The early identification of special educational needs and disabilities is critical to improving outcomes for children and young people.

Our consultation proposed that we will introduce clear statutory duties on schools to identify and meet needs as early as possible, enabling timely and effective intervention for pupils with special educational needs (SEN).

To support delivery, we are strengthening the evidence base on what works in early identification and assessment across education settings.

We will also introduce National Inclusion Standards, equipping educators with evidence informed tools and strategies to identify, assess and support pupils with SEN, while sharing best practice nationally. This is backed by £1.8 billion of investment to expand capacity and expertise, ensuring every community can access Experts at Hand.

In parallel, government backed research led by UK Research and Innovation will develop and scale new approaches to early identification, strengths‑and‑needs assessment, and support, for integration into education settings by 2028.

The government will develop a national cost framework for specialist provision packages, and we expect local authorities to commission provision based on that framework, whether that is within a specialist base in a mainstream school, or a special school, including those in the independent sector.

We will undertake a period of evidence gathering and stakeholder engagement to ensure that the framework is appropriately supporting high quality provision whilst tackling excessive prices and profit making.

Individual Support Plans (ISPs) will provide a record of need and provision for any child or young person receiving targeted, targeted plus or specialist support in school or college. They will allow settings to work alongside parents, providing a single, consistent record of what support has been tried, what has worked and what needs to change.

Under the proposals, settings will have a legal duty to produce an ISP for every child with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), including those who also have an education health and care plan. Where there are concerns about provision within an ISP, parents and young people would be able to raise these directly with the setting. The department’s proposals include strengthening the complaints process through having an independent SEND expert on panels to hear complaints concerning provision for a child with SEND.

The government is providing substantial, targeted investment to help local areas grow and strengthen their specialist workforce. Over the next three years, £1.8 billion will be made available to local area partnerships to develop and rollout of the Experts at Hand offer.

Local area partnerships will design and implement their own Experts at Hand models, tailored to local needs and workforce capacity, supported by strong national oversight. The department will set the overall framework, provide guidance and tools, and work closely with local areas to ensure consistent quality. We have also announced £15 million for new speech and language therapy advanced practitioner roles, as well as continuing our investment in the educational psychology workforce with £26 million to train at least 200 educational psychologists per year from 2026 and 2027, building on previous investment.

The department knows that continuing to build the specialist workforce is essential. It is working with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, as part of wider long-term workforce priorities such as the 10 Year Workforce Plan, to improve access to community health services, including speech and language therapy, for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

Many local authorities have systems which indicate the range of top-up funding that might be provided for children and young people with a particular type and complexity of need, sometimes referred to as ‘banding frameworks’. These can help determine levels of high needs top-up funding for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. A system which agrees likely levels of top-up funding in advance can also be an efficient, clear and transparent way of allocating funding.

The department has published guidance on how local authorities should allocate this funding. Section 7.4 of the high needs funding operational guidance sets out that top-up funding can reflect the costs of provision for a cohort of pupils at or within a school or college. The operational guidance is available on GOV.UK.

Funding does not need to be tied to the detailed provision that may be required or which is specified in education, health and care (EHC) plans, since schools and colleges have flexibility in deploying resources.

The local authority must be satisfied, however, that the final allocation of funding (both the top-up funding and other elements of funding) is sufficient to secure suitable provision for example, as outlined in an EHC plan.

The department recognises that families play a vital role in identifying and understanding their children’s needs, and we expect education settings to work in partnership with parents and carers as part of early identification, ongoing assessment and the timely provision of support.

We will place a duty on settings to produce an Individual Support Plan (ISP) for any child or young person with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The ISP will be developed by settings together with parents and young people, giving every child or young person with SEND a clear and consistent record of their needs and the help they receive, so that support is joined‑up, timely and genuinely centred on what will help them to thrive. ISPs will be used to communicate provision to parents and actions taken between parents and settings, supporting the relationship between home and setting. ISPs must be reviewed at least annually and may be reviewed more frequently as a child’s needs develop.

The information requested is shown in the below table. The footnotes for the missing data table should be reviewed as they explain some of the limitations to this data.

Data on looked after unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in England is published in the annual statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoptions’. The latest data is for year ending 31 March 2025 and has been available since 20 November 2025.

In these statistics, ‘missing’ is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known. A child may have had multiple missing incidents during a year that may have been resolved only to conclude with a further incident that results in the child being missing again on 31 March. Any missing incident is concerning but the vast majority (91%) of incidents, where a child who is looked after and reportedly goes missing, last for two days or less.

The department holds responsibility for the collection and publication of statistics for children looked after by local authorities in England only. Similar statistics for other countries in the UK are the responsibility of the devolved administrations.

Children missing on 31 March who were unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC), 2021 to 2025, England

Footnotes

1. Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10. Figures exclude children looked after under a series of short-term placements.

2. Historical data may differ from older publications which is mainly due to amendments made by local authorities after the previous publication. However, users looking for a longer time series may wish to check for the equivalent table in earlier releases.

3. Missing is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known.

4. Since 2017 a growing number of local authorities informed the department that they do not record incidents as 'away without authorisation', but instead report all incidents as 'missing' to maintain consistency with local police reporting. We estimate this could mean an overestimate of missing incidents of up to 13% in 2021, 10% in 2022, 11% in 2023, 13% in 2024 and 12% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 9,600, 11,100, 11,500, 11,500 and 11,300. There is a corresponding estimate of an undercount of away without authorisation incidents of up to 32% in 2021, 30% in 2022, 32% in 2023, 36% in 2024 and 32% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 3,800, 3,600, 3,900, 4,300 and 4,300. However some of these local authorities submitted some 'away without authorisation' information and this can be found in the away from placement without authorisation table.

5. Figures for 2021 exclude data for Hackney.

The information requested is shown in the below table. The footnotes for the missing data table should be reviewed as they explain some of the limitations to this data.

Data on looked after unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in England is published in the annual statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoptions’. The latest data is for year ending 31 March 2025 and has been available since 20 November 2025.

In these statistics, ‘missing’ is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known. A child may have had multiple missing incidents during a year that may have been resolved only to conclude with a further incident that results in the child being missing again on 31 March. Any missing incident is concerning but the vast majority (91%) of incidents, where a child who is looked after and reportedly goes missing, last for two days or less.

The department holds responsibility for the collection and publication of statistics for children looked after by local authorities in England only. Similar statistics for other countries in the UK are the responsibility of the devolved administrations.

Children missing on 31 March who were unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC), 2021 to 2025, England

Footnotes

1. Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10. Figures exclude children looked after under a series of short-term placements.

2. Historical data may differ from older publications which is mainly due to amendments made by local authorities after the previous publication. However, users looking for a longer time series may wish to check for the equivalent table in earlier releases.

3. Missing is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known.

4. Since 2017 a growing number of local authorities informed the department that they do not record incidents as 'away without authorisation', but instead report all incidents as 'missing' to maintain consistency with local police reporting. We estimate this could mean an overestimate of missing incidents of up to 13% in 2021, 10% in 2022, 11% in 2023, 13% in 2024 and 12% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 9,600, 11,100, 11,500, 11,500 and 11,300. There is a corresponding estimate of an undercount of away without authorisation incidents of up to 32% in 2021, 30% in 2022, 32% in 2023, 36% in 2024 and 32% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 3,800, 3,600, 3,900, 4,300 and 4,300. However some of these local authorities submitted some 'away without authorisation' information and this can be found in the away from placement without authorisation table.

5. Figures for 2021 exclude data for Hackney.

The information requested is shown in the below table. The footnotes for the missing data table should be reviewed as they explain some of the limitations to this data.

Data on looked after unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in England is published in the annual statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoptions’. The latest data is for year ending 31 March 2025 and has been available since 20 November 2025.

In these statistics, ‘missing’ is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known. A child may have had multiple missing incidents during a year that may have been resolved only to conclude with a further incident that results in the child being missing again on 31 March. Any missing incident is concerning but the vast majority (91%) of incidents, where a child who is looked after and reportedly goes missing, last for two days or less.

The department holds responsibility for the collection and publication of statistics for children looked after by local authorities in England only. Similar statistics for other countries in the UK are the responsibility of the devolved administrations.

Children missing on 31 March who were unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC), 2021 to 2025, England

Footnotes

1. Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10. Figures exclude children looked after under a series of short-term placements.

2. Historical data may differ from older publications which is mainly due to amendments made by local authorities after the previous publication. However, users looking for a longer time series may wish to check for the equivalent table in earlier releases.

3. Missing is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known.

4. Since 2017 a growing number of local authorities informed the department that they do not record incidents as 'away without authorisation', but instead report all incidents as 'missing' to maintain consistency with local police reporting. We estimate this could mean an overestimate of missing incidents of up to 13% in 2021, 10% in 2022, 11% in 2023, 13% in 2024 and 12% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 9,600, 11,100, 11,500, 11,500 and 11,300. There is a corresponding estimate of an undercount of away without authorisation incidents of up to 32% in 2021, 30% in 2022, 32% in 2023, 36% in 2024 and 32% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 3,800, 3,600, 3,900, 4,300 and 4,300. However some of these local authorities submitted some 'away without authorisation' information and this can be found in the away from placement without authorisation table.

5. Figures for 2021 exclude data for Hackney.

The government is committed to upholding the principles of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child and safeguarding the rights of children, as we continue to do through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

We know that some schools choose to follow the UNICEF scheme ‘Rights Respecting Schools Award’, which puts children’s rights at the heart of school policy and practice, and we welcome that commitment to promoting the rights of children. However, there are no plans to provide funding for the ‘Rights Respecting Schools Award’ scheme in England.

All schools in England have specific duties to promote the spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development of their pupils and prepare them for the opportunities and responsibilities of adult life.

Schools in England are required to promote the fundamental British values of democracy, rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs. Citizenship education is an effective way of doing this, and we expect teachers to reinforce these values as well as to support pupils’ SMSC development.

Ministers welcome the opportunity to meet children and would be grateful for requests to be sent to the office of my hon. Friend, the Minister for School Standards.

Education plays a vital role in promoting integration and ensuring children and young people are prepared for life, including learning about the values that underpin and unite our society. All schools in England have a duty to promote the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of their pupils and to prepare them for the opportunities and responsibilities of adult life. It is up to schools to decide whether to join UNICEF’s Rights Respecting School programme.

Citizenship education provides a framework for pupils to develop the knowledge, skills and values that will prepare them to take their place in society as responsible citizens. Citizenship forms a core part of the statutory national curriculum at key stages 3 and 4 and primary schools can choose to teach citizenship at key stages 1 and 2, following the non-statutory framework for citizenship.

This government’s ambition is that all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.

The department is committed to improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools and colleges, as well as ensuring special settings cater to those with the most complex needs, restoring parents’ trust that their child will get the support they need. This includes strengthening accountability for inclusivity, including through Ofsted, and encouraging schools to set up resourced provision or special educational needs (SEN) units to increase capacity in mainstream schools.

High-quality teaching is central to ensuring that all pupils, including those with Down’s Syndrome or other types of SEND, are given the best possible opportunity to achieve. The department is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers over the course of this parliament. To support all teachers, the department is also implementing a range of teacher training reforms to ensure teachers have the skills to support all pupils to succeed, including those with SEND.

On 1 September 2024, the government introduced a new mandatory leadership level qualification for special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) in mainstream schools. The qualification will play a key role in improving outcomes for pupils with SEND, including Down’s Syndrome, by ensuring SENCOs consistently receive high-quality, evidence-based training on how best to support children with SEND.

High needs funding will also increase by almost £1 billion in 2025/26, compared to 2024/25. The department has also announced £740 million of capital funding to create more specialist places including in mainstream schools.

The department works with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to support building the evidence base for early language interventions. In July 2024, the department announced that funded support for the 11,100 schools registered for the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme (two thirds of English state primary schools) would continue for the 2024/25 academic year. NELI is the most robustly evidenced early language programme in the UK, helping children who need extra support with their speech and language development to make four months of additional progress and seven months for those on free school meals.

To support early language skills, the department has invested over £20 million in NELI. The department does not hold the exact number of children who have completed NELI since 2020, but an estimate is based on the data included in EEF’s 'NELI Scale-up: Evaluation Report - Year 2', as attached. The programme has screened more than 650,000 children in the last four years and supported more than 210,000 four and five-year-olds since the pandemic. Broken down by academic year, this is:

2020/21: 35,000

2021/22: 59,000

2022/23: 58,000

2023/24: 59,000

The Stronger Practice Hubs, which provide advice, share good practice and offer evidence-based professional development for early years practitioners, have also collaborated with the EEF to fund and make places available on several early language programmes. This is helping to strengthen and add to the evidence base of early years professional development programmes. The department does not hold data on the number of children who have benefitted from these programmes.

The number of new schools who registered to deliver NELI in each academic year since 2020 are as follows:

2020/21: 6,668

2021/22: 4,418

2022/23: 26

2023/24: no new school registration undertaken

For registered schools, the government has continued to fund the intervention so that schools can deliver the programme to new cohorts of reception children, where they are identified with below or well-below average language levels. We do not hold figures on how many of these schools completed the full work programme in each of those years.

The department works with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to support building the evidence base for early language interventions. In July 2024, the department announced that funded support for the 11,100 schools registered for the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme (two thirds of English state primary schools) would continue for the 2024/25 academic year. NELI is the most robustly evidenced early language programme in the UK, helping children who need extra support with their speech and language development to make four months of additional progress and seven months for those on free school meals.

To support early language skills, the department has invested over £20 million in NELI. The department does not hold the exact number of children who have completed NELI since 2020, but an estimate is based on the data included in EEF’s 'NELI Scale-up: Evaluation Report - Year 2', as attached. The programme has screened more than 650,000 children in the last four years and supported more than 210,000 four and five-year-olds since the pandemic. Broken down by academic year, this is:

2020/21: 35,000

2021/22: 59,000

2022/23: 58,000

2023/24: 59,000

The Stronger Practice Hubs, which provide advice, share good practice and offer evidence-based professional development for early years practitioners, have also collaborated with the EEF to fund and make places available on several early language programmes. This is helping to strengthen and add to the evidence base of early years professional development programmes. The department does not hold data on the number of children who have benefitted from these programmes.

The number of new schools who registered to deliver NELI in each academic year since 2020 are as follows:

2020/21: 6,668

2021/22: 4,418

2022/23: 26

2023/24: no new school registration undertaken

For registered schools, the government has continued to fund the intervention so that schools can deliver the programme to new cohorts of reception children, where they are identified with below or well-below average language levels. We do not hold figures on how many of these schools completed the full work programme in each of those years.

The department works with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to support building the evidence base for early language interventions. In July 2024, the department announced that funded support for the 11,100 schools registered for the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme (two thirds of English state primary schools) would continue for the 2024/25 academic year. NELI is the most robustly evidenced early language programme in the UK, helping children who need extra support with their speech and language development to make four months of additional progress and seven months for those on free school meals.

To support early language skills, the department has invested over £20 million in NELI. The department does not hold the exact number of children who have completed NELI since 2020, but an estimate is based on the data included in EEF’s 'NELI Scale-up: Evaluation Report - Year 2', as attached. The programme has screened more than 650,000 children in the last four years and supported more than 210,000 four and five-year-olds since the pandemic. Broken down by academic year, this is:

2020/21: 35,000

2021/22: 59,000

2022/23: 58,000

2023/24: 59,000

The Stronger Practice Hubs, which provide advice, share good practice and offer evidence-based professional development for early years practitioners, have also collaborated with the EEF to fund and make places available on several early language programmes. This is helping to strengthen and add to the evidence base of early years professional development programmes. The department does not hold data on the number of children who have benefitted from these programmes.

The number of new schools who registered to deliver NELI in each academic year since 2020 are as follows:

2020/21: 6,668

2021/22: 4,418

2022/23: 26

2023/24: no new school registration undertaken

For registered schools, the government has continued to fund the intervention so that schools can deliver the programme to new cohorts of reception children, where they are identified with below or well-below average language levels. We do not hold figures on how many of these schools completed the full work programme in each of those years.

Child poverty has gone up by 700,000 since 2010, with over four million children now growing up in a low-income family. This not only harms children’s lives now, but it also damages their future prospects and holds back the economic potential of the country.

My right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister announced the appointment of my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education to be the joint leads of a new ministerial taskforce to begin work on a child poverty strategy. The government is committed to delivering an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty, to tackle the root causes and give every child the best start at life.

This government is committed to improving mental health support for all children and young people. This is critical to breaking down barriers to opportunity and learning. The right support should be available to every young person that needs it, which is why the government will provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school.

The government will also be putting in place new Young Futures hubs, including access to mental health support workers, and will recruit an additional 8,500 new mental health staff to speed-up access to treatment for children and adults.

The department works closely with the National Autistic Society (NAS) and is aware of the Cullum Centres and the evaluation currently being undertaken by Goldsmiths, University of London, but has made no assessments of the Centres to date. The department engages regularly with NAS and other autism stakeholders to understand the issues faced by autistic children and young people and to understand possible solutions.

The department supports local authorities to provide sufficient school places for all children, including autistic children, through capital funding. The department has published over £1.5 billion of High Needs Provision Capital Allocations for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years. This funding is allocated to local authorities to support them to deliver new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), including those with autism, or who require alternative provision (AP). This funding forms part of the department's transformational investment of £2.6 billion in new high needs provision between 2022 and 2025 and is on top of the department’s ongoing delivery of new special and AP free schools.

Reaching over 70% of schools and further education (FE) colleges, the Universal Services programme helps the school and FE workforce to identify and meet the needs of children and young people with SEND earlier and more effectively. The programme will also help the schools to successfully prepare children and young people for adulthood, including employment.  Universal offers online training, professional development groups, bespoke school and college improvement projects, sector-led research, autism awareness training and an embedded focus on preparation for adulthood, including employer-led webinars for college staff. The programme commenced in May 2022 and runs until Spring 2025, with a budget of nearly £12 million.

The department has begun collecting data from local authorities on available capacity in special schools, SEND units and resourced provision, along with corresponding forecasts of demand for these places. This data will help the department to effectively support local authorities to fulfil their statutory duty to provide sufficient specialist places.

I refer the noble Lord to the answer of 12 February 2024 to Question 11638.

I refer the noble Lord to the answer of 22 February 2024 to Question 14564.

The department takes the welfare of unaccompanied migrant children extremely seriously and we are committed to ensuring they are safe and secure. Local authorities have a duty to provide services to all children in need in their area. Under Section 20 of the Children Act 1989, those under the age of 18 arriving as unaccompanied asylum-seekers should enter the care of the local authority in which area they first present.

All unaccompanied children, including those who have been arrested or trafficked, should be safeguarded and have their welfare promoted in the same way as any other looked-after child. Social Workers and other practitioners including police, health, education and youth offender services practitioners, and those who care for looked-after children, are encouraged to consider the full range of support available to looked after children in their areas, including that from community and other organisations.

The provisions under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 ensure that if there is uncertainty over whether a potential victim of trafficking is a child or an adult, then that person is presumed to be a child and receives the appropriate support without delay. If practitioners have concerns that a child may be a potential victim of modern slavery or human trafficking, then a referral should be made to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) as soon as possible. Guidance on making a referral can be found in the attached document. The NRM acts as a formal framework for first responders to identify potential victims of trafficking and assists with the provision of victim support. Like any other child in need, a trafficked child referred through the NRM should be safeguarded by the local authority on which the referral is made. Where it is evident that the child faces a significant risk of harm from the trafficker, appropriate arrangements will need to be put in place to keep the child safe from harm, and the child’s care plan should include such measures.

In addition, the Home Office has rolled out Independent Child Trafficking Guardians (ICTGs) to two thirds of local authorities in England and Wales. In June 2023, the Minister for Safeguarding agreed to extend the current grant agreement to 31 March 2025, alongside working to deliver ICTG national rollout covering all of England and Wales. ICTGs are an additional source of advice and support for potentially trafficked children, and somebody who can advocate on their behalf to ensure their best interests are reflected in the decision-making processes undertaken by the public authorities who are involved in the child’s care. The support they provided is in addition to the statutory support provided to children by local authorities. Statutory guidance on roles and responsibilities of ICTGs is attached.