General Overview of the Act
4.The Act has four Parts comprising 101 sections and one Schedule. Part 2 is separated into five chapters.
5.It establishes a statutory framework for supporting children and young people with additional learning needs (‘ALN’). This replaces the legislation surrounding special educational needs (‘ALN’) and the assessment of children and young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities (LDD) in post-16 education and training. The legislation being replaced on ALN is in Part 4 of the 1996 Act and that on LDD is in the 2000 Act.
6.It introduces a new statutory plan called an ‘individual development plan’ (referred to as an ‘LDD’ in these notes) to replace statutory and non-statutory education plans specifically for children and young people with ALN and LDD. The meanings of child and young person for the purposes of this Act are set out in section 99. A ‘child’ means a person not over compulsory school age, while a ‘young person’ means a person over compulsory school age but under 25.
7.It provides rights of appeal to children, the parents of children and young people in connection with this new statutory plan and related rights about additional learning provision (referred to as ‘ALP’ in these notes). These appeals are to the Education Tribunal for Wales (“the Tribunal”), which is the new name for the Special Educational Needs Tribunal for Wales (‘ALNTW’).
8.It makes consequential amendments to other Acts, including the 1996 Act, the 2000 Act, the Education (Wales) Measure 2009, and the Equality Act 2010.
9.The Act is supplemented by a code on ALN (‘the code’) which contains further requirements on particular bodies and guidance to bodies about the exercise of their functions. See the notes to section 4 for further detail. The Act also contains regulation making powers to set out some further details of the system.
10.Some provisions of the Act set out the general position, but they need to be read in conjunction with other sections of the Act (or of the 1996 Act) in some scenarios. In particular: