§ Mr. BoswellTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what arrangements are made for the provision of support, including(a) regular access to his Department's documentation, (b) access to funding for the National Grid for Learning and (c) funding for continuing professional development, for local education authority support services for children with special needs. [128324]
§ Jacqui Smith[holding answer 4 July 2000]: At the moment, all local education authority (LEA) support services for children with special educational needs (SEN) receive "SPECTRUM" a monthly update of new DfEE publications from which support services can place orders for documentation. Each month all the publications DfEE has sent automatically to schools are posted on the EASEA website, where there is also a searchable archive of documents from past months. School and LEA staff can register with the service at www.easea.co.uk to receive a regular e-mail alert when new information fitting their personal profile of interest, is on-line. Work is in hand to automatically provide LEA support services for children with SEN with the monthly batch mailing to schools from September. Funding for the National Grid for Learning is made available to LEAs through the Standards Fund. A total of £205 million has been made available for 2000–01 of which £155 million has been provided specifically to allow LEAs to continue to equip schools in line with their ICT development plans. As such it is not available to LEA support services. Additionally, under the Standards Fund for 2000–01, £26 million is being provided to support in-service training in special educational needs. LEA support services are eligible for this funding.
§ Mr. BoswellTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many special education needs tribunal hearings took place in each of the last five years; and what proportion of them in each year resulted in a determination in favour of a material change in provision for the pupil in question. [128791]
§ Jacqui SmithThe information requested is shown in the table.
Year Decisions issued Upheld Dismissed 1994–95 242 150 92 1995–96 904 522 382 1996–97 981 556 425 1997–98 1,135 701 434 1998–99 1,220 921 299 Note:
'Decisions issued' is the terminology used in the Special Educational Needs Tribunal's Annual Reports where this information is published. It equates to hearings that have taken place.