Givan announces £1.2m Pre-School Support Fund for children with special educational needs
Date published:
Education Minister Paul Givan has announced a £1.2m Pre-School Education Inclusion Support Fund to support young children with special educational needs (SEN).
The pilot Fund will provide resourcing to pre-school education settings with at least one child undergoing statutory assessment of their educational needs. Settings will receive a payment of £750 per month, per class to help them meet the needs of children with SEN.
The Minister said:
“Pre-school education settings are facing challenges in supporting increasing numbers of children with additional needs in their pre-school year. This additional funding will help settings to support those needs.
“Settings will have flexibility on how they use the funding, which can be used to resource additional staff hours, buy in therapeutic interventions or specialist equipment, resources or training. This pilot programme will test the impact of additional resource on children with SEN in our pre-school settings.”
The Fund is part of the Minister’s £25m Early Learning and Childcare package and aims to begin addressing the needs identified by pre-school settings through the End-to-End Review of SEN.
The Minister continued:
“We are working closely with the Education Authority (EA) to identify settings who have children undergoing statutory assessment. We have written to over 200 eligible settings this week and will work with the EA to get payment issued in the coming days.
“As children are referred for statutory assessment throughout the year, further payment tranches will be made in December 2024, January and February 2025.”
The Minister concluded:
“I hope this fund is welcome news and I will continue to develop solutions and seek funding opportunities to address the range of challenges identified by pre-school settings through the End-to-End Review of SEN.”
Notes to editors:
- The End-to-End Review of SEN included a workstream focusing on Early Intervention which included early years. Findings from this workstream identified particular challenges for pre-school education settings in meeting the needs of children with SEN/D or emerging SEN/D.
- The Fund does not pre-empt the outcome of the statutory assessment process and is not intended to be assigned to individual children, but rather recognises there are additional support needs within the class and that funding may be necessary to provide that support.
- The funding is secured until March 2025; continuation of the Fund will be prioritised within any future Early Learning and Childcare budget.
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