The Prime Minister and the Education Secretary have both confirmed the news, which has delighted Steve Brine and his fellow members of the All Party Autism Group with has long campaigned on the issue.
More than 1% of children are on the autism spectrum and over 70% of them attend mainstream schools, so every teacher will have autistic students in their classes at some point. Autism training has not been mandatory for teachers, and some have no special educational needs (SEN) training at all, and campaigners have welcomed the news.
Steve Brine said: "Our goal was for autism to be included in the new framework of core content for initial teacher training (ITT) courses, and this is great news. This new ITT framework is being developed by an independent expert group, which is due to report to ministers shortly, but to have the confirmation this, alongside broader SEN training, will happen is fantastic."
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