To ask the Minister of Education whether she has any plans to review the policy that children with a Statement of Special Educational Needs are counted as supernumerary and are not included in the school's pupil numbers.

Article 18(1)(f) of the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 specifies that normal admissions arrangements do not apply in respect of children with statements of Special Educational Needs (SEN), while Article 16(5)(b) of the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 places a duty on a school’s Board of Governors (BoG) to admit a statemented child if that school is named on his/her statement.

There are no current plans to review this policy where statemented children are treated as supernumerary for the entire duration of their time at school. My Department did examine this issue some years ago with the managing authorities and sectoral body representatives and consulted with schools and Trades Union Side (TUS) on a draft proposal. This work was discontinued as factors such as annual growth or decline in pupil numbers at individual schools and the increasing number of children presenting with statements resulted in changeable modelling outcomes from year-to-year. This would have created difficulties for schools to manage any flexibilities they had around approved enrolments and how they could manage available places and in the assessment of suitable school sizes when planning new builds or extensions to existing school stock.

It should be noted that the Department’s assessment of sustainability where a Development Proposal (DP) is published always examines the position excluding and including SEN.