I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 from Devon’s local authority concerning external educational interventions provided for children and young people in care and for children and young people receiving SEND support/EHCPs in your jurisdiction. For the purposes of this FOI request, ‘external educational interventions’ are defined as the
following:
– Mentoring
– Tutoring
– EAL Support
– Functional Skills Tutoring
– Functional Skills Assessment
– Study Skills (including attitude/wellbeing support)
An external educational intervention is support that is external to the primary mode of education; this includes interventions that are external to maintained schools, PRUs, special schools, etc.
Please provide the following information.
1. The number of children and young people in care who receive external educational interventions each academic year, going from 2017/18 to 2021/22.
2. The number of children and young people in care who currently receive external educational interventions broken down into the following categories:
a. By age group, from age 4 to age 25.
b. Types of school attended (e.g. mainstream state, maintained special, non maintained special, mainstream private, special private etc)
3. The funding spent by the Local Authority each academic year on providing external educational interventions to children and young people in care, going from 2017/18 to 2021/22.
4. Local Authority future spend expectations for the provision of external educational interventions to children and young people in care.
5. The number of children and young people in care who have SEND requirements, including children receiving SEND support and those with EHCPs.
6. When external educational interventions, such as tutoring, is required for children and young people in care;
a. Provider/s the local authority uses for this additional support
b. The number of young people referred to each provider
Children and Young People with SEND support/EHCP support
1. The number of children and young people with SEND requirements/EHCPs who receive external educational interventions each academic year, going from 2017/18 to 2021/22.
2. The number of children and young people with SEND requirements/EHCPs who currently require external educational interventions broken down into the following categories:
a. By age group, from age 4 to age 25.
b. Types of school attended (e.g. mainstream state, maintained special, nonmaintained special, mainstream private, special private etc)
c. Primary diagnosis/need type from the list below.
§ Autism Spectrum Disorder
§ Hearing Impairment
§ Moderate Learning Difficulty
§ Multi-Sensory Impairment
§ Other Difficulty/Disability
§ Physical Disability
§ Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulty
§ Severe Learning Difficulty
§ Social Emotional and Mental Health Needs
§ Specific Learning Difficulty
§ Speech, Language and Communications Needs
§ Visual Impairment
§ SEN Support but No Specialist Assessment of Type of Need
3. Any forecasts the Local Authority have made about the future number of children and young people with SEND requirements/EHCPs who require external educational interventions in terms of primary need up to 2026.
4. The funding spent by the Local Authority each academic year on providing external educational interventions to children and young people with SEND requirements/EHCPs, going from 2017/18 to 2021/22.
5. Local Authority future spend expectations for the provision of external educational interventions to children and young people with SEND requirements/EHCPs.
6. When external educational interventions, such as tutoring, is required for children and young people with SEND requirements/EHCPs;
a. Provider/s the local authority uses for this additional support
b. The number of students referred to each provider
If it is not possible to provide the information requested then please provide all information possible and reach out to discuss how any issues might be resolved.
Devon County Council (DCC) believes compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time.
To comply with this request, DCC would need to collate data from the EHCPS, Virtual School, Children in Care as well as pulling the data from many spreadsheets and files, and contact over 300 schools, which would take more than 18 hours of officer time.
Additionally, DCC does not keep data for SEN support, and the EHCP data would only cover those learners for whom DCC commission alternative provision (AP), and would miss all the data from schools who commission their own AP.