All teaching staff across schools in England to have SEND mandatory training

Made mandatory that all teachers, HTLA’s,TA’s & support staff to undertake minimum basic training to support SEND including Autism and other conditions / behaviours which may be associated with the Autism spectrum (ADHD, PDA, ODD, dyspraxia, dyslexia) to ensure appropriate support for students

A court has delivered a landslide ruling on a recent school exclusion case.The ruling made clear that all schools must make sure they have made appropriate adjustments to support Autistic children and those with other disabilities, before they can resort to exclusion. In order to support this further, I would like to see changes made where it is mandatory that all staff working & supporting students within schools across England, should be equipped with at least the minimal basic awareness training to support all students within SEND.

We want all children, no matter what their special educational need or disability (SEND), to be able to reach their full potential and receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life. We have taken a number of steps to achieve this and continue to take action.

It is important to recognise that decisions relating to the professional development of staff rightly rest with schools, head teachers, and teachers themselves, as they are in the best position to judge their own requirements. The Government is assisting schools to do this through investing in workforce training on SEND and setting out clear standards that all teachers must meet.

We are taking action to ensure the school workforce gets the training it needs. In April 2018, the Department for Education announced £3.4 million funding over 2018-2020 to equip the school workforce to deliver high quality teaching for children with any type of SEND. The SEND schools’ workforce contract will help schools identify and meet their training needs in relation to SEND, as well as building the specialist workforce. The Whole School SEND consortium, led by the National Association for Special Educational Needs, is delivering this contract.

As part of Government’s ambitious plans, we recently launched the first ever integrated teacher recruitment and retention strategy. The strategy contains an Early Career Framework for newly qualified teachers (NQTs), which is a two-year support package to support NQTs to help all pupils succeed - including pupils identified within the four areas of need set out in the SEND Code of Practice. Early roll-out of the Early Career Framework will start in time for September 2020, with national roll-out from September 2021.