuesday 29 March), sets out its vision for a
single, national SEND and alternative provision (AP) system that
will introduce new standards in the quality of support given to
children across education, health and care.
- The plans to reform the system will be open for a 13-week
public consultation, giving families frustrated by the existing,
complicated and bureaucratic system of support the opportunity to
shape how a new system will work in the future - and give them
confidence that their local school will meet their children’s
needs so they can achieve their full potential.
- Detailed proposals in the SEND and alternative provision
green paper include:
-
Setting new national standards across
education, health and care to build on the foundations created
through the Children and Families Act 2014, for a higher
performing SEND system;
-
A simplified Education, Health and Care Plan
(EHCP) through digitising plans to make them more
flexible, reducing bureaucracy and supporting parents to make
informed choices via a list of appropriate placements tailored
to their child’s needs, meaning less time spent researching the
right school;
- A new legal requirement for councils to introduce
‘local inclusion plans’ that bring together
early years, schools and post-16 education with health and care
services, giving system partners more certainty on who is
responsible and when;
-
Improving oversight and
transparency through the publication of new ‘local
inclusion dashboards’ to make roles and responsibilities of all
partners within the system clearer for parents and young
people, helping to drive better outcomes;
-
A new national framework for councils for banding and
tariffs of High Needs, to match the national standards
and offer clarity on the level of support expected, and put the
system on a financially sustainable footing in the future;
-
Changing the culture and practice in mainstream
education to be more inclusive and better at
identifying and supporting needs, including through earlier
intervention and improved targeted support;
-
Improving workforce training through the
introduction of a new SENCo NPQ for school SENCos and
increasing the number of staff with an accredited level 3
qualification in early years settings; and
-
A reformed and integrated role for alternative
provision (AP), with a new delivery model in every
local area focused on early intervention. AP will form an
integral part of local SEND systems with improvements to
settings and more funding stability.
The proposals are backed by new funding to implement them, worth
£70 million. This will build on the £9 billion government
investment in local authority high needs budgets next year and
£2.6 billion for new places for children with SEND over the next
three years.
