PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
SEND Specialists: Schools - 14 September 2026 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

This Government are investing £1.8 billion over three years to deliver the Experts At Hand service, which will give mainstream settings access to health and education specialists for SEND. We will also deliver new SEND and inclusion training courses and materials as part of a £200 million investment for teachers, leaders and support staff.

In Cornwall and my constituency, children needing specialist SEND places have missed out this September. Some have been offered partial education otherwise than at school arrangements instead or are even at home. We inherited a system that has let down a generation. Will the Minister confirm that the new Bill is on its way and that it will close the gap for children in my constituency? When will it take effect?

We are determined to ensure that every child who needs a specialist place has access to one. That is why we are investing £3.7 billion in specialist places and are proposing the new specialist provision packages system. We recently had a full consultation on the proposals, and we are carefully working through the detailed responses that we got to the consultation questions. We will bring forward the Bill as quickly as possible.

Several schools in my Camborne, Redruth and Hayle constituency are reporting profound concerns about the lack of availability of educational specialists right across Cornwall, including occupational therapists, educational psychologists and speech and language therapists. As a result of our remote coastal location, recruitment and retention is particularly difficult. Will the Minister meet Cornish MPs to discuss this issue?

I can confirm that, after very strong lobbying from my hon. Friends the Members for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) and for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham), I will be visiting Cornwall to talk to them directly and see the issues at first hand. I absolutely recognise the issues around recruitment and retention in rural areas, and we are very much working on that.

I speak to parents, young people and teachers in my constituency all the time about the need for SEND reform. One of my best friends is a special educational needs co-ordinator, and he often tells me how broken he and his colleagues are after battling this broken SEND system for so long. Will the Minister ensure that the SEND reforms cater for all the young people in Harlow who need them, and that they will make being a SENCO an attractive proposition again?

I really appreciate that question. I have talked to SENCOs around the country, and I know how much pressure they are under and how often they feel that they have to go into battle for the children they support. They play a critical role, and they need more support. Inclusion has to be the business of the entire school, not just one individual. We are determined to support them.

Over the past two years, that £3.7 billion investment that I have mentioned has started. That money is going into local authorities today, so that they can start building schools, creating places, and taking the action that the Conservative Government failed to take.

Barely a day goes by without hearing from a new family whose child is struggling or—worse—does not have a school at all. Given the long delays in autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnoses and the length of time it takes to get packages in place, what consideration has been given to screening for neurodivergence at a very early stage so that we can plan properly for those schools?

I hear the same stories from families about long waits. The new system that we are proposing is all about identifying needs as early as possible. Through the national inclusion standards, which the independent panel is working on, new tools will be developed to support schools to identify needs early, and then work will be done with the Experts at Hand service to put in place interventions to support those young people.

Children in Gorton and Denton are being left without suitable education while families wait for SEND tribunal appeals, but they are waiting for school places that do not exist. Does the Minister agree that we need an independent assessment of SEND school capacity? The Government reforms will not help if we do not first fix the capacity crisis.

I absolutely agree that we need more places in our schools. We are working as quickly as possible to get money into local authorities to deliver that capacity. That includes growing the number of inclusion bases, which can be built faster and often allow children to be educated in their community. As I travel around the country, I have seen how life-changing that has been. The money that we have put in is already creating new places, and we will continue to invest this year and next.