Written question asked by Lord Willis of Knaresborough (Liberal Democrat) on Wednesday, 31 January 2001, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 7 February 2001. It was answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern (Labour) on Wednesday, 7 February 2001 on behalf of the Department for Education and Employment.

Dept for Education and Employment

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, how many (a) speech therapists there are in (i) primary schools and (ii) secondary schools in each local education authority, (b) vacancies exist for such a post and (c) people are in training to be school speech therapists. - Includes figures and fact that information is not available in format requested.

Answer: Mr. Willis: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many (a) speech therapists there are in (i) primary schools and (ii) secondary schools in each local education authority, (b) vacancies exist for such a post and (c) people are in training to be school speech therapists. [148705] Jacqui Smith: This information is not collected centrally. However, DfEE, together with the Department of Health and the National Assembly for Wales, recently commissioned a survey of NHS speech and language therapy services in England and Wales. The findings from this survey are summarised in DfEE Research Report 239, published in November 2000. Two thirds of respondents to the survey indicated that they operated a designated speech and language therapy service to mainstream schools. This provision is mainly focused on primary schools. Under the Standards Fund 2001-02, we are supporting expenditure of £82 million on special educational needs. We envisage that LEAs will spend £10 million of this on enhancing speech and language therapy provision in conjunction with the NHS and the voluntary sector.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 362 c580W;362 c581W; 148705
Session: 2000-01
Subjects: Primary education Schools Special educational needs Training Secondary education Vacancies Speech and language therapy
Contains statistics: Yes
Link: View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk