PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Special Educational Needs: Huntingdon (4 October 2024)

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children with an education, health and care plan in Huntingdon constituency have a place in (a) primary and (b) secondary school; and how many such children in that constituency do not have a school place.

Asked by:
Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative)

The special educational needs (SEN) publication publishes data on pupils in schools in England with Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/special-educational-needs-in-england. The data file titled “School level underlying data 2024 (csv, 10 Mb)” under the section “Additional supporting files” includes the figures at school level, including the school‘s parliamentary constituency. As these figures are taken from the January 2024 school census, the parliamentary constituencies are based on pre-election boundaries. Where statistics were published prior to the changes in parliamentary constituency boundaries, they will be updated to reflect the new boundaries in the next publication of statistics. This is expected to be in June 2025 for statistics on schools and pupils, including SEN.

It may be useful to note that as the data requested is published at school level, it can be combined with information from ‘Get Information About Schools’ (GIAS) to identify parliamentary constituency. GIAS currently reflects the changes made following the general election parliamentary constituency changes and is accessible here: https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/. Updates to geographical data are made on a quarterly basis using data published by the Office for National Statistics.

Information on the number of children in Huntingdon who do not have a school place is not readily available. Information is however available on the placements of children and young people with EHC plans, for the Cambridge local authority in the publication: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-health-and-care-plans.

An extract showing the number with placements other than in school or further education establishments, is given at this link: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/75145e5f-3b4f-4e79-4100-08dce44cbd16.

Answered by:
Catherine McKinnell (Labour)
14 October 2024