Givan announces £1.2m Pre-School Support Fund for children with special educational needs | Newry News | Latest Newry News, Newry Sport and Newry Business for Newry City

Givan announces £1.2m Pre-School Support Fund for children with special educational needs | Newry News

Education Minister Paul Givan has announced a £ 1.2 million Pre-School Education Inclusion Support Fund to support young children with special educational needs (SEN).

 

Givan announces £1.2m Pre-School Support Fund for children with special educational needs | Newry News today

 

The pilot Fund will provide resources to preschool 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 says, “Pre-school education settings are facing challenges in supporting increasing numbers of children with additional needs in their preschool 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 £25 million Early Learning and Childcare package and aims to begin addressing the needs identified by preschool settings through the End-to-End Review of SEN.

 


BELLEEK LIVING NEWRY


 

The Minister continues, “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 adds, “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.”

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Posted by on Jan 3 2025. Filed under Community, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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