§ Mrs. MayTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will list those local education authorities which are failing to process draft statements of SEN within the legally required period;138W and if he will set out the action taken by his Department with each such authority and list the responses of each authority. [61975]
§ Mr. Charles ClarkeFigures showing the time taken by all education authorities to produce draft statements in 1996–97 were published by the Audit Commission in March this year. These showed that most LEAs were failing to produce a significant proportion of their statements within the statutory time limits. The Government's Programme of Action for meeting special educational needs, published last month, made it clear that we are committed to achieving a substantial improvement in LEAs' performance and will continue to challenge under-performing LEAs; and that we intend to require LEAs to publish information about the time taken to complete statutory assessments and statements. In addition, we will shortly be providing LEAs with guidance on good practice in this area.