Special Educational Needs
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of potential merits of introducing (a) additional oversight and (b) inspection of local authority SEND services where there is evidence of systemic delays or repeated findings against authorities at the SEND Tribunal.
Answered by Department for Education
The department holds local authorities to account in delivering their responsibilities on special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Where failure is persistent, the department may intervene directly, using statutory powers and improvement partners to support service improvement.
Area SEND inspections also help make sure local services are meeting the needs of children and young people with SEND. There will be a full consultation on proposed changes to the Area SEND inspection framework too, looking at changes to inspection as a result of changes to roles, responsibilities and statutory duties of local area partners and wider SEND reforms.
In our ‘SEND Reform: Putting children and young people first’ consultation, we proposed measures to improve local authorities’ future decision-making and transparency around Tribunal outcomes. This included proposals to publish an annual SEND Tribunal outcomes dashboard and introduce new requirements on local authorities following Tribunal judgments, for example to publish regular summaries of judgments made against them. We are currently considering all consultation feedback and will publish final proposals in due course.
The Ministry of Justice publishes information about the number of SEND Tribunal cases, including the number of cases conceded, in the SEND Tribunal Tables.
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