Here is the Department for Education’s news release from overnight about the Send reforms.
And this is what it says about how it will spend £4bn improving Send provision in English schools,
To dramatically improve the support mainstream schools can provide for children with SEND, and rebuild families’ confidence in the system, the government will:
-[NEW] Provide £1.6 bn over three years across every early years setting, school and post-16 setting, equating to thousands of pounds extra every year on top of existing core SEND funding, to run targeted and small group interventions at the earliest signs of children having additional needs
-[NEW] Invest £1.8 bn over three years for “Experts at Hand”:
Every council working with Integrated Care Boards and health board will commission local professionals – educational psychology, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and more – so they are routinely available in every area, whether or not children have an EHCP
Special and alternative provision schools to provide expert training, direct interventions with children and short-term placements in their schools
Once rolled out an average secondary school will receive over 160 days – around an additional full school year - worth of dedicated specialist time every year
-[NEW] Invest over £200m so every community’s Best Start Family Hub provides a dedicated SEND outreach and support offer.
-[NEW] Invest £200m to ensure all local authorities can transform how they operate in line with our reforms while maintaining current SEND services
-Train every teacher to be a teacher of children with SEND, with the biggest SEND training offer ever seen in English schools – backed by £200m - and a new requirement for all teachers to be trained to support children with SEND.
-Create 60,000 new places for children with SEND, including the 10,000 places already delivered, backed by investment of over £3.7bn.
Taken together, from the foundations of local family outreach and teacher training, up to today’s investment in expert classroom support, the government is building a SEND system unrecognisable from the one families experience today.
