Select committee: Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 16
Fourth report: Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report
Published 22 Dec 2020
Paragraph 105
Addressed to Government Equalities Office
Women and Equalities Committee Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
We agree that catch up funding should be weighted towards children who have been “hardest hit” by disruption to their education. We know that many children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) will be in the hardest hit group; many received little or no support earlier this year. We know that pupils with SEND are likely to fall further behind without commensurate help. Pupils with SEND in mainstream schools have often borne the brunt of the dysfunctional SEND system, missing out on support for their needs through a lack of ring-fenced funding. We Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report 45 are very concerned that catch up funding allocations do not adequately reflect this. In the light of experiences earlier this year, it is unacceptable that the £1 billion catch up premium does not include ring-fenced funding for pupils with SEND in mainstream schools. We recommend that funding for the remaining tranches of the universal catch up allocation be increased by around £211 million, to allow mainstream schools to receive £240 per pupil with an EHC plan or receiving SEN Support, ring-fenced for their catch-up support in this academic year. We further recommend the Department procure an additional strand of specialist provision in the National Tutoring Programme, designed to support pupils with EHC plans and those receiving SEN Support, across all schools.
From: Women and Equalities Committee, Fourth report: Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report (HC 1050), paragraph 105, 22 December 2020
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 14 April 2021.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the Committee's report and sets out measures taken during the pandemic, while declining some recommendations and committing to publish the National Strategy for Disabled People in Spring 2021.
- On a statutory Code of Practice on the Public Sector Equality Duty, the government says it "does not see any compelling need to depart from the normal preference of its predecessors against additional statutory codes of practice".
- On publishing assessments of disabled people's food needs, it says that, "in line with the practice of successive administrations", it "does not routinely publish EIAs".
- On the SEND review, the Department for Education "intends to publish proposals for consultation in the spring of 2021", saying the pandemic "has unavoidably delayed" the review.
- On an independent inquiry and social care reform, it says there will be "opportunities to look back" at COVID-19 but is "focused entirely" on the response for now, and will "bring forward proposals this year" on adult social care.