Sharon Hodgson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sharon Hodgson on 2016-02-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many staff were employed by her Department to collate and publish statistical data on children with special educational needs in (a) 2010 and (b) 2015.

Edward Timpson

Department staff were involved in activities covering requirements gathering; technical development and helpdesk facilities to upload data onto Department systems; liaising with school census staff to develop SEN requirements for the school census and monitoring data quality; publishing the statistical first releases in May and July; publishing Special educational needs: an analysis and summary of data sources.

It is not possible to calculate the number of full time equivalent staff because it would not include staff employed to collect the school census, which also collects SEN data, as it is difficult to separate out the SEN specific work.

The figures for 2010 are not available.