DfE in the dark over speech and language therapist employment levels

The government doesn’t know how many speech and language therapists (SALTs) are working in council services ahead of the rollout of its new experts at hand service, a minister has admitted.

The admission has prompted concerns about how data gaps could impact the new £1.8 billion service – a key pillar of ministers’ SEND reforms.

It aims to get earlier support into schools from specialists such as educational psychologists and SALTs.

Georgia Gould, the schools minister, has previously said 7,500 experts would be needed.

However she told the Local Government Association conference this week that her department “doesn’t actually have a view of how many speech and language therapists are operating in councils around the country”.

Gould also told a committee of MPs last week there has “been a data gap, we don’t have at the moment knowledge across the system about how many inclusion bases there are, for example.

“We don’t know the number of speech and language therapists that each local authority has”.

New data collection ‘important’

As part of their local SEND reform plans, councils are now required to submit quarterly data dumps to the Department for Education. This will include workforce data, as well as total planned spend by the council and the local health service.

Gould said the data collection exercise was “really important” and it would enable them to get a “really clear baseline of where there is provision”.

“We will be monitoring really carefully some of the key data points that will tell us about the system readiness.”

But Jo Hutchinson, from the Education Policy Institute, said the “sequencing and timescales” of the reforms look “problematic”.

“Ideally, you would first baseline assess the size and spread of the workforce, then create a workforce development plan for how to attract and train additional staff as needed, then implement that plan and deploy the workforce where they are needed through the local EAH teams.

“When those stages have been completed you can then look at implementing things like increased early support in schools, and after that you can consider whether it is appropriate to reform EHCPs or repurpose funding.

“Whereas the government is looking to legislate before gaps in the workforce are understood and addressed. From the perspective of the families affected, that doesn’t sound very reassuring to me.”

Warren Carratt, chief executive of Nexus Multi Academy Trust, said the policy was a “hit and hope” proposal, adding: “How can a minster acknowledge that the DfE has no data in this area whilst simultaneously seeking to implement policy that is directly impacting this very same area.

“It is a recipe for utter disaster. The sector deserves better. Children and families deserve better”.

A landmark EPI report revealed data gaps in counting the number of EPs too, finding the official data undercounted the workforce by about a third.

Hutchinson, director of SEND and additional needs, said she would expect the same challenges in counting SALTs as, for example, schools also hire these privately.

Go further

Steve Jamieson, chief executive at the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, said they have “long highlighted the need for better data” on numbers of SALTs working with youngsters.

“We are pleased that the minister has recognised this data gap. While the plan to establish a baseline for local authorities is a step in the right direction, this must go further.

“Improved national data collection on the number of speech and language therapists working across all sectors, settings, and employers is required in order to enable the government to accurately plan for the workforce.”

Schools Week previously revealed how government was refusing to reveal how it calculated its need for 7,500 specialist staff.

Our reporting also exposed an untapped pipeline of EPs, as almost nine in 10 applications for funded training courses were being turned away.

Gould previously pledged specialist staff would be given “ring-fenced” time on the frontline in schools, rather than “spending all their time doing form filling and administrative work”.

She said the DfE was working “closely with the NHS on their workforce planning, and they are really confident that we can meet our ambitions.

“We absolutely recognise that we need to be training more people and bringing them into the system, as well as asking people to come back.”