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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