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House of Commons
Friday 3 July 1992
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker-- in the Chair ]
PETITION
Fishing Limits
9.34 am
Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) : I have a petition from Mr. Eric Clemonts of 60, Harrington street, Cleethorpes. The petition started in Grimsby and Cleethorpes, and spread to other parts of the country. It has been signed by 18,000 petitioners, many of them did so in fishmongers and--judging by the petition's smell--in fish and chip shops up and down the country.
The petition states that Britain contributes almost two thirds of the waters in the so-called European pool and almost three quarters of the valuable species of fish. That pool has been over-fished by European fleets that have fished out their own waters. As a result, a conservation crisis has developed, threatening the lives and well-being of the fishermen of this country. The petition urges the Government to take back control of British territorial waters, on the ground that only the nation state has an interest in conserving its own fish stocks.
The petition states :
"Wherefore your petitioners pray that your Honourable House direct her Majesty's Government to assume control over those waters extending 200 miles out to sea and to the midway point in the North Sea, English Channel and Irish Sea of which they are the lawful custodians in order to halt the wilful and reckless destruction of Britain's fish stocks and the livelihood of our fishermen by the criminally greedy and irresponsible fleets of other Common Market states. These potentially rich resources are the property of the British people as much as North Sea oil and gas, and we see no justification for their surrender. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever humbly pray".
To lie upon the Table.
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Point of Order
9.36 am
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : On a point of order, Madam Speaker. You will have heard questions yesterday about the French blockade of British hauliers in France. Have you received any information about a statement by the Foreign Minister on the subject? Is it not about time that the Foreign Minister called in the French ambassador to try to stop the carnage and the threats to the British lorry drivers to the effect that if they do not behave, their windows will be smashed? It is high time that Parliament stopped crawling on its hands and knees to Jacques Delors and the rest of them, and did something about the British drivers and holiday makers.
Madam Speaker : The answer to the hon. Gentleman's direct point of order is no. I have not received any requests from the Government about making an announcement or statement this morning.
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Special Educational Needs
9.37 am
Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge) : I beg to move,
That this House considers that the opportunities for children and adults with special educational needs are being jeopardised by the fragmentation of education and the inadequate level of resources from central government.
I have chosen special educational needs as the subject of my motion as it is apparent that serious problems are developing in that aspect of our education system. More and more teachers are coming to the end of their tethers as cracks appear in the system of support for children with special educational needs. It is not just children with special needs and teachers who are suffering, but all children. If schools do not have sufficient resources to cope with special needs, they cannot give a fair deal to any of their pupils. Before the election I was approached by a mother with a son in a school in Cambridge. She said that she had progressed through the state system and done reasonably well, gaining three A-levels, but she was concerned that her child would not benefit in the same way. The class in which he was being taught had a high proportion of children with special needs, although they have not been formally identified as such. The teacher had to spend much time with those children and had little time for the rest. As a result, the children without special needs were missing out and gaining little educational benefit from their school. I have discovered that that is by no means an isolated case and that the problem is becoming increasingly common.
Some 11 years after the passing of the Education Act 1981, and nine years after it came into force, it is time for the Government to take a hard look at special needs education and ask why things are beginning to go seriously wrong. Special needs education is in serious crisis in my constituency and is affecting all children. Every crisis poses both threats and opportunities. The threats are to the education of our children and the longer-term health of our society ; the opportunities are to learn from what is going on and to make changes for the better.
When the Education Act 1981 was introduced there was a consensus. There was support for its provisions. I believe that that consensus still exists. The measures in the Education Act 1981 were the natural extension of a comprehensive education system, enacting the principles of equal access and equal opportunities. Children who had learning difficulties or physical handicaps would be entitled to have an assessment of their needs. Identified special educational needs would be met in mainstream schools through individual attention, learning support assistance and specialist teaching. Wherever possible, children who previously would have been sent to special schools would be integrated into mainstream schools. All children would have an enriched educational experience, as human prejudices were confronted and annihilated. A small minority of children whose needs were greater than most would have the additional safeguard of a formal statement which specified their needs and put a legal obligation on the local education authority to meet them. One measure of the success of the 1981 Act is that there has been a steady decline in the proportion of children in special schools. Parents, teachers and learning support assistants have worked hard together to make the implementation of the Education Act 1981 a reality. I know that all the schools in my constituency remain very
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strongly committed to the principles of the 1981 Act. We have to ask ourselves, therefore, why things are beginning to fall apart. The inadequate level of resources is the primary reason for the problems that we are experiencing in special needs education. I am not alone in holding the view that not enough resources are allocated to special needs education. That view has recently been expressed by the new Director General of the Confederation of British Industry, Howard Davies, who, in his previous post, was head of the Audit Commission. I think that it is fair to say that Director Generals of the Confederation of British Industry are not normally renowned for their socialist views. I want to stress, therefore, that it is not simply we on this side of the House who argue that local authorities are being starved of cash.I have here case studies drawn from the Spastics Society's research on statementing, based on the experiences of 240 families with children with disabilities. In the first case, Adrian's mother wrote :
"He has achieved a lot in his school work but he could have achieved so much more if he had more back-up, more regularly. Equipment to help him with motor skills problems is not very forthcoming. Help in sports is also lacking his physio sees him once a week but he needs more. I work with him but I'm no expert. At assessment reviews, ideas are very forthcoming but often are never followed through I think there is a lot more room for improvement in the system to help disabled children in mainstream schools." In the second case, Jonathan's mother commented on the "meanness" of the local education authority in refusing relatively low-cost aids for Jonathan --for example, appropriate computer software, in view of the
"thousands of pounds I have saved them"
in undertaking transport arrangements for him and going to help in school when paid help was not available. Jonathan's story illustrates the "hidden subsidy" contributed by parents to successful integration.
Most parents' accounts from the Spastics Society study indicate the damage caused to integration by the lack of resources. Likewise, for Sarah, the resources to carry out the statement
"could not be guaranteed by the authorities."
A welfare assistant had been offered
"on a take-it-or-leave-it basis."
These examples are typical of what is happening throughout the country.
Central Government do not allow local authorities to spend enough on education. The Government's cap on local government spending is, in effect, a cap on opportunities for children with special needs and, therefore, a cap on the opportunities for all children. Those who want evidence of the resource problem need look no further than the increasing numbers of children with special needs who are being excluded from schools. A recent survey pointed to the fact that exclusions were up 20 per cent. on the previous year. The evidence is that they will increase.
The authors of a recent Audit Commission report stated that they could find no evidence at present that schools were becoming less willing to accept children with special needs. In preparing for this debate I came across a number of specific cases in my constituency in which children were being excluded from mainstream schools. I had to look no further than the Cambridge Evening News and my mailbag. My researcher came across more examples when he spoke to the head teachers of the local schools.
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I am not criticising the schools. I know from personal contact that all of them are committed to the integration of children with special needs, but they are torn between their desire to implement the aims of the 1981 Act and their commitment to give all pupils a decent education. They are no longer prepared to accept children unless they are given adequate resources to cater for their needs. In excluding pupils, they are often supported by the parents of the children involved, not because they do not want their children to go to mainstream schools but because the parents know that if their children are not given an appropriate level of learning support assistance their move to a mainstream school will becounterproductive.
Exclusions from mainstream schools have knock-on effects. They mean that children have to stay in special schools and special units attached to mainstream schools. That in turn means that children who would benefit from places in special units have to wait. We have many examples of that in Cambridge.
The effect of the inadequate level of resources is exacerbated by the increasing proportion of children in our schools who have formal statements of special educational need. The reasons for this appear to be complex. I have heard it argued that there is an increasing real demand because more low birth weight and premature babies are surviving into childhood. These children are more likely to have physical or mental handicaps, with associated learning difficulties. With the steady advance of modern medicine, I am sure that this is a factor. However, I believe that it is unlikely to be the principal cause.
There are probably two main reasons that explain the increasing rate of statementing. The first is increasing parental demand for formal statements ; the second is the increasing number of children in our society who have emotional and behavioural problems. The argument turns full circle. The scarcity of resources explains why parents and schools are putting more pressure on local education authorities to have their children statemented. Because a local education authority is legally obliged to comply with the terms of a formal statement, the statement comes with resources attached to it. Statementing has become a means of ensuring that the education of one's child is buffered against any cuts in special needs provision. That is exactly what is happening in my constituency this year. Primary and secondary schools in Cambridge are facing cuts of anything up to 75 per cent. in hours of learning support assistance. The children who are least affected are those who have statements which specify the number of hours of learning support.
One can hardly blame parents for pressing for the statementing of their children, yet it was not the intention of the 1981 Act to create a situation in which parents and schools compete with each other to get their children statemented in order to secure the resources that they need. In my opinion, it is against the spirit of the Act.
That view was well expressed by Lady Warnock in a recent debate in another place when she said :
"Children with statements are becoming a class apart, just as the handicapped used to be considered as a class apart. The notion that was central to the 1981 Act of a continuum of special needs has been lost sight of as the number of statemented children rises and non-statemented children are left out of the need for special provision."--[ Official Report, House of Lords, 11 June 1992 ; Vol. 537, c. 1397.]
Hence, the 2 per cent. of children with statements are getting some provision and it is becoming increasingly true
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that those without formal statements are getting practically nothing in the way of extra resources. It cannot be right that one child with a statement gets 30 hours of learning support assistance a week while another, whose problems are slightly less severe, gets nothing at all.Many parents have told me that the statement for their child did not tell them anything that they did not know already. There is also evidence in a recent Audit Commission report which confirms that the process of formal assessment is not regarded as useful by the majority of parents in defining the needs of their children. Only one in seven of parents questioned found the statementing process informative, but three times as many valued the process because it gave their child the necessary resources to progress. The process of formal assessment is costly. The Government's recent announcements about strengthening the statementing process and introducing an appeals procedure must add to the cost. If resources are limited--we all accept that they are--would not it be better to redirect them into providing help for the child rather than into strengthening the statementing process?
The second substantial cause of the increasing demand for statementing is the rapid increase in the number of children in our schools who are emotionally and behaviourally disturbed. This is one of the areas of greatest concern to schools in my constituency, and I have no doubt that that concern is shared in schools across the country.
Increasing social need is a terrible indictment of the Government's social policy. It is a symptom of the greater inequality and poverty that their policies have produced ; the scandal of homelessness is another. I am deeply worried about the lack of provision for children who are emotionally and behaviourally disturbed. Supporting those children is the unattractive side of special needs education. There may be some kudos attached to helping people who have learning difficulties, but coping with children who are disruptive is a less-favoured proposition. It is expensive, and if resources are not available the teaching life of the school is jeopardised. That is backed up by the Audit Commission, which considered special school costs for different categories of special need. For children with moderate learning difficulties, the annual cost is £4,000 per child. For children with severe learning difficulties, the figure is £6,500 and for children with emotional and behavioural disturbance it is more than £8,000. I stress that emotional and behavioural disturbance does not describe simply naughtly children who need to be brought into line. It often describes children who have been subjected to appalling physical, emotional and sometimes sexual abuse.
Problems associated with the process of statementing are identified in the Audit Commission's report. As there are no clearly defined criteria on the level of need at which statementing becomes appropriate, local education authorities have different policies on the process of formal assessment. The proportion of statemented children in different local education authorities varies by a factor of five, and in the 12 local education authorities studied for the Audit Commission's report there was no relationship between the apparent level of need and the proportion of children with statements.
The writers of the Audit Commission report observed a lack of consistency in local education authorities. An examination of 300 cases showed that pupils with widely
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differing levels of need were issued with statements. Schools in all 12 local education authorities were able to point out children without a statement who had greater needs than those with a statement. Factors that had no bearing on the need of a child were influential in the decision to issue a statement, the most significant being the level of determination of the school or parent and whether the parent was represented by a lawyer or a voluntary organisation.The implication of all the findings is that resources are not being well targeted on children with the greatest need. The Minister should ask himself whether recent moves to strengthen the statementing process will change the situation. I believe that they will not, because the parents who press for statements will be articulate, middle class and will know how to do it under the present system. The new law may make it slightly easier for them, but it will do nothing to reduce inequalities between parents who have the knowledge and confidence to do battle with the LEA and those who do not. There is a conflict in the statementing process because the local education authority is assessor and provider. An LEA has no incentive to issue specific statements requiring it to provide teaching support for which it has no resources. This leads to disputes between schools and local education authorities where it is felt that the refusal to issue a statement or to make its terms more specific resulted from an unwillingness or inability to provide resources, rather than a proper assessment of need. One parent who was interviewed by the Spastics Society explained :
"A statement is supposed to be a legally binding document which has an effect on the rest of your child's life--they cannot be honest and say what they really feel because they are limited to the provision that they know the LEA can provide and so you are lost really before you start. So why bother having a procedure like this when it might as well not be done?"
My local education authority in Cambridgeshire has admitted that education officers encourage schools not to go through the formal statementing procedure but assure them that resources will still be available to meet the child's need. In the event, this has not proved possible and schools and parents are outraged to find that children without a formal statement of special needs are having their learning support assistance cut dramatically.
The fragmentation of our education system since the introduction of the Education Reform Act 1988 has made special needs education even worse than it might have been. Formula funding under local management of schools is calculated largely on a per capita basis and has penalised schools in areas of greatest social need. That is certainly so in Cambridge, where I know of at least two schools that lost teaching staff previously appointed at the discretion of the local education authority. I should like to read extracts from a letter that was written to me by the chair of governors of the schools. She says :
"I write on behalf of the joint Governing Body of the two schools to express our very grave concern at the lack of support being given to schools by the Local Education Authority. Communication at all levels is poor ; headteachers in crisis situations--eg concerning children who have been abused or are abusing others, children with severe behavioural problems, teachers threatened with violence from parents--are receiving little or no help or advice we know that money is short. We question the management of that
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money especially in the area of special educational needs. The schools have lost out' under Local Management of Schools in that the two extra teachers allocated to them in recognition of the heavy special needs demands were removed under formula funding. The latest blow is that the allocation of support staff to the schools for next year has been reduced to a level which is totally inadequate. The schools have been likened by an independent professional to a simmering pot'. The staff do a fantastic job--we are proud of our delivery of the National Curriculum--and because of their dedication the lid is kept on the pot'. Now those staff numbers are to be reduced, despite evidence of increased needs in the children, and staff are becoming exhausted, we fear that the pot may boil over'." The room for manoeuvre by local education authorities is further restricted by the creation of grant-maintained schools, which pose an even more invidious threat to special needs education. There is the real possibility that those schools will exclude children with special educational needs. I am less worried for children with learning difficulties of physical disabilities than for those with behavioural problems. There is some credit to be gained by a school catering for children with learning difficulties and there is little threat to the overall academic standards of the school, but disruptive children are another matter. The point is graphically made in the Audit Commission's report :"No LEA reported difficulty in setting up units for pupils with special needs in ordinary schools, providing they were able to agree on the funding arrangements with the school. A number of schools were contemplating seeking grant-maintained status and all stated that they wished to retain their units for pupils with special needs. The one exception to all of this is the case of children with emotional and behavioural disturbance."
I want to underline that. It is a concern of the Audit Commission as well.
Exclusion of pupils on the grounds of special educational need is the first rung on the ladder of introducing selection according to academic ability. It is selection at its most basic and prejudicial level.
I shall deal briefly with post-19 provision, the provision for adults with special educational needs. I know that many hon. Members also wish to mention it. The opportunities for many people with learning difficulties are abruptly cut off at the age of 19. Although such people may have been given extra help throughout their childhood, it is as if, at the age of 19, the existence of their disabilities is no longer acknowledged. Provision for continuing education for people with special educational needs has always been lamentably inadequate, but there is now real uncertainty about the future of what provision there is.
With the implementation of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, parents fear for their children, and centres of further education are unable to plan ahead. They have no idea of the basis on which special needs education for adults will be funded from April 1993 when responsibility for further education establishments is transferred from county councils to the newly formed Further Education Funding Council. Are the Government committed to maintaining and improving the provision for post-19 special educational needs?
Mr. Tom Clarke (Monklands, West) : My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Has she been made aware of the statement by the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation which expresses its concern about the confusion following the implementation of sections 5 and 6 of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and
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Representation) Act 1986? The statement deals with precisely her point. It refers to young people reaching the dramatic age at which they leave school--they and their parents find that the world has changed and that no arrangements have been made. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should take this opportunity to confirm that they are closely monitoring the legislation?Mrs. Campbell : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point which I hope the Minister will consider in his response. Are the Government committed to maintaining and improving the provision for post-19 special educational needs? If so, how are the resources to be allocated? What support will they give to adults with multiple handicaps? The Government have a responsibility to answer those questions.
I said that a crisis poses a threat and an opportunity. The opportunity is offered because a crisis can prompt a serious and valuable reappraisal. I have attempted to offer an analysis of the threat to special needs education, which I believe points the way ahead. We expect the Government to publish a White Paper on education in the not-too-distant future, and I sincerely hope that they will take note of what is said today.
Recent Government proposals on special needs education have concentrated on strengthening the statementing process. There is considerable evidence that some local education authorities have been dilatory in that respect. However, there are also dangers in an approach which concentrates exclusively on one aspect of a complex system.
There is a danger that the resourcing of special needs education will become strongly biased towards children with articulate parents, while it ignores the rest, and against children with special needs who do not have statements. There is also a danger that too many resources will be diverted into the process of formal assessment to the detriment of the provision of real support for children with special needs. The danger of strengthening the statementing process alone is that the Government are merely giving parents yet another stick with which to beat local education authorities.
Without additional resources the statement will become a meaningless piece of paper. In fact, the Government's apparent unwillingness to provide more resources for special needs education, or at least to allow local education authorities to raise more money for special needs, leads me to suspect that the Government have a "wash-your-hands-of-responsibility" policy towards special needs education. Something far more fundamental needs to be done than what the Government have so far proposed.
Mr. Harry Greenway (Ealing, North) : I wonder whether the hon. Lady does not have more confidence in the teaching profession than seems the case from her interesting speech. Does she agree that children with special educational needs should be, and invariably are, thrown up--if I may use that term--by the teaching professionals who recognise the problems? Is not the real problem the fact that local authorities--or the nation--do not have a sufficiently developed psychological service to enunciate the needs of the children? I believe that that is where the blockage lies, and we must all accept that such a blockage exists.
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Mrs. Campbell : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, because it allows me to re-emphasise what I was saying. Teachers are doing a wonderful job. They recognise children's needs, but the difficulty is for the local education authority to provide the extra resources required. I do not believe that the problem lies with the psychological service. The Audit Commission's survey said that one in seven parents did not learn anything new from the statementing process itself. They knew what their child needed, but the support is simply not available under the present financial regime.
There is an urgent need for the Government to produce guidelines on the level of need for which a formal assessment is appropriate. That is necessary so that parents and local education authorities know where they stand and so that the original intention behind the formal assessment can be recaptured. It was never intended that statementing should be seen as the only means of securing help for children with special needs. The Government have a lop-sided policy in strengthening the statementing process without defining criteria for deciding whether to initiate a formal assessment.
The Government must also examine seriously formula funding under local management of schools. There is a need for the system to be reformed so that social need is taken properly into account in the funding allocated to individual schools. Children with behavioural and social problems should not necessarily have to go through the formal statementing procedure to get the resources that they and the schools need to cope.
There is no doubt of the threat posed to the principles of equality of opportunity and equality of access by grant-maintained schools in relation to children with special educational needs. For that reason, among others, grant-maintained schools should never have been introduced and should now be abolished.
As all schools are to be assessed on examination results, pupil attendances and other factors, there will be a monstrous disincentive to admit children with special needs, especially those with behavioural and emotional problems. What is to become of such children who have already been badly hit by poverty and a lack of security in their family backgrounds? Will they miss out on school altogether as schools decide that they cannot risk their position in the league tables? Do we merely store up trouble for ourselves by creating another generation of inadequate parents?
The Government must consider ways of separating the functions of the assessment of special educational need and the provision for special educational need, both of which are at present carried out by the local education authority. It may be necessary to establish an independent office in each education authority to carry out the function of assessment which will be completely independent of that authority.
Underlying all the problems that I have related, the root cause of the present situation is insufficient resources. In the last analysis, the key measure of the Government's commitment to special needs education is the amount of funding that they allocate to that cause. Without adequate resources, even the best mechanisms of support in the world will falter. The Government must give serious thought to increasing the resources allocated to special needs education. I am conscious of the heavy burden of responsibility
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Mr. John Bowis (Battersea) : The hon. Lady makes an interesting point about a new form of independent assessment within a local education authority area but not of the local education authority. At the moment, the teacher, parents, education authority and-- where appropriate--the health authority are involved in multi-disciplinary assessments. What does the hon. Lady think is missing, as they seem to be the key people in assessing an individual child's individual special needs?Mrs. Campbell : I am grateful to the Gentleman for making that point because it allows me to amplify my comments. It is important that all those people are involved in the assessment of the child's needs because they know the child and are able best to assess what the child needs to correct his or her difficulties. However, I do not believe that the responsibility for specifying the resources should lie with the local education authority, which is ultimately the body for supplying the resources. That was my point.
I am conscious of the heavy burden of responsibility I carry today to express the hopes and fears of all parents, learning support assistants, teachers and head teachers in my constituency who have urged me to take up in the House the issue of special needs education. Would that I could take home with me some words of encouragement from the Minister. There are schools in my constituency that are held together only by the willpower of head teachers and their staff who are working far beyond the call of duty. They are literally stretched to breaking point in trying to cope with their children who have special educational needs. The cuts that they will experience in learning support assistance next year may be the last straw. Some of the material with which they provided me in preparation for today's debate--the case histories and accounts of their working lives--would move people with the hardest of hearts. I want the Minister to be moved and to throw away his ideology. I plead with him not to fragment our education system yet further, but to consider carefully the suffering and deprivation that fragmentation will cause.
There are hon. Members of all parties who care about children and adults with special educational needs. We are determined that those people will not be left out in the cold. We are equally determined to support the teachers and learning support assistants who are being put under so much stress. If we are able to do nothing other than to be a voice for those people, we shall speak loudly and in unison, and we shall continue to argue on their behalf until our arguments prevail.
10.11 am
Sir John Hannam (Exeter) : The House is grateful to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) for providing this opportunity to debate special educational needs. She raised many important points which will be taken up by hon. Members and replied to by the Minister. The all-party disablement group has been at the forefront of action to ensure that the legal framework for special education laid down in the Education Act 1981 is not only properly carried out by local authorities, but strengthened and improved. Over the past year, we have had a number of meetings with Ministers and I am pleased that in his letter to me on 25 June my hon. Friend the Minister confirmed :
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"the Government shares the general concerns about the operation of the 1981 Education Act."In the debate in the other place on 11 June 1992 on Second Reading of the Education (Amendment) Bill, Baroness Blatch, the Education Minister, announced the Government's proposals for legislation to deal with the main problems facing parents of children with special educational needs. The proposals include some important points. First, there is to be legislation on the length of time that authorities may take to assess children's special needs, which is an important aspect of the current problems. Secondly, parents of children who have been statemented will be given the right to state a choice of school. I find that complaints by constituents about the choice of school are common. Parents see a school that is ideally suited for their children and then find that the children have been assigned to another school, often much further away.
Another proposal that has been announced is the introduction of a comprehensive and coherent system to deal with appeals under the 1981 Act. All those proposals are much welcomed. The Government intend to carry out full consultation, so today's debate can play an important part in feeding in some of the concerns of our constituents and we shall be able to make some input in the consultation process. I was a member of the Committee on the 1981 Act. It was an unusual Committee because it was one of only two Special Standing Committees in which we took evidence from outside organisations and individuals for two sittings before we began the Standing Committee proceedings. I thought that that was an extremely good idea and I am sorry that it has not been pursued to a greater extent with other legislation. The Special Standing Committee procedure enabled us to take evidence from people such as Mary Warnock, who was a key witness.
I recall discussions about Mary Warnock's estimates of the 2 per cent. of children who needed statementing and to go to special schools and the 18 per cent. who could go into mainstream schools. We know now that the figure of 2 per cent. has been used as a maximum figure by many local authorities. They get near 2 per cent. and they then call a halt to statementing regardless of the number of children with handicaps in their areas. I understand that Mary Warnock has more recently expressed the view that her original estimate of 2 per cent. was probably too low. The Audit Commission report shows that, due to insufficient guidance on what constitutes special needs in the 1981 Act, most statements are deliberately vague and lack specific comments on the children's needs. That is done to allow local authorities to avoid an open-ended financial commitment. The Audit Commission report also confirmed what the all-party disablement group had been saying--that some local authorities were statementing far fewer than 2 per cent. of children, some being right down to under 1 per cent., while others reached a level of 3.3 per cent.
Looking back at the 1981 Act, it is worth remembering, first, that a clear legal framework was provided for assessment procedures which may lead to a statement which determines the child's individual special educational needs and the provision intended to meet them. Secondly, the Act requires the education of pupils with special needs in mainstream schools wherever possible, subject to certain conditions. Thirdly, the Act established the parental right--a key point raised by the hon. Member for
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Cambridge--of parents to be partners with the local education authority and relevant professionals in decisions about their children's education.The hon. Member for Cambridge made a key point about advocacy. As a sponsor of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986, which was promoted by the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke), I fully support the implementation of the provisions in the Act, which have not yet been implemented, that will ensure proper advocacy and representation.
The Education Act 1981 was widely welcomed by disability organisations, which continue to support its guiding philosophy and the intentions behind it, but it has become clear to all of us that a number of serious problems exist in the Act and in the way in which it has been implemented by some local education authorities. That has resulted in a wave of complaints and inquiries from parents in dispute with their local education authorities, and hon. Members have been on the receiving end of many anguished letters and surgery cases.
In January, I helped to launch a parental support group in an area covering a large part of the southern half of Devon. There was a packed meeting of parents, including an hon. Member, who is not able to be here today, who has a handicapped child. At the meeting, I heard of the frustrations being experienced by parents of dyslexic children and of children with severe sensory handicaps. Some of the difficulties related to the differences that parents had with local authority educational psychologists. In general, however, one came away with the conclusion that parents pretty well knew best what their children required and that the frustration that they experienced was in knowing what their children required and being unable to obtain it.
Many of the frustrations are being taken on board by local government and national Government with the review now taking place. Devon county council has published a major consultation paper covering the whole subject of special educational needs, although that in itself is causing considerable controversy as a result of some of the points made. I will quote the council on the question of post-19 education, which was referred to by the hon. Member for Cambridge. For years, I have been trying to impress upon the local education authority the fact that there is a statutory obligation on local authorities to provide post-19 education. I received a letter, which I sent to Devon county council. On 16 March came the following reply :
"I am concerned about the need for continuity of provision for young people with special educational needs beyond the age of 19. Mr. Howarth's letter of 22 March 1990 to you states that local education authorities are not justified in automatically withdrawing funding from special educational needs students when they reach the age of 19."
That was a specific statement of the position, but the letter continued :
"It is our practice to continue to fund students to the end of the academic year during which they are 19. However, pressures elsewhere in the budget make it impossible to fund these students beyond that."
So, on the one hand, we have a clear statement of the statutory requirement laid down by the Government and, on the other, the local education authority says, "Sorry, but we can't carry it out." We all know that students with handicaps need extra time : they need to continue past the normal age to achieve
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certain levels of education. I hope that that point will be clearly established in the changes that are now taking place.RADAR, the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, and IPSEA, the Independent Panel of Special Education Advisers, have assembled and collated a wide-ranging list of examples of problems with local authorities. I shall cite a couple because they give a clear idea of what is needed to correct the position.
Some authorities refuse to assess children. One local education authority in the south-east of England concluded that a six-year-old girl with spina bifida required a statement, but, instead of issuing one under section 7 of the Act--which is a clear legal duty--it wrote to the parents saying that a statement would be
"issued and the recommended support made available when resources allow".
That is a clear example of an LEA's failure to carry out a statutory responsibility.
In some cases, vaguely worded statements are drawn up so as to give little indication of the kind or amount of provision needed. That is in clear breach of schedule 1 in part II of the Act. An LEA in the north-west issued a statement for a seven-year-old boy with juvenile chronic arthritis :
"some help required from an adult".
That statement should have specified clearly the boy's need for a learning support assistant for a specified amount of time, to give fullest possible access to the national curriculum and broader school curriculum.
Some LEAs are refusing to carry out an assessment or issue a statement. An LEA in the south-east has instituted, as a matter of policy, a moratorium on assessments. Another is operating a minimal statementing programme. Such policies clearly contravene the legal duties laid down in section 5 of the Act.
Other LEAs are going slow on assessments : we have all received examples from our constituents.
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