To ask the Minister of Education to outline what actions within the Special Educational Needs Reform Agenda - Delivery Plan 2025-2030, will be completed this year.

The Special Educational Needs (SEN) Reform Agenda and its associated five-year Delivery Plan contain over 100 actions. As outlined in the Delivery Plan, transformation will take time and full implementation will require significant investment.

Since publication of the SEN Reform Agenda and Delivery Plan, substantial progress has been made on delivering the ‘enabling’ conditions to support reform, including the publication of an Outcomes Framework in June 2025 and the SEN Policy Statement in August 2025. Governance structures and a delivery unit within the department have also been established this year.

In addition and since publication in February 2025, there has been significant progress on completing and commencing a number of year one actions including:

Publication of the Education Authority’s (EA) Operational Plan 2: 2024-26 (OP2) in January 2025;

Publication of the EA’s Graduated Response Framework (GRF) in March 2025;

Phased implementation of the EA’s Local IMPACT Teams (LITs) from September 2025;

Completion in June 2025 of a public consultation on changing the ‘supernumerary’ status for children with a statement of SEN;

EA’s Special Schools Plans of Action published September 2025;

Pre-School Education Inclusion Fund (PSEIF) continued into 2025/26;

Phase Two of the Education & Training Inspectorate’s (ETI) review of specialist provisions in mainstream schools is ongoing and expected to report by December 2025;

Progression on the digitisation of the statutory assessment and review process; and

Design and development work on the 13 actions funded under the Public Sector Transformation Programme, the majority of which will commence during the 2025/26 academic year.