Speeches by McKinnell.

“My hon. Friend’s final question was a request to meet and discuss the matter. I am more than happy to do so.”

“Clearly, effective inspection is important, both to keep children safe but also to maintain and drive high standards. It is a non-negotiable for us in terms of inspection, and settings will be held to account for how they support pupils with special educational needs. Ofsted is going to put focus on inclusion within ma…”

“In terms of Ofsted? At this stage we have not set out the proposals yet, and we will also set out our consultation outcomes at the same time. That will come in the autumn.”

“As far as I am aware, the free school meal expansion will apply to more children, and clearly any family currently receiving universal credit will now receive free school meals, and any associated impacts in terms of the benefits that flow from that, or other receipts that flow from that, will be looked at. We are not …”

“I am struggling to hear you with the fans; I am sorry. Do you mind repeating your question?”

“No children will be impacted by the expansion of free school meals because it is an expansion, and obviously any impact in terms of transitional arrangements will continue.”

“Gosh, there are a lot of issues in that question. I think we are bringing through some changes to the school admissions ecosystem when it comes to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. They are not significant changes, but we do recognise the challenge that we need to make sure that schools and local authorities, …”

“Have you got a response to that?”

“This is a big topic, and I appreciate I have been asked for brevity. Fundamentally, we want to create a less adversarial system. We just want to prevent parents from having to seek legal redress to get their child’s education. That should never be the case, but I recognise for a small proportion of parents that is curr…”

“You are right, we have had really good feedback. I have seen it for myself. It is uplifting to see it in practice and to see the impact that it is having both on the children, but more so on the whole school and the workforce, and how empowered and confident they are as a result of this intervention. Yes, I am very hea…”

“I will try to be short. Clearly, we know we need to develop the pipeline of speech and language therapists and educational psychologists. For speech and language therapists we now have a degree apprenticeship route. We are keen to support as many pathways and routes into these specialist areas that we need more of. We …”

“Yes. The spending review will take per pupil funding to its highest ever level, and that will enable us to transform the SEND system. We recognise that a huge amount of the needs that are being identified and the support that can be provided is through the school system, and that is why we are determined to support sch…”

“Yes, I think there is a real opportunity here to get good data that can inform how any reforms are delivering in practice, but also how to keep it continuously improving as well. We have a data strategy that we are currently working on as a Department. We want to make improvements to the data and the oversight of the S…”

“Clearly, it is working well in some areas and it is not working well in others. Generally, as part of our SEND reform, we want to harness where that is working well and where that good practice is, find the ingredients and make sure we have a much more consistent approach. Where partners are not meeting their duties, w…”

“The purpose of the statutory guidance will be to clarify those roles and responsibilities. The intention would be that that would be clarified through that.”

“We appreciate the appetite for updated guidance on the delegation of clinical tasks by healthcare professionals to school and college staff. I am pleased to confirm that officials and Department of Health and NHS England colleagues are developing non-statutory guidance to clarify the roles and responsibilities, because…”

“You identify a big challenge, and we want to improve services that support early identification and intervention where it is needed, and whole-school inclusive practice. The local authority and the ICB as joint commissioners of services will clearly play an important role within that. We will need to set out the detail…”

“At the moment, the statutory duties are clear that Health and local authorities have a duty to ensure the integration of educational and training provision with health and social care provision. That means that they have to make joint commissioning arrangements with local partners in order to meet the needs of children…”

“I will just see if Alison has an answer to that first. I might not need to write.”

“We are seeing an increase in need not being met, and that is the big challenge that we want to overcome. That is why we are focused on upskilling and training the workforce. That is why we have the pilots on the early intervention. It is why we are focused on early years and improving and upskilling the workforce withi…”