Jess Phillips – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jess Phillips on 2016-04-13.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 12 April 2016 to Question 32243, how many investigations her Department has carried out into cases where schools or early years settings have been accused of refusing to accept disabled children in each year since 2010; and what the outcomes of those investigations were.
Edward Timpson
If it is considered that a child or young person may have been refused admission to a school because of a disability, a claim for disability discrimination can be made to the First-tier Tribunal for Special Educational Needs and Disability. The latest Disability Discrimination Statistics are available on GOV.UK[1].
Claims for disability discrimination against early years settings are heard by the county courts.
In 2014, 27,140 new statements or EHC plans were issued[2] and, in total, there are currently 240,185[3] children and young people with statements or EHC plans. Since 2013, the Department has received around 25 requests for an SEN determination about school admissions each year, although only three have resulted in directions to admit. In order to protect the identity of the child, we are unable to give details of these.
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statements-of-sen-and-ehc-plans-england-2015 (Table 2)
[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statements-of-sen-and-ehc-plans-england-2015 (Table 1)
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