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 £25million 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.”