Jo Hutchinson, Director for SEND and Additional Needs at the Education Policy Institute, said: “These plans include some important incremental improvements but they fall short of being transformational. The government must set out a detailed assessment of how many additional special school places are required, of what kinds and where, and how its pipeline of new special schools will meet that need.
“The focus on early help and mainstream inclusion in the national standards is welcome, but we await sight of the draft standards in order to assess these. A transformational training plan would include details of when, where and how school teachers will receive training in the specific needs of children with different types of SEND; ten of the eleven need types have no government-funded training for schools and this is not included in the ITT Core Content or Early Career Frameworks.
“Finally, the government must set out how it will place funding for Alternative Provision on a stable footing and extend this to enable post-16 alternative provision to help reduce the rates of NEET status among young people who have attended AP.”
You can find the full SEND and AP Improvement Plan here.
