The department is providing a range of support to ensure all childcare placements are able to support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in early years.<\/p>
The SEND and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan sets out how an effective single national SEND and AP system will be delivered. This includes new national standards for identifying and meeting SEND. These new standards aim to make consistent the provision that should be made available across the country for every child and young person with SEND. There will also be new local SEND and AP partnerships, strengthened accountability and dashboards, and reforms to funding.<\/p>
High needs funding will be rising to £10.1 billion in 2023/24, which is an increase of over 50% from the 2019/20 allocations. High needs funding is for supporting children and young people with complex SEND, whose support costs more than settings can meet from their core funding, or who are in specialist provision. The extra funding will help local authorities and settings with the increasing costs of supporting children and young people with complex SEND.<\/p>
Local authorities are required to establish a Special Educational Needs Inclusion Fund to provide additional top-up funding to childcare settings. This fund requires all local authorities to work with providers to address the needs of individual children with SEND.<\/p>
The Early Years National Funding Formula contains an additional needs element to take account of the number of three and four-year-old children with additional needs in an area. The Disability Access Fund will be at least £828 per eligible child for 2023/24.<\/p>
The department has also committed to funding up to 5,000 early years special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) to get an accredited level 3 Early Years SENCO qualification.<\/p>"} , "answeringMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4806", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Claire Coutinho"} } , "answeringMemberConstituency" : {"_value" : "East Surrey"} , "answeringMemberPrinted" : {"_value" : "Claire Coutinho"} , "dateOfAnswer" : {"_value" : "2023-03-30", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "isMinisterialCorrection" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "questionFirstAnswered" : [{"_value" : "2023-03-30T16:12:35.08Z", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} ]} , "answeringDeptId" : {"_value" : "60"} , "answeringDeptShortName" : {"_value" : "Education"} , "answeringDeptSortName" : {"_value" : "Education"} , "date" : {"_value" : "2023-03-14", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "hansardHeading" : {"_value" : "Childcare: Special Educational Needs"} , "houseId" : {"_value" : "1"} , "legislature" : [{"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/terms/25259", "prefLabel" : {"_value" : "House of Commons"} } ], "questionText" : "To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure that all childcare placements are able to support children with SEND.", "registeredInterest" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "tablingMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4471", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Rachael Maskell"} } , "tablingMemberConstituency" : {"_value" : "York Central"} , "tablingMemberPrinted" : [{"_value" : "Rachael Maskell"} ], "uin" : "165332"} ], "itemsPerPage" : 10, "page" : 0, "startIndex" : 1, "totalResults" : 1, "type" : ["http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#ListEndpoint", "http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#Page"]} }