Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 230-239)

MR BRIAN LAMB, MR JOHN HAYWARD AND MS CLAIRE DORER

11 JANUARY 2006

  Q230 Chairman: Can I welcome Brian Lamb, from the SEN Consortium, John Hayward from Focus Learning and Claire Dorer from NASS. Thank you, again, for coming here and welcome to the Committee. I notice all of you have been sitting there listening to the first session so you are all primed to the sorts of questions we might be asking. You are in a rather different position because you are provider representatives. Let us get started by asking you for just a thumbnail sketch of your organisation. Shall I start with Claire Dorer, as she is sitting in the centre?

  Ms Dorer: NASS actually stands for the National Association of Independent Schools and Non-Maintained Special Schools. We represent about 120 schools: all of the 73 non-maintained special schools and about 50 independent schools. They provide for children with, perhaps, the most severe and complex forms of SEN in the country, much of the provision is residential and places in the schools tend to be funded by local authorities making placements because they do not have that provision within their own authority.

  Q231  Chairman: I have seen the very excellent work of one of your members in Huddersfield. John Hayward?

  Mr Hayward: Thank you. We appreciate being asked to take part in the work you are doing and we fully agree that the SEN procedures need considerable review. We just hope that we can say something to you that will help. Focus Learning Trust is a support and liaison charity to help more than 30 independent, small schools set up around the country. There are about 1,800 secondary school children, and professional teachers at all of them. My involvement may just help you a little bit. Four of our children needed statements. The experience was a nightmare that I would not wish on anyone. So we have had a little practical experience and, as a result, I have kept in touch with special needs ever since and got drafted on to the Focus SEN team. One or two things we found—

  Q232  Chairman: Can we hold that for the questioning? I just wanted a thumbnail sketch. Brian Lamb?

  Mr Lamb: Good morning. The Special Education Consortium is convened under the Council for Disabled children and we are a very broad coalition that represents everybody from small parents' groups dealing with special education at the front line through many of the major disability organisations that do, indeed, provide specialist services from special schools through to support, through to some of the teacher unions. Our main aim is to try and bring together everybody with an interest in special needs to represent the interests of disabled children within the education system and to try, where possible, to seek consensus across the sector and represent, as far as possible, a co-ordinated view which is often helpful to committees such as yourselves and, indeed, to government. We were very involved in both the SENDA legislation, as one example of the kind of work we do.

  Q233  Chairman: Thank you for that, all three of you. You have heard the evidence we have just taken in the last hour, what is your view on the big questions that were emerging? Can we start with the big question of: are statements useful? Are they not useful? There seemed to be an interesting division of opinion on the whole role and status of the statementing process. What is your view.

  Ms Dorer: I think we feel that there are problems with statements in terms of parents and children actually getting them in the first place and then how the provision coming out of them is actually organised and, eventually, provided. At the same time, I think we would have a lot of anxieties about there being nothing there that would guarantee provision for children with SEN.

  Q234  Chairman: How are they doing it in Scotland then? Do you know?

  Ms Dorer: It is very new, is it not? It was really only November that it was launched, so I think it is too early to tell how that is working.

  Q235  Chairman: You do not know the methodology there—what they aim to replace it with?

  Ms Dorer: They are talking about additional needs now, are they not, rather than special educational needs. However, as I say, it is too early on for me to be able to say to you I know anything about what is happening.

  Q236  Chairman: Would you like to see us following that path, though, Claire?

  Ms Dorer: For the schools that I represent I think that would be difficult because children are only admitted because they have got a statement of special educational needs. Some local authorities are very happy to place children in our schools, for others it is a real struggle and it is only the fact that the statement is there that eventually is the lever that allows that placement to happen. So we feel we would need something that means that children who need that specialist provision would still have a right to it.

  Q237  Chairman: Brian, some people would suggest that it is not just that there are some specific problems in special education; some of the evidence we have taken this morning might be construed as saying there is nothing very much good about special education in England today. Is that right?

  Mr Lamb: I think, in terms of statements, what we have to look at is that for a long time there has been concern, and I think we have all been aware within the sector of the various problems that parents face in relation to statements, but I would go back to the theme that seems to have come through this morning that you need some means to assess the particular needs of children's learning. We have School Action and School Action Plus but when you have got to a stage where the child is not making progress once you have gone through that process within the school, what do you do? You need something that is going to be able to be triggered by parents where parents are going to be able to be involved in that process, and if they do not like the outcomes of that process to be able to challenge that. That process we currently call "statements" and, indeed, the whole issue of needing to follow that kind of process predates even some of the Warnock work and the growth after the Warnock report. So there is clearly a need to have that kind of process. Whether the current one is absolutely the right one is clearly open to much more debate. I think the moves that have been made to try to simplify the bureaucracy, which you have heard about already this morning, are absolutely right. For example, IP statements and the fact that they are completely rewritten when a child transfers from one authority to another—why can the statement not go with them?—I think I am right in saying it does for the first six months but what happens after that? I think in all those areas we could look very much at how you might simplify, but the crucial element of identifying the needs of the child and making sure there is appropriate provision for the child, making sure the parent can trigger that process and it is transparent, are all crucial. If we do not have the current system, I suggest that any other system we devise would have those similar elements in it. The other element you have already talked about this morning is how far that should remain vested with the local authority or go into a more national body as the Cameron Commission looked at. I think the obvious advantage of the national body is it takes it outside the immediate remit of the education authority so you can perhaps worry less about that purchaser/provider issue. I think one of the major problems is that if you move away from the estimation of local need, you are still going to be using probably most of the same people in the same kind of areas, and if you say it is going to be absolutely on need without any reference to the ability to deliver, I do not think the sector would have much problem with that but I think, as legislators, you need to be aware you are probably writing an open-ended cheque, and I do not know any government that has been willing to do that yet.

  Q238  Chairman: Is this at the heart of the problem? What was surprising about the first session was that people said, on the one hand, the system was not very good; it was pretty awful and not delivering to those students and parents who needed this kind of specific help. Indeed, when I pressed the four of them on: "Are there any good examples of local authorities whom we could emulate?" they were almost quite reticent to give any at all. Is it as bad as that?

  Mr Lamb: I think it is mixed, and I think what you were getting was, obviously, the mixture of the people's particular local authority examples. I think we have within SENC come across examples of where parents have been happy about the outcomes with local authorities and I think the key elements where that has been true—and SEC, obviously, could write with some of those more positive examples—is where parents are involved in the process from the beginning, where there is less conflict then about the level of provision and where parents can, to some extent, with the local authority, negotiate the provision and where there is a lot of clarity about expectations and what can be provided. Where things go wrong is where you have a conflict situation where there is a feeling that the local authority are holding back and not delivering, and there is no actual negotiation between parents and local authorities. So I think there are good examples and there are also very bad examples. I think we have to recognise there is that mixture.

  Q239  Chairman: Is not the local authority always in the rather unenviable position of being the gatekeeper for resources and everyone knows that there are not sufficient resources, so local authority is always going to be unpopular because it is telling people, whatever the need out there, there is only a limited resource that has to be shared in some way, and people have to be prioritised. There is not an open-ended amount of resource.

  Mr Lamb: I think you are right there is always going to be an inevitable level of conflict because there is never, probably, going to be enough resources in the system for everything that we in the special needs movement would actually like to see. Having said that, I think the more transparency there is and the more flexibility there is about the way those resources are used and the more that parents are actually involved in the process of deciding those, then the more chance there is of at least getting some equilibrium in the system where, I am sure, you will not have parents saying: "That is great, I have got everything I need for my child", but perhaps: "I have a good enough service for my child". I think that is what we can provide some examples of as well, but that involves a lot of work from the authority, the parents and the school all working together to deliver that. Typically, I think, where conflict most occurs is where you have got the situation that was illustrated in the earlier evidence, where there is potentially a very large bill for a special school placement that a local authority, for one reason or another, thinks it either cannot afford, or it is not the right placement, and there is often a dispute about both of those. It is often in those cases where you get the more bitter legal disputes and where it goes to a tribunal and you get into the kind of situations we have been looking at.


 
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