The Department for Education has published today, 27 July, its final evaluation of the pilot projects on Individual Budgets for families with disabled children.

A series of pilot projects had been commissioned, to test out if the concept of Individual Budgets can be effectively applied in the context of additional educational provision for disabled children and young people.

The final report, published in three volumes, presents the findings from the first two years of the Individual Budgets for disabled children pilot programme. It covers an evaluation of the process, an assessment of outcomes for participating families, and a separate volume on overall implications and recommendations for the future.

The main evaluation reports are also accompanied by: a set of six case study reports, detailing the activities and progress made by each of the pilot sites; two thematic case study reports, focusing on resource allocation and the means by which safeguarding has been addressed in the Individual Budgets context; and a technical report.

CSIE welcomes the prospect of increased family involvement in planning educational provision for disabled children and young people. Individual Budgets alone, however, cannot make parental choice of school a reality in all areas. The capacity of mainstream schools to respond to the full diversity of learners has to increase, if all parents are to have a real choice of school. Until this happens, the “choice” of mainstream will continue to be unavailable to some parents, depending on where they live.

Further information on the Individual Budgets pilots and links to all reports are available on the DfE website.