We asked the Department whether its definition of ‘vulnerable children’ remained relevant in light of the pandemic. The Department explained that two elements of the definition that it used to decide who could access a school place—children with a social worker or an EHC plan—were fixed. But the definition also included an important third category, which was those children whom schools considered vulnerable in other regards. This allowed schools flexibility to take account of factors such as ...

We asked the Department whether its definition of ‘vulnerable children’ remained relevant in light of the pandemic. The Department explained that two elements of the definition that it used to decide who could access a school place—children with a social worker or an EHC plan—were fixed. But the definition also included an important third category, which was those children whom schools considered vulnerable in other regards. This allowed schools flexibility to take account of factors such as wider home circumstances or mental health issues, and to make sure that places could be made available to the children whom schools knew would suffer if Type: conclusion | Number: 10 | Response status: under_consideration Government response: 2.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: January 2022 2.2 The department continues to work with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) and local authorities (LAs) to collect, interpret and