We’ve been reviewing the way we buy education places for pupils with Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) in independent special schools, non-maintained special schools, and independent special post-16 settings.
We’ve also been looking at how we buy packages of support that help children learn at other locations, not at school, for a period of time hopefully with the aim for them to return or reintegrate to school.
It’s all part of our responsibility to make sure that what we’re purchasing from education providers is working well and that it’s meeting young people’s needs.
To help us review all these services, we’ve been talking to parents and carers and young people about their experiences, through workshops, phone calls, one-to-one meetings and surveys.
Thank you, all of you, who have been part of our engagement. What you’ve told us about your experiences of these education placements and support helps us write new service specifications for future contracts.
It means that when children and young people are receiving these services in future, the provider of those services will be able to work in ways that meet requirements that reflect what parents and young people have said are important to them.
By way of example, your feedback has meant that our new contracts will require improved communication with families; more training for staff to ensure they can meet children and young people’s needs; clearer expectations from us about the relationships that we want to see providers having with families, and improvements in the way providers seek feedback from families about their services and respond to this to make them even better.
We’ve published a fuller description of the feedback we’ve had from parents and carers on our website.
We are aiming for the new approach for buying these services to be in place by 1 February 2026. We will be keeping families informed as we move forward.