Uncorrected Evidence 478

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 478-ix

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE

SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS

Wednesday 15 March 2006

MR KEVIN ROWLAND, MS JEAN SALT,

MS SHIRLEY CRAMER and MS KATE GRIGGS

Evidence heard in Public Questions 806 - 849

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Education and Skills Committee

on Wednesday 15 March 2006

Members present

Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair

Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods

Jeff Ennis

Helen Jones

Mr Gordon Marsden

________________

Memoranda submitted by British Psychological Society,

NASEN, Dyslexia Institute and Xtraordinary People

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Kevin Rowland, Principal Educational Psychologist, Plymouth City Council, and Chair of the Division of Child and Educational Psychology, British Psychological Society; Ms Jean Salt, President of NASEN; Ms Shirley Cramer, Chief Executive of Dyslexia Institute; and Ms Kate Griggs, Founder of Xtraordinary People, gave evidence.

Q806 Chairman: Good morning. Could I welcome Kevin Rowland, Jean Salt, Shirley Cramer and Kate Griggs to our deliberations and say that we are very, very pleased that you could all come and give evidence to us. I have explained already that we are rather tight on the timetable so we need to get absolutely the best value we can out of you. We are always conscious of the high quality we get from our witnesses. We are getting towards halfway through the SEN inquiry, we are enjoying it, and some of us went to look at two special schools on Monday, which we found very interesting indeed. We are getting to that stage where knowledge is making us almost dangerous in the area because we know a little bit about it and we are improving all the time! However, we want to get on. Is it alright if we go straight into questioning rather than asking all of you to open up? We all know that there has been a debate raging in the SEN sector over inclusivity and the right of a child and a parent to have an inclusive education or have a special education in a different setting, so it is about, is it not, the sort of special schools direction and it is also about inclusion in the mainstream? Kevin, where do you put yourself in terms of that? Do you take the 20/20 Campaign group's position that we should get rid of all special schools and everyone should be in mainstream?

Mr Rowland: I think we have to make sure we maintain specialist provision and see it as part of a continuum of needs. I would also put it in the context that we are on a journey within our society, from 1760 with a provision for blind children and a provision for deaf children. So I think we must maintain specialist provision, but what we have to introduce is much greater flexibility and break down some of the barriers that exist between the specialist provisions.

Q807 Chairman: Jean, where do you stand on this?

Ms Salt: NASEN has members both within mainstream schools and special schools and we would still see the need for good training, good resourcing and a welcoming ethos in mainstream schools because some placements can be really successful within mainstream schools. However, we still see the need for the role of special schools. Specialisms need to be developed so that they can provide an outreach service which can be used by mainstream schools all over.

Q808 Chairman: Thank you for that.

Ms Cramer: We know that the majority of dyslexic children are supported in the mainstream environment, and that is where we would expect to see most dyslexic students, but we certainly believe that there is a place for special schools on the continuum. There are some children with very severe dyslexia whom we think need to be in a very specialist environment who then can move back into the mainstream once they have had intensive support. I would also draw attention to the fact that 90 per cent of class teachers and head teachers, according to a recent survey, did believe that children with specific learning difficulties should be supported in the mainstream, although they certainly thought there were not the resources to deal with them in the mainstream.

Q809 Chairman: Kate?

Ms Griggs: I would agree with that. I think that providing the provision is there within the teaching workforce, children with specific learning difficulties should be in mainstream schools. Currently that is not the case, which is why I think if children fall very dramatically behind they may need a period of time in a specialist support environment to catch up, but if the training is in place they should be able to be in mainstream schools, absolutely.

Q810 Chairman: But there has not been much difference in terms of the number of children. I was rather shocked when shown by one of our special advisers the figures for the number of children in a special school setting, which really has not changed for a considerable number of years. It is around the same level. Is that to be welcomed? There was a feeling at one stage, with some of the publicity, that special schools were being closed all over the country, and it obviously is not the case. There have been round about the same number of children for the last ten years. Are you happy with that or is that a problem for you? Kevin?

Mr Rowland: I think what has happened is that the population within special schools has changed and the profile within special schools has changed, and that is to do with the capacity building of mainstream schools and the development of mainstream schools. It is a societal-wide issue and increasingly we have difficulties with managing children who might be aggressive within mainstream schools, so we have seen a change in population. Some years ago we may have seen children who were perhaps 'more delicate', was the phrase that was used, for those children within special schools and they were there to protect them from some of the robust encounters they may have had in mainstream schools. Mainstream schools are very much geared up now for providing for those children's needs. So we are seeing a change in population in special schools and that population reflects children with social and communication difficulties and children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. I think also that early years provision is much more geared up now to meeting the needs of children so we have children with learning difficulties being embraced within mainstream settings more and more. Again, for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, and where that translates into aggressive behaviour, mainstream schools are definitely struggling to cope with those children.

Chairman: I am the warm-up act, I get you going and now I will hand you over to the real interrogators. Helen?

Q811 Helen Jones: We have received a lot of evidence about the difficulties that many parents experience in getting teachers to recognise what a child's problem may be and calling in the appropriate support. All this seems to come back to training. Do you think that there is enough emphasis in initial teacher training on special needs education and, in particular, what would you recommend for post-graduate training where the course is much shorter and a lot of the time is spent in schools. How do we tackle that?

Ms Salt: I would like to start with that. NASEN is involved in doing some training for teachers both within mainstream and special schools, and we would agree with you in our written submission that training is a big issue if every teacher is going to be a teacher of children with special educational needs. I am pleased to report that I am currently a member of a TDA steering group on special education and they are looking at developing a pilot for the three to four-year training course. They are also looking at extending placements within special schools, which has not happened on a great scale before now. However, there is still the issue of the PGCE course because most of the training is devolved into the school placement and it very much depends on the effectiveness of the SENCO and the senior management team within schools as to how much training the PGCE students are going to get. Some institutions do do more in the core curriculum for their PGCE students and there is some interesting research going on in Leeds University into the SEN knowledge of PGCE students.

Q812 Helen Jones: What would you recommend then, particularly for post-graduate teacher training, because another of the problems that we come across quite frequently is that children with special needs can be supported and encouraged in primary schools but the transition to secondary education is very difficult?. Of course, there are more teachers in secondary education that have been through the post-graduate training system. Do you think that that is part of the problem and what can we do to solve it? If we want to support children in mainstream school we are going to have to support them right the way through, are we not?

Ms Cramer: To answer the first question is there enough emphasis in initial teacher training on special educational needs, I would say the answer is absolutely there is not, and the modules that the TDA are currently looking at and developing are, in my understanding, going to be voluntary, and I do have some concerns that if they are voluntary how do we know if we are developing standard good practice for children, and that a certain area will have no teachers, for example, if people have not chosen to take up that training. In terms of post-graduate training, I think there is a huge lack of emphasis on the numbers of specialist teachers who are trained to support children with specific difficulties. I can speak mostly about specific learning difficulties and we have asked very specifically that there should be an audit of the specialist training, who is out there, how are they trained, what are their qualifications. We need to make sure that all children have support that is equal to the best and for that we believe there needs to be a structured what we have called 'tiered support' of services so that all teachers in mainstream schools have an awareness and a foundation understanding of special educational needs. On the next level, in each primary school there needs to be at least a practitioner at level three in dyslexia and literacy and at least one specialist post-graduate trained teacher per every five primary schools. We think that is probably the minimum.

Q813 Chairman: This is the triangle you are talking about?

Ms Cramer: This is the triangle position.

Chairman: We are getting drilled down into the triangle a little later. Roberta cannot contain herself on that but she will have to be restrained for a while.

Q814 Helen Jones: What about in-service training, though, because I remember coming across a problem in my own constituency - and again it is reflected in the evidence given to us - where the local authority quite rightly said, "Look, we can put courses on; what we can't do is force teachers to release their SENCOs or any other teachers to come on these courses." How can we solve that problem? How can we make sure that there is an incentive built into the system so that the in-service training takes place when people need it, because otherwise however well you train people initially it is all going to break down, is it not?

Ms Cramer: One of the concerns that we have come across for continual professional development is the cost of supply, and perhaps an incentive could be the funding of supply teaching to allow people to go on continuing professional development courses. It seems to me that is one of the single biggest barriers. We also need to bring in a timetable of planning and looking at what we might call a 'gap analysis', what it is you need in your school to bring the school standards up, what are the training needs, and matching those by offering training and incentives to local education authorities and to schools.

Mr Rowland: I think one of the ways forward is to work more collaboratively with head teachers. A specific example that we are working on as a collaborative now is providing courses for newly qualified teachers as they enter their first year. That is primarily to look at managing behaviour, low level, frequently occurring disruption, and also what steps to take with serious incidents. The head teachers are very keen on that so therefore they have released the staff. We are also looking at a second phase on success with diversity so we are looking across the whole field of managing the curriculum and managing the classroom environment to embrace greater diversity within classrooms. It is very difficult sometimes because if we take a child with low incidence needs, who might be in a secondary mainstream school, there might be only one or two a year, so it is possible for a teacher never to have taught a child with a visual impairment. Therefore we need to have targeted provision as well and targeted support within the classroom to support them. So we need to look at different ways of thinking about continuing professional development and I think a greater emphasis on networking across schools and schools working collaboratively. I think we are moving away from the days when we might have had experts giving courses to schools and then schools maybe choosing or not choosing to send people. We must be much more sensitive to the needs of schools and the capacity of schools to release staff. A primary head teacher made the point to me a couple of weeks ago that it is quite difficult to keep releasing staff because it destabilises the school environment, so we have to look at different models of working with teachers to build their knowledge base and schools to change cultures because ultimately when we are looking at inclusion, we are looking at a culture change, and once we have achieved those cultural changes within organisations and institutions, then I think a lot of things will follow on from that, with support.

Q815 Jeff Ennis: On this theme of CPD, it has been suggested by some witnesses that we ought to try and provide some sort of on-the-job training, as it were, and I am thinking primarily in the primary sector field now, whereby if a teacher gets someone in their class suffering from a specific learning disability that ought to be matched by a training package so that both the child and the teacher can learn together. I guess that would have more meaning to the teacher. Is that a relevant initiative that could be pursued?

Ms Salt: I think that if the school is planning for the pupils that it is admitting they would have seen the pupil coming into the school and they would have planned and done some training prior to the pupil arriving in school. I think one of the things that NASEN would like to see is more emphasis on the statutory inclusion statement within the National Curriculum 2000 where it talks about teachers setting suitable learning challenges, responding to pupils' diverse learning needs, and overcoming barriers to learning and assessment for individuals and groups of pupils. We would like to see within training much more emphasis put on that. That would go some way to resolving the difficulties in the PGCE programmes if the students were aware of that statement. The other thing that as an organisation we know is that in Scotland teachers have to do 35 hours of compulsory professional development per year. I know it is on the much smaller scale in Scotland and I am not sure if that would ever fit into the English system.

Ms Griggs: Can I just say something. I have been sitting through the evidence and listening to what the teachers' unions have been saying as well as what the TDA have been saying. The teachers' unions were very much saying that they do not have enough emphasis on CPD so obviously that is an issue to start off with. But also in terms of this whole area of training teachers to support children with specific learning difficulties, the one thing that I think it is very important to get across is that those teaching methods help across the board. It is not just children with SEN, it is literacy, and it is right across the board. I think what does need to happen here is the Department and the training organisations and primary national strategies all need to have a joined-up approach to accept the fact that if they get it right from the start they will be getting it right across the board. I think that will then have an impact on what schools and heads actually spend their teaching budget on. We were listening last week to the fact that they are very keen to put training in place for anything that is going to make their results look better, and we have heard very many instances where children with specific learning difficulties have been told not to come into school. The emphasis has to change slightly. I think it is great that the TDA is saying, "We accept the challenge and we have got it right for 80 per cent, now it is twenty per cent", but we need to start putting the money where the mouth is and really focus on this and getting it right.

Q816 Jeff Ennis: We have obviously focused initially on the training of teachers being one of the prime concerns, if not the biggest concern in SEN provision in this country. Is it the prime concern and are there any other issues within SEN that we need to be ranking in terms of biggest concern areas?

Ms Cramer: One of the things that I would like to mention is the standards and what parents perceive as a postcode lottery of provision. You could be getting one style of support in one area and you could be classed in one area but not in another area. I think the Audit Commission and Ofsted in their reports have brought this up time and time again so good standards across the piece, I think, would be very helpful for parents. At the Dyslexia Institute we have certainly heard a lot of parent' concerns around this area, that the standards are just not there.

Q817 Jeff Ennis: Has anybody got any other major concerns?

Ms Salt: Just that we would see 150 local authorities with 150 different ways of working so I would agree with the Dyslexia Institute.

Mr Rowland: I think the parents have a huge role to play. With the development of parent partnerships and schools developing much closer relationships with parents, I think that will start to bring a number of things together. The greatest success for many children is when the parents are involved in part of the development work in the classrooms that you alluded to earlier, but that also brings into focus issues around accountability, transparency and monitoring aspects, where we are working collaboratively to look at the development of children. Where the family and the schools systems become more fragmented and we do not have the transparency and the partnership, we then see more challenges in terms of making sure that we have got good outcomes for children.

Q818 Jeff Ennis: A final question, I guess it is for Shirley, and it is about the Dyslexia Institute's claim that the cost of failing children with dyslexia is in the hundreds of millions of pounds. What evidence do you have to back that up?

Ms Cramer: I am glad you brought that up actually. What we tried to do was look at Government figures through the Prison Service, through the Probation Service, through Jobcentre Plus, through the long-term unemployed, through school exclusion, and we looked at the numbers of what I call the over-representation of people with specific learning difficulties in those categories. Last year we did a very specific piece of research in the Prison Service which showed that 52 per cent of prisoners have literacy difficulties and 20 per cent have hidden difficulties, and the assessments used were very robust, so we took the extra ten per cent that we would not have expected to see over and above the international standards on numbers of people who are dyslexic, and we looked at the figures of how much does it cost to keep somebody in prison, and we just timesed them up. We had �186 million in the Prison Service, �80 million in Probation, �50 million in school exclusions, so just in those three categories alone �300 million a year, and then I began to look at what does it take to train a specialist children in every primary school in the UK, those sort of figures, and we began to see that an investment in training would really make a very big difference in the long term to some of these other figures. That is not to say also in terms of poor skills. The fact is if you cannot get a job because you do not have the skills you are not productive.

Q819 Jeff Ennis: Do we have any international comparisons that confirm what you are saying, Shirley?

Ms Cramer: I have not seen in specific learning difficulties anything similar although I have been sharing my what I call very simple analysis with organisations in other countries just for them to have a look at that too.

Chairman: That is very interesting. We are going to move on to specialist support staff as a category and I am going to ask Gordon to start.

Q820 Mr Marsden: I would quite like to develop one or two questions about the role of specialist support staff. If I could start off very specifically with you, Kevin, on educational psychologists. Would you be able briefly to describe for us what you see the role of educational psychologists being in the system? Is it primarily that of assessment or is it that of child development? There is a lot of talk about a central role for psychologists working with schools to develop teaching strategies for children with complex learning needs, but do you think that role has changed with the changed role of local authorities in relation to schools in recent years?

Mr Rowland: Yes, the role has changed significantly, especially over the last 30 years. We now have special needs co-ordinators within schools, so that has had a huge impact on the range of work educational psychologists undertake. Educational psychologists, as you know, work from 0 to 19 in all phases of education so we have that unique overview of special educational needs, and also educational psychologists have the responsibility for reviewing and monitoring children out of authority and independent schools so we see that big picture. The role has fundamentally shifted from one that is primarily assessment, if we look back to the 1960s and 1970s, to one of working collaboratively within the classroom scenario, bringing the scientific nature of psychology to bear in practice so we have that link with universities and we can support the development of action research. We work with parents so we will make home visits and especially in early years we would see that as crucial, working with other agencies. Increasingly, the role is linking with mental health services and looking at children's mental health, well-being, bad behaviour within schools, social services departments, where we have been looking at children's welfare and child protection issues, so there is a broad range of functions that educational psychologists undertake.

Q821 Mr Marsden: You are describing to me a very broad remit and some might say potentially (I am not saying actually) a very theoretical remit. You also mentioned the way in which the role of SENCOs has changed and revolutionised the situation. I would like to bring in one or two of our other witnesses today on this. I wonder if you felt that there is still a huge gap between what SENCOs are now expected to do in the new system and what they are provided with in terms of training, position in school, and not least money to do it?

Mr Rowland: Part of the approach of educational psychologists is to develop training programmes for SENCOs, and there are many examples of those around. Also I think the practical nature, certainly the role that I would be familiar with is not theoretical (although we bring theory to bear on what we do at all times) it is very practical. We are working with head teachers, working with teaching assistants, working with parents. It is a very practical approach within the classrooms, often involved with coaching and developing programmes for individual children and groups of children and, increasingly, a new development, if we look at the changing role of educational psychologists, is networking between schools as schools form collaboratives and help share and develop practice across schools within neighbourhoods. So within the new framework for universal targeting and specialist services, we are certainly providing the universal approach through teacher training, TA training, and targeted services for individual children.

Q822 Mr Marsden: Jean Salt, I see from your biography that you were a SENCO in a large comprehensive school for a significant period of time. What is your perspective?

Ms Salt: Of working with educational psychologists?

Q823 Mr Marsden: Yes, but specifically on the issue of whether or not SENCOs on the ground have got the wherewithal to do the sorts of things that they are now expected to do in conjunction with psychologists?

Ms Salt: I relied very heavily on my educational psychologists where we would share and brainstorm ideas to meet the needs of children with quite severe specific learning difficulties and other severe needs who were included in the mainstream school, but on the work of the SENCO, NASEN has just done a project with the DfES because we were concerned that we were hearing that teaching assistants were being appointed to take on the role of SENCOs, and so we explored that, and we have come to the decision that while some teaching assistants are very highly qualified and they can do the administrative and routine jobs of a SENCO's role, that the SENCO needs to be either a member of the leadership team and have quite a strategic view of the school's progress, and then you will get the priority that special needs needs within the school, or at least they need to have a direct line manager within the leadership team, which would probably happen within secondary school. We have found that SENCOs who were considered to be good at their job were members of senior management within primary schools but within secondary schools it varied.

Q824 Mr Marsden: So would it be fair to say then that you are concerned that the present situation is not satisfactory for SENCOs?

Ms Salt: Yes, and we have got a very good set of standards for SENCOs which were produced by the TDA in 1998 and I am currently on this exemplification group looking at the classroom standards that the TDA are producing and we cannot find where the SENCO standards would fit within that work.

Q825 Mr Marsden: Shirley and Kate, can I ask you very briefly to comment on that but perhaps take the discussion on a bit further. The buzz word of teachers and teaching assistants principally in mainstream schools today in 'personalised learning', and in this place we have, as you know, the second reading of the Education Bill and part of that is about personalised learning, but personalised learning for children with special educational needs is an even bigger demand than for people with mainstream needs, I would suspect, so are we actually expecting too much at the moment in terms of delivering the sort of work that perhaps previously educational psychologists delivered in schools?

Ms Cramer: I think the issue is that you cannot expect a mainstream teacher to do everything but there needs to be somewhere for them to refer children. That is why the tiered support or the different levels of support with teachers being able to offer some personalisation, some differentiation in the programme, but then knowing where to go when the child needs more, is important, and I think again that is a big gap in the system right now in many places in that there is not perceived to be anywhere, and there does need to be knowledge on the mainstream teachers about where the children could go or what they might need.

Q826 Mr Marsden: How are we going to improve that?

Ms Cramer: I think we have to improve that through training.

Q827 Mr Marsden: There are no shortcuts?

Ms Cramer: I do not think there are really any more shortcuts and I think that if we want all children to be included in the mainstream and if we want to have a good personalised learning programme, then we certainly need to improve the training.

Ms Griggs: I absolutely agree, it is totally down to training. We did some research for our awareness week last year which was covered quite extensively on ITV, and that found that 96 per cent of teachers feel that they do not have the expertise to teach children with learning difficulties, and all of them wanted that training because without that they cannot help children with specific learning difficulties. It is not a case of getting a statement or getting time with the learning support assistant. Unless that assistant has got specific training in this area they will not make any progress with these children. That is basically the case. That is the issue.

Q828 Mr Marsden: Kevin, I know you wanted to come back briefly on that but I wanted to take you on to another issue, which is the alleged shortage of specialist staff, particularly educational psychologists. This is something that Ofsted recognised in their 2004 report, the report on the contribution of support services, but there was also an Audit Commission report which talked about a shortfall in specialist support. Ofsted have talked about problems with delegation perhaps being part of it. Many of us as individual constituency MPs, certainly for my part, have experienced parents of children with special educational needs coming in with some aspect of statementing or inclusion in school or challenging things at tribunals. There is a common thread coming out that these things are taking an awful long period of time because there appears to be a shortage of educational psychologists.

Mr Rowland: If I can go back to the previous point I wanted to make. One of the changes that has occurred over the last 20 years is that the model of service delivery has moved to embrace a consultative model whereby teachers cannot always access the training but we can provide continuous support and consultation for those teachers through visits to schools, and it is a way of sharing the specialist knowledge needed. In terms of the shortage of educational psychologists, we have approximately 2,600 psychologists in this country and we have a national shortage at the last count of 282 educational psychologists. There is definitely a shortage but also we have got this variation between local authorities. In removing barriers to achievements, Southampton was cited as having 1.7 per cent of its children with statements, which freed up psychologists to be able to deliver support to schools, but also within that authority for every 2,000 children there was one psychologist. Currently in Plymouth we have one psychologist for every 4,500 children approximately, so we have got a variation but there are also major problems in delivering services.

Q829 Mr Marsden: So is this highly variable? You mentioned Plymouth and Southampton. My geography is not that great but they are not that far from each other. This is not a regional issue, this is an issue where you could have one local authority who was just about holding their own on psychologists and one next door where there might be a real crisis. What you seem to be suggesting - and I do not know what other people would like to say on this - is that this is intrinsically linked to the local authority's attitude to the statementing process.

Mr Rowland: It is linked to statements certainly but also we have a major problem nationally with supply. If we take an educational psychology training course, we have figures of 367 applications for 12 places. We are not funded to train enough educational psychologists per year to meet the demand and principal educational psychologists throughout the UK will tell you that the most frequent complaint they will receive is not having enough educational psychologist time in their schools. However, we try to cover the schools, we will always fall short of the demand.

Q830 Mr Marsden: Shirley, have you and your colleagues across the board been lobbying the DfES on this issue?

Ms Cramer: One of the things we hear most from parents is how hard it is to get identification and assessment of any description for their child, so we would be advocating with the DfES for early identification and that would involve screening followed by a specific assessment from an educational psychologist. That is something that parents complain a great deal about. What has been done in the interim is there are many specialist teachers who are trained now to do some kind of assessment specifically for specific learning difficulties.

Q831 Mr Marsden: You say "in the interim". Are you seeing that as a sticking plaster thing or something that is actually theoretically a good thing to do?

Ms Cramer: I think it is theoretically a good thing to do and I think we will see more of it. I think the BPS has put in the new CSET qualification whereby specialist teachers with qualifications in specific assessment training will be able to "diagnose" or to identify dyslexia and therefore that would help the situation in the shortage of psychologists.

Q832 Mr Marsden: I am not asking necessarily for your views pro or against but I understand that the Scottish Parliament and Executive are removing the requirement for statementing from the process. If we were to take radical steps in terms of reducing the amount of statementing as part of dealing with children with special educational needs, would that have a beneficial impact on the situation or not?

Ms Cramer: The problem is that although the statementing process is bureaucratic and difficult a lot of parents hang on to it. You have to be able to put something in place before you take that away and I think parents and professionals need to be assured that something is there.

Q833 Mr Marsden: It is not that statementing necessarily as constituted at the moment is ideal; it is something that parents feel they can wave at people and get something done about?

Ms Cramer: Absolutely.

Ms Griggs: Can I just raise something. We have been doing a lot of work with schools across the country, but just to give you an example of a primary school we are working with in Southwark. They have a diploma-trained teacher who can do diagnostic assessments and so there is then not a need for an ed psyc in the early stages. They are supporting children now with very complex learning needs and with very severe dyslexia without statement because they have the training in school so that they can pick them up from reception, they can see when they have got problems, and they can deal with it without it needing to get to the statementing stage. If the training is not there and if the support is not put in for the kids, statementing is the thing that a parent would flag to get support.

Q834 Mr Marsden: Can I say - and I have to ask you this Kevin - in the middle of what is obviously a situation where there are considerable problems in the short term for all the reasons we have discussed, we have got a situation where the training route for educational psychologists is being changed, I understand, with a move from a one-year masters as a diploma to a three-year doctorate. Whatever the long term benefits is that not in the short term a fairly crazy thing to be doing when we have a shortage? Surely this is going to mean that certainly for the short term we are going to have even fewer people qualifying because you are lengthening the period of qualification?

Mr Rowland: This is an issue that had to be considered because the knowledge base required by educational psychologists needs to change to reflect the complexity of the context in which we are working. We have reduced the amount of years training from seven to six years so it is a shorter training route. You are right, I would not agree it is crazy but I think it is a necessary change and we are having to embrace that change through a difficult period. I also think everybody is at a sea change at the moment. We are having to review the number of statements, how statements are used, the statutory assessment, the number of professions, SENCOs for instance, on the brink of a change, educational psychologist are changing so we have come to a Zeitgeist almost of moving from how things used to be in the 1980s, and now we are changing so we are in that process of bridging now and we are all having to work collaboratively. We had to grasp the nettle at some point, but I do agree that it will bring about challenges, and the profession is working very hard to see how we can work with schools to support that change, for instance taking on assistant educational psychologists.

Q835 Mr Marsden: Can I put this past your other colleagues briefly for their comment, whether in fact you are really concerned that this change is going to cause problems in the short term and do you agree with Kevin's analysis? Are there other short-term things that could be done, not least perhaps by the Department (I am not pushing it all on to the voluntary organisations or indeed educational psychologists) to help this transition process through? Shirley?

Ms Cramer: I think a promotion on the proposals around the CSET training, which means that specialist teachers can identify specific learning difficulties, would help. It has just started, it is very small numbers, and the funding of those kinds of courses by the Department might very well help that. I have been very concerned, as have colleagues around the country, about the lack of funding for diploma-trained teachers that Kate had mentioned, who are capable of doing more on the assessment and identification and helping colleagues in this area too. In our experience, many teachers fund that training themselves and we believe that they should be funded to go on those courses. I think that would help.

Q836 Chairman: Do we need educational psychologists? You go to schools and some schools say, "Well, we would rather have the expertise in the schools. We know our children. With the right trained people in schools, it is a bit of a diversion having the educational psychologists, and anyway they are expensive, you cannot get any, and they are changing and lengthening their training." Some people might say that is a restrictive practice to keep the wages high. Sorry Kevin!

Mr Rowland: We are shortening the training from seven years to six years.

Q837 Chairman: How are you doing that because that did not come in our briefing?

Mr Rowland: The model that used to exist was three years undergraduate psychology, one year teacher training, a minimum of two years teaching, a one year Masters, and now we are doing a three plus three, an initial degree in psychology plus three years postgraduate study.

Q838 Chairman: So there are not any changes to teacher announcements?

Mr Rowland: No. With the postgraduate studies, almost two-thirds of that will be in schools.

Q839 Chairman: Why is not the Government willing to fund that?

Mr Rowland: I am not sure that it has been discussed at governmental levels. There seems to be some confusion about the funding. The initial training has changed from what we would know of as the CPD model, which is progressing as a teacher into an educational psychologist. Just as we have an initial teacher training course, we now have an initial educational psychology programme and the funding for that needs to be clarified and it should be set at a national level to make sure we do not have national or regional shortages. We are now at a point where we can finally clarify the funding issue. A model used to exist of secondments based on local education authorities but that did not work because some authorities did have teachers train as educational psychologists and some did not. We are moving now to a fair and equitable model. The DfES and LGA are unable to resolve those issues and so at the moment we are faced with no funding mechanism whatsoever.

Q840 Chairman: It is a serious situation. Is there not a feeling in some schools that what we really need is the competence within schools and not to have to look outside for external help?

Ms Griggs: Absolutely. It is only going to be for very complex issues that an educational psychologist needs to be called in and if the expertise is not within the school. Both of my children have been supported without the need for an educational psychologist report. My eldest son had one done when he was six, but he has gone the whole way through with trained teachers assessing where he has got to and putting things into practice for him.

Q841 Chairman: Would you prefer more money to be spent on training up people in a school rather than having these expensive people that take a long time to train?

Ms Salt: There is no simple answer to this. In my local authority the aim was to have a specific learning difficulties trained teacher in every secondary school and I think they pretty much achieved that. I was lucky because I had four such people in my school, but I still needed the advice and consultation from the educational psychologist working with other children with other difficulties and with more complex difficulties. What we are seeing both in special and mainstream schools is children with quite severe and complex needs and that is where extra resourcing is needed, but that resourcing needs to be monitored. Funds are delegated to schools now without being ring-fenced or earmarked for special educational needs. I think there needs to be clear, accountable and transparent procedures in place for monitoring the use of those funds.

Ms Cramer: We would agree with that. One of the things that we are seeing with the delegated funding for schools without ring-fencing is that funding is being spent on a variety of issues without accountability and that is going to ensure that many more children struggle. The other issue is that if teachers are not being trained and somebody retires, sometimes they are just not being replaced and therefore we might have less skills in the system since the delegated funding came in rather than more, which I think is a problem.

Q842 Chairman: That is very useful.

Mr Rowland: Educational psychologists and the profession for many years have sought to share knowledge and skill so that there is a collaborative working environment. The Alan Steer report recently called for more educational psychologists to support mainstream schools across the board in order to meet the needs of children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. I think there are shifting populations of children. To bring in the knowledge and the expertise that is within the profession and having it shared across other professions with colleagues is a very important component as we move into a new future of supporting our most vulnerable children in society.

Q843 Dr Blackman-Woods: I think one of the messages that are coming across quite clearly in this inquiry is that there is a lack of suitable training and that is perhaps even more extraordinary because it looks as though there is some consensus around in terms of what should be done to correct that situation. Is there a strong consensus between the model that is put forward by the Government in removing barriers for achievement and the three stage approach that is put forward particularly by Shirley and Kate? Is there really consensus?

Ms Cramer: I can say that there is certainly consensus in all the specific learning difficulty organisations and speech and language and other what you might call hidden difficulties, there certainly is agreement on that support and from other organisations that I have spoken to. I do believe that there is certainly consensus around training being a priority and having it cost-effectively at different levels of support so that you have it for the children where they need it and that is in the classroom.

Q844 Dr Blackman-Woods: It does seem very simple and straightforward and almost commonsense. I think that then begs the question of why the proposals are not being implemented. Can you tell me how much you think it is an issue of cost and how much you think it is other issues?

Ms Griggs: I think it must be an issue of cost. It is a very simple solution. I think it is also a case of joined-up thinking. There has been a lot of focus recently on how we get early reading right. There is now this issue on SEN. The two very much join together. I think it is a case of everybody working together to look at what clearly is a model that will put things right for all children and putting emphasis behind it, effort behind it and money behind it. I am sure it does boil down to money.

Ms Cramer: We have tried to work out what it would cost in terms of provision per primary school. We think that you could probably provide 'Rolls-Royce' provision for specific learning difficulties at �5,000 per primary school.

Q845 Chairman: How many primary schools are there?

Ms Cramer: There are 17,500 primary schools and that would equate to around �88 million, but that is providing the very best.

Q846 Chairman: It sounds like a very good investment.

Ms Salt: There is no easy answer with this. We would agree with the Removing Barriers agenda, but that is quite a long-term solution. We have got to get common understanding between all the agencies' definitions of special needs and disability. We have got to get special needs as the priority. Somebody said earlier on this morning that if we get the teaching right for these children then it is going to be right for all children.

Q847 Dr Blackman-Woods: But that does suggest that it is not quite as simple as we are suggesting because presumably one of the first things that has got to happen is a change in basic teacher training, however that is carried out. I just wonder whether that is happening, whether there are discussions under way about changing the basic teacher training qualification so as to have more time to spend not only on special educational needs but the whole issue of personalised learning because I think they are linked.

Ms Salt: To include more specialisms within initial teacher training might not be cost-effective because you have got somebody learning how to become a teacher and they need to know how to match learning styles to the different needs of teaching and to be aware of the different teaching styles that you can have. We have talked about personalised learning. As an association we would see the cohort of pupils being targeted under personalised learning to be a different cohort to those with special educational needs. Whilst we might be looking at individual programmes for children with special educational needs, the personalised learning pathway seems to target those who are just missing those crucial level boundaries or grade boundaries at GCSE level.

Mr Rowland: We are working closely with primary mental health workers who are now working in schools and we are seeing specialist family support workers from social care departments and we are seeing the barriers beginning to break down with visionary headteachers in special schools supporting children. In my opinion good special schools have always provided personalised learning. They have very good relationships with the students, they have high expectations, they have a solution focus and a constructive outlook. We have started to bring those ingredients together from a multi-agency perspective thus breaking down the barriers between special and mainstream schools and now we have the recipe, especially with the new landscape of universally targeted and specialist services, to work together in a coherent model. If that gives us a platform then the triangle that we are talking about provides a way to integrate the training and support. I think training is an element, but we must also see that there is a need for ongoing support through the consultation and we must do collaborative work within classrooms for teachers without overloading teachers and teaching staff within schools. That multi-agency perspective with special schools coming in is a very important picture to hold on to when we look at the personalised learning agenda.

Q848 Dr Blackman-Woods: One of the things that struck me on our visit on Monday was how highly trained some of the teachers were in the specialist schools. Should we be using more secondment? It did seem to me that they had skills that they could pass on in the right setting. Are discussions taking place about that? How often does that happen?

Mr Rowland: I had this very discussion with a headteacher from an EBD school yesterday. When you have a highly volatile situation then taking somebody out of that situation can alter the group dynamics. We were looking at how we can build capacity and ensure quality. We were trying to look at two term secondments by building up a collaborative with mainstream secondary schools where we could have some exchanges, but we have to be very, very careful because the children within schools for emotional behavioural difficulties and autistic children are very sensitive to changes in those kind of relationships. We were thinking very hard about how we could build capacity across the whole system, use the expertise and the knowledge within the special school and bring teachers into that environment as well without disturbing the ethos of the school. The issues that you are talking about are being discussed on the ground. There are some very visionary headteachers around within special schools who I think also feel frustrated by the barriers to working with mainstream colleagues.

Ms Salt: We have got examples of co-located special schools being with mainstream schools and we have got examples of dual placements. There are funding issues around dual placements of pupils, but you are going to get the special and the mainstream school talking to each other about the provision for a particular child. It is there but it needs to be expanded.

Dr Blackman-Woods: That is really interesting. Thank you.

Q849 Chairman: May I just put it on record that when we visited Marketfield School in Colchester and Shorefield School in Clacton we found wonderful staff and two inspiring heads. I could not fault the training or the dedication of the people that we saw there. We saw some brilliant children too. I am afraid that is the end of this session. I am sorry it has been short. It has been absolutely of the highest quality. Thank you very much for putting up with my pushing you a bit about educational psychology. It is interesting, ever since I have been involved, even when I was a university teacher, there has been a great shortage of educational psychologists. You never have enough educational psychologists.

Mr Rowland: I would agree with that.

Chairman: Thank you very much for your attendance. If you think of anything you would like to add afterwards, please e-mail us or telephone us and tell us.