 House of Commons |
Session 2007 - 08 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill |
Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Hannah
Weston, Committee Clerk
†
attended the Committee
Public Bill CommitteeWednesday 12 March 2008[Mr. Peter Atkinson in the Chair]Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill9.30
am
That, if
proceedings on the Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill are not
completed at this day’s sitting, the Committee do meet on
Wednesday 19th March at half-past Nine o’clock and thereafter at
the same time on Wednesdays when the House is
sitting.
It is a
pleasure to be here today, Mr. Atkinson. This is first time
that I have served in Committee under your chairmanship. It is
especially pleasing because the Committee is about to debate my private
Member’s Bill. I thank everyone for coming. It is a real honour
that my Bill has come this far and I hope that it will move further
through the various other stages and, with the blessing of the House,
eventually become
law.
Mrs.
Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con): It is also a pleasure
for me to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson. I
have not been a member of a Committee of which you have been Chair, and
there can be no better Committee to serve on than this one. The hon.
Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West is to be congratulated
on progressing her Bill this far through the House. Although I have
tabled several amendments for discussion today, they are very much in
support of finding a way in which to ensure that the Bill will be
effective if, as the hon. Lady said, it proceeds with the blessing of
the
House.
Annette
Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): It is a pleasure
to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson. I wish to
add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and
Washington, West, whose constituency name is as difficult to handle as
mine, although I have sympathy when people get “North”
and “Mid” wrong in the title of my
constituency.
I, too,
am delighted that the Bill has reached this stage and
I hope that we shall be engaged in constructive debate this morning.
Our only motivation in tabling amendments is to make sure that the Bill
has a real impact on the lives of children with special educational
needs. I look forward to our
debate.
Question
put and agreed
to.
The
Chairman:
Although it is probably not relevant in the
circumstances, I remind Members that adequate notice should be given of
amendments as a general rule. I do not intend to call starred
amendments.
Clause 1Information
about children with special educational
needs
‘(1A)
Information secured by the Secretary of State under subsection (1)
shall include reports, made in each calendar year, by all providers
awarding Qualified teacher status, containing information on the
content and breadth of their qualification programmes, in relation to
special educational
needs.’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to
discuss the following amendments: No. 2, in clause 1,
page 1, line 9, at end
insert—
‘(1A) Information
secured by the Secretary of State under subsection (1) shall include
reports, made in each calendar year, by the Training and Development
Agency for Schools, containing information
on—
(a) the extent of
provision,
(b) rates of
participation, and
(c) rates of
completion,
of
courses, accredited programmes, and continuous professional development
for teachers, teaching assistants, special educational needs
co-ordinators and other school staff, in relation to special
educational
needs.’.
No.
3, in
clause 1, page 1, line 9, at
end insert—
‘(1A) For the
purposes of subsection (1), the information shall include (but not be
limited to)—
(a) the
number of teachers and classroom assistants who have received training
to identify and support children with special educational
needs—
(i) in the past
calendar year, and
(ii) at any
time since first becoming a
teacher,
(b) the nature of
training received under paragraph
(a),
(c) the
nature and content of special educational needs-related courses
received by persons training to become a teacher or classroom
assistant,
(d) the number of
persons receiving training under paragraph
(c),
(e) the nature of each
child’s special educational need,
and
(f) for
children for whom a statement of special educational need has been
made, the length of time between the date of first application and the
date the statement was
made.’.
Annette
Brooke:
The purpose of the amendments is
to touch on a core area of the debate on Second
Reading. In fact, if we counted the number of words that dealt with
teacher training that were uttered in that debate, they would probably
outweigh many of the other issues. It is something that hon. Members
feel strongly about. The UK has seen a move to inclusion. We have seen
the development of excellent practice, in pockets, in respect of
educational needs, but the training of teachers has not moved apace
with the developments and needs in our schools today. It is well known
that even teachers on a four-year training course, for example, might
only spend a matter of hours on special educational needs, and that is
just not adequate.
The
purpose behind amendment No. 1 is not only to debate training within
the four-year course, but also to cover all routes to teaching. I
cannot claim that it actually will do what I want it to do, as I am not
the world’s best at drafting amendments. I was thinking
about school-centred initial teacher training and the
“Teach First” programme, in which
high-flying graduates go straight into teaching. Whatever route is
taken into teaching—the four-year course, a one-year
postgraduate course, such as the one I took which, at that time,
included nothing whatever on special educational needs, or other
courses that involve much more training on the job—the intention
of the amendment is to highlight the fact that we need to monitor how
much training is taking place for special educational
needs.
It
is difficult to know how the Bill will operate. I assume that
accompanying regulations will probably spell out some of the things I
am talking about—I should be happy for them to be picked up in
regulations. However, our only clue as to what lies behind the two
major clauses in the Bill is that information could assist in improving
“well-being” and that the mechanisms could
include
“allowing the
Secretary of State, local authorities and schools to monitor and
evaluate whether policies and programmes were effective and thus inform
any policy changes...enabling local authorities to plan better for
provision to meet the needs of children with special educational needs;
and...enabling local authorities which are improving well-being or
planning effectively to be identified and to spread good
practice”.
I
agree with all those examples, but there is no mention whatever of
teacher training, which is why I wanted to flag it up. I feel that in
some form or other it must be covered—probably not in the Bill,
but in regulations. Guidelines would not be sufficient. That is the
purpose of my amendment. I want my contribution to the Bill to achieve
real outcomes for children. Every aspect is
important—information gathering, spreading good practice within
schools, better provision by local authorities, the Government knowing
what is going on at each local authority level and individual
records on the child and the teacher picking up on them. Underlying all
that, however, teacher training is absolutely vital. My amendment No. 1
addresses that particular issue and I hope that we can come to a
consensus that it must be picked up in one way or
another.
Amendment No.
2 relates to existing teachers, and is intended to be
as comprehensive as possible on continuing professional development. It
is not enough just to be aware of what courses have been on offer. We
need to know the rates of course completion. We need a pretty good
breakdown, going right down to local authority and school level, to
know exactly what courses teachers have
undertaken.
We have
all received a representation from the British
Dyslexia Association, which has been calling for at
least one specialist teacher for dyslexia in a school. That suggestion
could be picked up within my proposals. We need knowledge about
specific conditions. Things have moved on greatly with dyslexia, but I
am sure that we could still go into schools and find poor practice;
long-standing teachers may still deny that dyslexia exists. I have
certainly found that in the last few
years.
Similarly,
many teachers do not seem to have an appreciation of some of the most
common characteristics of autism. When I was in a school recently a
teacher expressed surprise that a child with autism did not like going
out to the playground. Although, obviously, every condition is
different, most of us are aware that it is fairly common for children
with autism not to like loud
noises and things like that. Such basic training is needed throughout
the whole school. I have mentioned teaching assistants, who are very
important, because they will obviously be giving direct support to many
children, but other school staff, such as the school secretary, need to
understand as well. I could have included the drivers of school
transport, because children have particular behaviour patterns; for
example, they are not being awkward when they wish to alight from the
school bus in a particular way. Understanding is
needed.
I
hope that we can present these provisions in a positive light. They
cover areas that need to be addressed sooner rather than later because
there has been a lack of training for far too
long.
Mrs.
Miller:
Again, I congratulate the hon. Member for
Gateshead, East and Washington, West on securing the debate. Any debate
on special educational needs helps push the issue up the agenda so that
people will take notice of the importance of delivering not just words,
but real action. The premise behind my amendments is to ensure that the
provisions are not just words written on a piece of paper, but that
they result in action at school
level.
Many children
who have special educational needs do not realise their potential in
school. That is brought into stark light by GCSE results. In England,
54 per cent. of children gain five good GCSEs including English and
maths. The figure is significantly and dramatically lower for children
involved in school action and school action-plus. About 13 per cent. of
children in school action achieve five good GCSEs, including English
and maths, and the figure is just 9 per cent. for those in school
action-plus. The situation for statemented children is of even greater
concern. We are discussing the introduction of a mechanism that will
help parents, children and teachers to ensure that such children
achieve their
potential.
I
was concerned to read in the Royal National Institute for Deaf People
briefing to the Committee that the achievement levels of children with
deafness are also impaired by the current system. Among children who
have no learning difficulty, just an impairment in hearing, only 32.9
per cent. achieve five good GCSEs, which should give us all cause for
concern when compared with the other figures I have
given.
It is only
sensible that we gauge whether the support that children need is in
place. We have all read the 2004 Ofsted report, which notes that only
one in four local education authorities has strong strategic management
of special educational needs and that the majority have weak evaluation
systems. High-quality information is critical in ensuring that children
meet their
objectives.
Amendment
No. 3 covers similar ground to the amendments tabled by the Liberals. I
want to press the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West
on the specificity of the Bill to ensure that it will be a useful and
valuable addition to our legislative format for special educational
needs. Amendment No. 3 deals in particular with the diversity of the
problems that children face. It would ensure that we have the levels of
training in special educational needs that the hon. Member for
Mid-Dorset and North Poole outlined earlier. It would introduce
monitoring of the timeliness of the statementing process, about which
many of my constituents in Basingstoke have great concerns, despite the
fact that they live in an education authority that is deemed excellent
in its delivery in that
regard.
I pay tribute
to the work of TreeHouse on the background of the Bill. It did a great
deal of work in establishing the fact that there was
a lack of information, particularly with regard to autism. The Bill
hints at the sort of information that might be required, and amendment
No. 3 is probing to see if that point can be taken a little further. I
am trying to ensure that the Bill is the effective document that it
needs to be.
On levels
of training, we must ensure that there is continuing professional
development. In my county of Hampshire, there is a very developed CPD
programme that teachers can access on a regular basis. However, no
information is available about which schools in my constituency or
throughout the county are taking up that good-quality professional
development training. Parents of children with special educational
needs would be most interested to read about
that.
9.45
am
Dealing with
special educational needs is part of every teacher’s daily life,
and compelling statistics from the National Union of Teachers show that
there are massive gaps in teacher training, as the hon. Member for
Mid-Dorset and North Poole hinted. The NUT’s survey found that
only 16 per cent. of teachers had specific special educational needs
qualifications. That might be understandable, because those teachers
who are going to work in special schools might be the ones
who want to go forward and take those specific
qualifications. However, 86 per cent. of teachers have not received any
continuing professional development training in the area of moderate
learning difficulties, and only a quarter have received professional
development training on behavioural, emotional and social
difficulties.
Teachers face these issues in
the classroom every day of the week, and we are simply not giving them
the tools to deal with them. The figures show that more needs to be
done to support teachers in the classroom, and we should be able to
look regularly at whether that is being achieved, because the vast
majority of teachers want to receive such training and
support.
There is a
particular problem in the areas of dyslexia and autism. Many teachers
lack confidence in not only supporting those children affected, but
identifying needs. I know that that area is of particular interest to
the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington,
West and that it is one of the reasons why we are here today discussing
the Bill. Xtraordinary People, which is an organisation that does a
great deal of work in this area, estimates that three quarters of the
children with whom it is involved are being taught by those who have
not been trained to deal with dyslexia or other specific learning
difficulties. That reiterates the scale of the problem and the need for
us to be able to monitor it more closely.
I will briefly address the
aspects of the amendment that deal with the diversity
of children’s special educational needs. The number of different
needs that a child might have, and how those might be dealt with, are
currently
looked at in some way within the school census, but that does not go
into the sort of detail that would ensure effectively that the training
provided to teachers is of sufficient quality. There is still confusion
about the level of special educational needs in our schools,
particularly when we consider an area such as autism. The Medical
Research Council says that around one in 166 under-eights is somewhere
on the autistic spectrum, whereas teachers say that that figure is
significantly different—as high as one in 80. A provision in the
Bill to address the diversity of children’s needs would enable
us to clarify the situation.
Finally,
with regard to the statementing process, many parents are greatly
concerned that local authorities are in a difficult position because,
in many ways, they must act as both poacher and gamekeeper by assessing
needs, granting statements and also providing budgets. There is thus
the potential for a conflict of interest. In 2006, the Education and
Skills Committee looked at that in some detail and called for a
completely fresh approach. It
stated:
“The
Government’s failure to even consider the current statementing
process is a real missed opportunity.”
While this debate is not about the
statementing process, or indeed to call for changes, monitoring the
timelines for when statements are put in place might shed a little more
light on several of the problems experienced by parents in some parts
of the country when trying to get the sort of support that their
children need.
The
Conservative special educational needs commission, led by Sir Bob
Balchin, recommended that statements should be replaced by special
needs profiles that would be drawn up by an independent and accredited
profile assessor and that funding should come from a national funding
agency, thus removing the need for unnecessary adversarial appeals and
the apparent conflict of interest in local authorities. That is a
practical way in which we could change the system, and within the Bill
there is a practical way in which we could monitor the grave concern
experienced by many parents due to an unnecessarily long statementing
process.
Anne
Snelgrove (South Swindon) (Lab): It is a pleasure to serve
for the first time under your chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson. I
also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and
Washington, West on doing an excellent job of bringing the Bill into
Committee. I look forward to it becoming
law.
I have great
sympathy with the amendments, but I want to comment on the focus of the
Bill. Its focus is on publishing information on children with special
educational needs to improve their well-being so that we can diagnose
whether we can take the right action or whether the right action is
being taken for them. On Second Reading, I spoke about the issues of
teacher training that have been discussed eloquently today by
Opposition spokespeople. Although they are of great relevance, they are
not the primary purpose of the Bill. We need to be careful not to move
the focus of the Bill from children to teachers. Too much legislation
focuses on what teachers do, rather than on outcomes for young
people.
We have heard
about the training of teachers and the length of courses. There is a
variety of courses, but it would be difficult to equate a half-day
course run in a local authority to a full year’s
course—perhaps with
day release—for a teacher who is studying special needs. We need
to be careful not to put something forward that would be cumbersome for
local education authorities and that would shift the balance of the
Bill away from children’s needs and towards the needs of
teachers and teacher training in schools. However, I hope that the
Minister has taken great note of what has been said. It is an
important point, and the Department for Children, Schools and Families
needs to pay attention to what is going on in special educational needs
and to do the work itself. I am not convinced that we should lay that
on local authorities. We should be asking local authorities to
concentrate on what they are doing for children so that parents can be
convinced, through the data that are collected, that right and
appropriate action is being taken on behalf of their
children.
Mark
Williams (Ceredigion) (LD): It is a pleasure to
serve under your chairmanship, Mr.
Atkinson. I reiterate our appreciation to the hon. Member for
Gateshead, East and Washington, West for bringing forward the
Bill.
My hon. Friend
the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole talked about routes into
teaching. I was going to resist the temptation to be anecdotal, but
there were lots of anecdotes flying around the Chamber on Second
Reading. I was a teacher for 12 years, and I should declare an interest
in that I am still a member of the National Association of
Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers. I took the route of the
postgraduate certificate in education. It was a valuable course
and I gained much from it, but the special educational needs
provision was lamentable. I will not name the institution because no
doubt improvements have been made since, and I am not in the business
of denigrating specific institutions. There is good practice but, as my
hon. Friend said, it is
patchy.
My course
lasted for a year. The special educational needs
component was condensed into a series of professional development
seminars that lasted eight hours in total. I was looking back through
my old notes—one day they might be useful again—and
studies of dyslexia, autistic spectrum disorders, and provision for the
severely deaf were not a feature of those seminars. Unless one had
experience of working with such children on school placements—of
which there were three—one might not have encountered special
educational needs, other than as an aspect of the broad issues of
differentiation and access to the curriculum. In my first teaching
post, I met the challenge of being summoned to the head
teacher’s office to be told that later that week a child with an
autistic spectrum disorder would be coming into my classroom and that I
would be working with that child, although I had no background
whatsoever in assisting that child. Local education authority courses
were not particularly available. We were blessed with some experienced
teachers in the school who could assist and advise, but I was denied
that most fundamental
training.
Of course,
the hon. Member for South Swindon is quite right that the debate is
essentially about children, but it is also about the confidence of
parents and teachers. On Second Reading, the hon. Member for
Stourbridge talked about attrition in the teaching profession and the
despondency of teachers who feel
ill-equipped to deal with the conditions. It is not as if those
conditions are isolated or incidental. We have heard the statistics:
one in five children in our schools have special educational
needs.
While I
appreciate the diversity of the challenge, I do not think that it
should be an excuse for inaction. The Government have undertaken some
good pilot projects on dyslexia and have provided additional
resources. I commend them for that, but unless we make
information on special educational needs available to the Secretary of
State, particularly regarding initial teacher training and, as my hon.
Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole said, continuing
professional development, we will fall at the first hurdle. Such
information is the key to getting things
right.
I cite the
evidence in the Education and Skills Committee’s report, which
discussed mandatory initial teacher training in special educational
needs. I know that we are not going to pursue that particular line
today, but I support it. The figures that the hon. Member for
Basingstoke cited from the NUT about teachers’ lack of
confidence are, frankly, terrible. The Bill is about making information
available to the Secretary of State and looking at the courses
that our institutions are offering. It is not, I hope, about a
heavy-handed approach to higher education
institutions, which will defend their independence rigorously, but
about putting a spotlight on their work so that children can benefit as
we all want them
to.
I
absolutely applaud the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington,
West for the Bill, which is very important. I cannot emphasise enough
the feeling of inadequacy that many of our teachers face. I once had a
class—as the hon. Member for Stourbridge did, no doubt, on many
occasions—of 36 children, 17 of whom were on the special
educational needs register. That was an awesome challenge for a
teacher. We need to give teachers the tools to deal with such
challenges, and that is what the debate is all
about.
Mr.
Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater) (Con): It is a great
pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson. I
am glad that we are here and not in the middle of Hexham, where at the
moment it is a little
windy.
I congratulate
the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West, as the Bill
is an enormous step forward. As was encompassed by the
Minister’s words, the information on this subject is not really
available, and so often the reply that we, as MPs, get about SEN is
that the information cannot be collated. That goes right across the
spectrum. I find it interesting that even Ofsted, in 2004, said that
too little was known by schools about the attainment of pupils with
SEN. That surely encompasses the whole
matter.
I
will give a practical example. As some hon. Members will know, I am now
chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on dyslexia and specific
learning difficulties. The British Dyslexia Association launched a
dyslexia-friendly schools scheme throughout the United Kingdom. To my
county’s eternal shame, it cheated. The BDA wanted to increase
teacher awareness—all the things that we have been talking about
today—so that teachers had a benchmark to work to, thereby
allowing
the children to achieve more, within the framework of a charity.
Unfortunately, Somerset cheated. The whole scheme has been withdrawn
and the BDA has had to collapse
it.
Before the hon.
Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West gets palpitations, I
will tell her that Somerset county council is not controlled by either
my party or hers. I do not accuse anyone of doing anything particularly
wrong, but people were simply trying to be too clever by half. One of
the things that came out when I asked questions about where the
£40 million of special educational needs money goes in Somerset,
I was told, “We do not know.” When I pushed harder, I was
told that it also includes school meals. That cannot be right. I asked
the Government and they said, quite rightly, “We don’t
actually know.” We do not know because the organic system of
checking is not there, and it has ever been thus. The importance of the
measure is to bring that issue forward. Empowering special educational
needs co-ordinators and teachers creates a benchmark all the way
through for unitaries, counties and everybody else to
look at, most importantly, the
parents.
10
am
I
asked how many people were statemented in Somerset. I declare an
interest: my daughter is statemented; she has severe dyslexia.
I was expecting that the figure would be about 10 per cent. of the
school population. I do not know quite how many school children there
are in Somerset, but there are many thousands as it is a big county.
Only 1,000 people are statemented. I asked why, and was told,
“Well, we don’t need to statement because it’s all
there within the schools so that teachers are empowered to do the
job.” Privately, teachers will say, “Absolute rubbish! We
are desperately clinging on to what we’ve
got.”
I suspect
that the example of the 17 children in a classroom
that the hon. Member for Ceredigion mentioned is the norm; I do not
think that that is unusual. What worries me more is that when I then
went to my local tertiary college, Bridgwater college, it was able to
give me firm figures on what it was doing within SEN. We have a
terrible gap between the child going into school, at any age, and their
going on to tertiary education, university or
whatever.
Teaching
is important, but what is much more important, as the hon. Member for
South Swindon said, is that we must have the information to work with
in the first place. As Members, I am sure that we have all taken up
cases. I am appearing at a tribunal in two weeks on behalf of one of my
constituents, who has autism and other problems, because I feel so
strongly about this issue. It cannot be right that, as Members, we
cannot get the background to what is going on. I am not saying that
that is because people are trying to mislead, but it worries me that
every single authority that I have been in touch with—I have
asked Dyslexia Action, the BDA and Xtraordinary People to ask
questions—has come back with different answers, because every
single authority works in a different
way.
There is no set
way of doing this and I am sure that those members of the Committee who
were teachers, who probably went to different schools, will have seen
that within schools. I get the feeling that that is also the case within
school systems
themselves.
A lot of
head teachers do not want to admit that SEN is a problem because it
brings them down the ladder. Although I do not have too many rough
areas in my constituency, unlike some hon. Members, such as those in
Cardiff—
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and
Families (Kevin Brennan):
What are you talking
about?
Kelvin
Hopkins:
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would use the
word “disadvantaged”, rather than
“rough”.
Mr.
Liddell-Grainger:
The hon. Gentleman brings me to the
quick, as usual. He is my moral conscience in more
ways than one. We sit on the same Select Committee, and sit next to
each other. He prods me when I advertently use the word
“chav” and a few others that he dislikes, and rightly
so.
Even in my area,
which is fairly genteel and nice, there are too many variations and it
is too difficult to know what is going on. I implore the hon.
Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West and the
Minister: if the Bill makes it to the statute book, we as
parliamentarians, and certainly the Government, must push the issue as
fast as we
can.
The
Bill will break the log-jam. It will allow parliamentarians, local
authorities and the Government to understand exactly what the issue is.
Some 75 per cent. of all prisoners in this country have educational
problems. That is endemic at the start of their education and all the
way through. We cannot solve anything today in that respect, but we can
get a better understanding of where we are going from
here.
I am sure that
the hon. Lady will agree that we should praise all the groups that have
been involved in SEN—they are phenomenal. We had a raft of
papers from various organisations and they are superb at what they do.
What has been so nice about this Committee is that it has been very
factual and straightforward. I do not think that anybody outside the
House would disagree that the Bill is fundamental legislation that we
must get on to the statute book as soon as possible, so that we can
empower the Government to go out and do the job that they should
do—that is, get out to these places and find out exactly what is
going on, so that we can take up matters on behalf of our constituents
and there are no more
secrets.
Kevin
Brennan:
I shall try to stick closely to the
amendments, although I cannot allow the hon.
Gentleman to get away with describing his own constituency, compared
with mine, as though it were the Garden of Eden. I am reminded that
that is where original sin was invented.
Anne
Snelgrove:
The hon. Member for Bridgwater needs to be
careful, or we shall have to explain the meaning of the phrase
“normal for
Bridgwater”.
Kevin
Brennan:
I shall test your patience no further,
Mr. Atkinson, apart from inviting everyone to Cardiff next
Saturday to watch Wales win the grand
slam.
As
many hon. Members have said, this is a significant Bill. There is a
great deal of consensus on that. It is sensible—this is typical
of my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and
Washington, West—to formalise the Secretary of State’s
consideration of children with special educational needs when gathering
and publishing data. That is why the Bill has been so widely welcomed
on both sides of the House and on both sides of the Committee this
morning.
The
problem with the three amendments is not uncommon and is probably
recognised by the hon. Member for Basingstoke, as they fall into the
usual category of probing amendments. In other words, they are
suggestions that perhaps are not suitable to be included in a Bill, but
they deal with matters that need to be considered with regard to
regulation and guidance relating to the
Bill.
A general
principle that has been followed for many years by Governments of both
colours is that primary legislation is not the place
in which specific requirements are made of the Secretary of State in
respect of specific information, because of the inflexibility that that
creates in responding to events. The details of the data that the
Secretary of State collects through the powers in, for example, the
Education Act 1996 are set out in regulations. That allows for the
obvious flexibility that is required in practice in data collection
arrangements; it allows for change better to meet any new
circumstances.
As my
hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West has set
it out, the Bill ensures that SEN is a high priority when the Secretary
of State changes the data collection arrangements—with, in many
cases, the assistance of Parliament in introducing any new regulations
as required. Any new information collection
requirements should follow careful consideration of the burdens that
they place on people. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon
pointed that out
well.
We need to
consider carefully the burden placed on schools, local authorities and
all other data providers, and their ability to provide meaningful and
useful information. We need to ensure that the information collected is
of the highest quality and that, as was suggested, the collection
requirement does not distract those who should be focusing on helping
children to
succeed.
Mrs.
Miller:
The Minister characterises elements of the
amendments as burdens. Does that mean that he thinks that those are not
matters that should be monitored? I would find that slightly
concerning, given the information that has been so forthcoming from
teachers
themselves.
Kevin
Brennan:
If I may say so, that is a rhetorical rather than
a substantive point. Of course I do not think that. The point I am
making is very different and is, and has been for many years, well
recognised by those in government.
Amendments Nos. 1 and 3 would
require specific information on the content of courses related to SEN
taken by people training to be teachers. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset
and North Poole said, in her characteristically candid way, that she
was not sure that the amendment would achieve what she intended. I
shall go on to suggest why it is better not to include it in the Bill.
Nevertheless, I take on board the sincerity of her point about the
necessity to weave such training into teacher training. I shall make
some remarks later on how that is being
achieved.
Having to
collect the information would place a significant burden on providers
of teacher training, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon
suggested. Let me make it clear that training to teach pupils with SEN
and disabilities should be interwoven throughout initial teacher
training courses. Things have moved on since the hon. Member for
Ceredigion and I, both superannuated teachers, did our teacher training
courses many years ago. Such training should be woven into the initial
teacher training course—into subject-specific and general
professional studies, as well as direct experience during school-based
training.
It is hard
meaningfully to quantify the breadth of training in relation to data
collection, which is what we are talking about. The Bill is intended to
result in meaningful data collection to help children with special
educational needs, but unpicking in the way proposed the specific SEN
elements from the interwoven practice that should
take place would be an extremely burdensome and not necessarily very
meaningful method of data
collection.
Amendment
No. 3 also proposes that the Secretary of State collect information on
the nature of the need of every child in special educational needs, and
on the time taken to prepare statements of special educational need. On
the first point, I agree that our information on type of need is
limited, as it does not include children who receive provision at
school action level. That type of need collection was introduced to
school centres in 2004, and it was then recognised that there is no
external moderation for a school’s judgment on type of need with
relation to pupils at school action—unlike those at school
action-plus, or where the state or external bodies are involved with
the child’s
provision.
The concern
is that such need information at school action level may be of low
quality. The Government recognise that such information would be useful
to local and national planning and evaluation, so I have asked
officials to look again at whether it would be appropriate and, most
importantly, feasible to collect it. In doing so, and before taking a
final decision, we must carefully consider the additional financial and
administrative burden that it might place on schools. However, there is
a long lead-in period—the time required for changes to the
school census means that the earliest that such a change could take
place is 2011, but we are looking into the matter seriously.
On the second point, the
national indicator set for local government will be introduced in
2008-09. It includes an indication of the proportion of statements
issued within the statutory requirement of 26 weeks from the request
for an assessment. That will allow local authorities to be held to
account, locally and nationally, for the time taken to perform
statutory assessments and to issue statements. Therefore, that
part of the amendment is unnecessary because we will not only publish
that information, as would be required by the amendment, but monitor it
and follow it
up.
Finally, I have a
further point on the issue of teacher training and continuing
professional development. The inclusion
development programme will cover communication and dyslexia this year,
autism next year and behavioural, emotional and social difficulties in
2010, for all early years and the schools work force. It will be
monitored, including looking at take-up by schools, and there will be
an independent evaluation of its
impact.
Mr.
Liddell-Grainger:
That is extremely good news for
the next three years. Will the figures be available in readable form,
and will they be collated separately to the average county, unitary or
education authority?
Kevin
Brennan:
I undertake to get back to the hon. Gentleman on
the detail, but I can guarantee that the figures will be in readable
form. I may need to check on exactly how they are broken down, and
perhaps await divine inspiration to see whether I can meet the point.
However, I hope that Opposition Members will consider
withdrawing the amendment. The Government’s position is that
such measures are not
necessary.
Mrs.
Hodgson:
I appreciate the aims and intentions behind the
amendment. In many ways, I share them, but I do not feel that, as they
stand, they could work in the Bill. Taken together, the amendments
prescribe what information should be recorded under
the legislation, particularly with regard to the training of teachers.
Conventionally, such decisions usually result from regulations and
guidelines issued by the
Government.
The hon.
Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole mentioned such measures, and
hoped that they would be regulations rather than guidelines. I hope
that the Minister has heard that, and that he will take it on board.
The hon. Lady was also correct in mentioning two areas of the Bill that
relate to information. However, she did not mention the importance of
the outcomes that are spelled out in the legislation. She also
mentioned dyslexia. That is very important, and hon. Members will be
aware that I have a personal interest in
it.
Although amendment
No. 2 covers training, it would not necessarily ensure that there was a
specialist in every school, which is one of the objectives that we are
all pushing for continually. Again, that could be covered in guidelines
from the Secretary of State; it does not need to be in the
Bill.
10.15
am
The amendments
are clearly well intentioned. I could have no argument with the notion
that better recording of information on the training received by
teachers, both at the commencement of their careers and through ongoing
professional development, would help to paint a picture of how
provision for children with SEN is developing throughout the education
system. However, I do not think that we need to set out in this piece
of primary legislation what should be collected
and what should not. Thanks to the hard work of all involved in
campaigning, SEN provision is constantly shifting. As I have said
before, information gives us only a snapshot of developments, which
does not always reveal the breadth of the changes taking place in the
system.
The hon.
Member for Basingstoke mentioned that she had worked with Xtraordinary
People, which is one of the organisations involved in campaigning. The
hon. Member for Bridgwater mentioned various
organisations, too. I have worked with Xtraordinary People and I must
mention some of the others. The Special Educational Consortium has been
a fantastic support to me and to everyone concerned with the Bill. In
particular, Brian Lamb, its chair, has been of sterling help to me
during the course of the Bill. He has also been asked by the Secretary
of State to carry out a review into parental confidence in the
statementing system. That cannot come soon enough.
The hon.
Member for Basingstoke referred to TreeHouse. It has been a huge
support and has done sterling campaigning, as have Dyslexia Action, the
British Dyslexia Association and the RNID. I apologise to the other
organisations that I have not mentioned.
When considering new data
collection requirements, we must take care that we do
not unduly burden teachers with extra paperwork. It is also imperative
that any data that are routinely collected are robust enough to stand
up to scrutiny. Amendment No. 3 would require a breakdown of the
special educational needs of every child. As we know, many children do
not simply fit into one category of SEN, but have multiple needs. On
Second Reading I made clear my desire to see the collection of data on
pupils with SEN extended to school action level. However, that is not
for primary legislation but instead requires changes to the school
census, which is at the discretion of the Secretary of
State.
Amendments
Nos. 1 and 3 would require specific information about the content of
courses undertaken by teachers in the area of SEN. It is my
understanding that the scope of such training courses is extremely wide
and the provision of such training is dynamic in its methods of
delivery. Teachers can undertake a half-day course or a half-year
programme. The courses cannot be easily categorised and in my opinion
an attempt to do so would lead to their being pigeonholed,
which would be detrimental to overall teacher
development because some courses would be perceived as better than
others.
If there is a
desire to know the content of every syllabus in the land relating to
teaching SEN, it is already achievable through direct contact with
learning institutions, so I see no benefit in all that information
being held centrally in a Department. It might be preferable to put
pressure on providers to meet the demand for a work force skilled in
supporting SEN. We are all concerned about that.
The hon.
Member for Ceredigion, as a former teacher, gave testament to the fact
that we need to give teachers the tools. He spoke about there being up
to 17 pupils with SEN in a class. In those circumstances, I cannot see
how any teacher with, at best, only a couple of hours of brief
oversight into SEN, could be expected to deal with such a diverse range
of SEN in one class. We have to take our hats off to teachers for
coping in such
circumstances. The Government must ensure that teachers are given the
tools to deal with the situation and that they are not left to
struggle.
One way of
monitoring skills within the work force will be
through the work force census, which takes place in 2010. It will
record the substantive qualifications held by all teachers. I have
stated my hope that the funding being directed at the masters level
qualification announced by the Secretary of State in the
children’s plan will lead to increased uptake of SEN-related
postgraduate courses. I hope that will start to be seen as the census
rolls out. As the census is at its inception, tweaks at this stage may
not be possible. However, I hope that over time it will be possible to
evaluate how it could be used better to support SEN
pupils.
Amendment No.
3 will require the Secretary of State to collect information on how
long the statementing process takes. The hon. Member for Basingstoke
paid particular attention to that process in her contribution. However,
monitoring the time that it takes to obtain a statement will not solve
issues such as who is given a statement or the efficiency of the
appeals process. Given that a requirement to list the proportion of
statements issued within the 26-week time limit is due to come into
force, I do not feel that such a measure is a necessary addition to the
Bill.
Kevin
Brennan:
May I say something before my hon. Friend
finishes her remarks? As a point of information on an
earlier intervention, I can now tell the Committee that monitoring
arrangements in relation to the development programme are being put in
place. Local authorities will report on schools’ take-up of
national strategies. An independent evaluation will be commissioned
over the next few months, and further details will be available in the
summer. I hope that is of help to my hon. Friend and the rest of the
Committee.
Mrs.
Hodgson:
That information certainly is helpful. I cannot
stress strongly enough that it is only through the improved training of
teachers that we will be able to lift the level of
SEN provision. I speak from personal experience. I know how my
son’s teachers struggled because they lacked the necessary
skills. However, I must thank one teacher from my son Joseph’s
school, Hatfeild primary in Morden, Surrey. I wish I had thanked her on
Second Reading, but I will take the opportunity to do so now.
Mrs. James fought for Joseph and saw him through the
statementing process. I have a lot to thank her for, as does my son,
and I am pleased to put that on
record.
We need not
only to put more training in place, but to focus our resources on
improving it. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon said that one
important issue in the Bill concerns the outcomes as stated in Every
Child Matters and its impact on a child’s well-being. I hope
that aspect will bear fruit if the Bill becomes law.
The hon. Member for Bridgwater
mentioned Ofsted, and said that little is known about the achievements
of children with SEN. Again, that is an issue that we want to be
addressed in the Bill. He also mentioned the number of prisoners who
have SEN, particularly dyslexia. In years to come, I hope that we can
measure the outcomes and monitor prisoners. I hope that the
prison population will come down anyway, and that the number of
prisoners with SEN, and dyslexia in particular, will come down as well.
Clearly, work needs to be done in that
area.
The
Minister mentioned the financial and administrative burden on schools
in collecting new data and dealing with changes to the school census. I
appreciate that the provisions will increase the administrative burden,
and that the Government will have to pay close attention to the costs.
I was pleased by the commitment in the children’s plan for
better data to be collected on children with SEN and for the
information to be made available. The Secretary of State must,
therefore, have put some money
aside.
Barbara
Keeley (Worsley) (Lab): I want to touch briefly on the
issue of deaf children, which I spoke about on Second
Reading.
My hon.
Friend is focusing on outcomes. In 2006, the screening programme for
children with deafness was rolled out for the first time. On extra
data, one of the key things is that children born in 2006 will be the
first to be properly diagnosed, so we could set targets now. The
National Deaf Children’s Society has pointed
out that we could start to work on closing the
attainment gap for that cohort of deaf children, which will be the
first to be properly fully screened and diagnosed, if we put the right
interventions in place, collect proper data and monitor the
children’s progress.
Like everyone else, I
congratulate my hon. Friend on her Bill. However,
perhaps we in Parliament could campaign for the other things needed for
deaf children, which the information and monitoring of outcomes will
enable us to address. Parents of deaf children, like parents of all
children with SEN, need good information and support as well as a
diagnosis. We should encourage our local authorities to ensure that
they provide the necessary specialist support. Happily, my local
authority does so; it has a very good school for deaf children. We
could probably also encourage our health colleagues—the Minister
might provide a link—to invest more in audiology services, which
deaf children need.
We are taking two big steps.
First, the screening programme and, secondly, my hon. Friend’s
Bill. If we had those things too we
could—
Mrs.
Hodgson:
My hon. Friend makes a good point; she made a
good contribution on Second Reading on behalf of deaf children, who are
often the least mentioned of the SEN community. There is a strong
dyslexia lobby and campaign group, as there is for autism and other
SENs, so I am pleased about my hon. Friend’s contribution on
behalf of deaf
children.
As
I said, the children’s plan has, we hope, put money to one side
to help fund the collection of data and to ease the extra admin burden.
Although I support the intention of the amendments, I ask hon. Members
not to press them to a
Division.
Mrs.
Miller:
I very much welcome the Minister’s positive
response to elements of amendment No. 3, particularly the necessity to
understand better the diversity of need. He indicated that the
Government are doing
some work on work force training. I am not clear
about that, so it would be useful if he were to write to us on the
matter.
The hon.
Member for South Swindon and the Minister referred to the burden on
schools and local authorities. I feel strongly that we put a burden on
thousands of children up and down the country because of how the
present system works. I understand the points made by those hon.
Members, but we should look at lifting the latter burden first and
foremost in the actions that we take.
Amendment No. 3 was probing, so
I am happy not to press it to a Division. As the hon.
Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West said, teachers need to
be given a toolkit. I hope the Minister agrees, because we need to
ensure that comes to fruition throughout the training
process.
Annette
Brooke:
I thank the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and
Washington, West and the Minister for their comments.
I continue to stress the point
about teacher training, although I shall withdraw the
amendment in due course. We have a programme of more and more
inclusion, which I support. However, it is shameful that it was
introduced without addressing teacher training needs. It is pleasing to
hear that at long last there will be monitoring, but I emphasise my
earlier point: we have let the situation go on too long, especially
given the fact that we are learning more about complex conditions. It
is not good enough merely to have an audit of the qualifications
teachers hold.
My
daughter completed a top-up special educational needs qualification
about eight years ago. I do not suppose that it is up to date. The
continuing side of development is very
important.
10.30
am
The demands of
amendments Nos. 1 and 2 would fall on organisations that awarded
qualified teacher status and on the Training and Development Agency for
Schools. Those bodies play an important part in this issue, but Ofsted
also has a role to play. There will be a big Ofsted report on special
educational needs in 2009, but there is no reason why it should not
check up on the courses completed by individual staff in the sample
surveys.
With those
few words, which I hope will be taken on board, I am happy to withdraw
the amendment. We did not envisage it being included in the Bill, but
we want action on the important issues that have been raised. I beg to
ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Mrs.
Miller:
I beg to move amendment No. 4, in
clause 1, page 2, line 4, leave
out subsection (2) and
insert—
‘(1A) Information
published under subsection (1) shall be broken down
by—
(a) individual
school, and
(b) individual
local education authority,
in
England, provided that the name of the child or children to whom the
information relates is not
included.
(1B) The Secretary of State shall
provide the information published under subsection (1) to each school
and local education authority in
England.’.
Thank
you for selecting the amendment, Mr. Atkinson. It covers
another important point of debate. I reassure the hon. Member for South
Swindon that the duty under the amendment would be placed firmly on the
Secretary of State, not on schools. It is down to the Secretary of
State how information is collated and used. For reasons that we have
already discussed, the Bill says little on how the collected
information would be presented and
used.
School and local
authority level information that highlights local
levels of provision and areas of concern to be addressed must be
published in the report. Such information would be pivotal in
identifying and spreading best practice between different areas. We
must have a breakdown of information at local level to monitor pupil
progress and ensure that they achieve their
potential.
The Bill
must not, for the sake of it, simply create information that gathers
dust on our shelves and the shelves of others. Information needs to be
usable at grass-roots level. We have heard today about the need to
ensure that Bills are flexible. Perhaps we are here because we allow
our legislation be interpreted too flexibly and do not put what we want
to achieve at its core. By putting a little more specificity in Bills
such as this, perhaps we would address some issues before they rose to
prominence.
The hon.
Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole rightly said that levels of
inclusion have been expanded without addressing issues such as teacher
training. The amendment would ensure that the available data were
collected in such a way that school governors, teachers and head
teachers could use them to ensure that shortfalls in areas such as
teacher training were addressed before they became critical
problems.
The
amendment would provide for the publication of data
at school and local authority levels to help schools, head teachers,
governing bodies and other appropriate persons to identify and address
problems locally. We have heard that many local authorities are falling
short in this area. The amendment would help them to identify gaps in
“continuous professional development” or in their
recruitment at local
level.
The
Minister talked about announcements on Government developments in this
area. I hope that he will comment on how those announcements might help
to address the issues identified in the amendment. Ensuring that there
is better information, presented in a usable format, should be an
important part of the
Bill.
Kevin
Brennan:
Obviously, the Department is always looking at
how we can make the data that we publish more relevant and usable.
Clearly, we want to publish those data in the most useful form. We will
continue to do that, and look at the content of the annually published
statistical first release on SEN and other forums for the publication
of data, to consider how we can develop them
further.
There
are problems with the hon. Lady’s amendment, in what she is
asking for. Even where we hold information at school level—which
is not always the case, but is, perhaps, the assumption in the
amendment—the Data Protection Act 1998 requires us to protect
the privacy of
children. That goes beyond the requirement not to publish names, which
is the formulation used in the
amendment.
Where
there are few children with a given characteristic at a school or
within a local authority, information about that characteristic is
suppressed in our published statistics, so that those children cannot
be identified. For example, in many local authorities, there are fewer
than five children in a cohort at school action-plus level or with a
statement who have a hearing impairment as their primary type of need.
Publishing attainment information about a group of that size at local
authority, let alone school, level would give personal information
about a small, identifiable group of children. Therefore, we do not
believe it appropriate for all the data we hold to be published at
school or local authority
level.
As
I said, the Department is, however, always looking at how we can make
the data that we publish more relevant and useful. We will also look at
what other avenues we can use to ensure that people have access as
possible to as much of the data related to SEN that we hold. In
particular, we have asked Her Majesty’s chief inspector to
undertake a review of SEN provision in 2009-10, and that review will
include the collection and use of data to support the improvement of
provision. We will of course look at our SEN data publications, as well
as whether changes are necessary to the SEN framework and our
information-gathering arrangements, in the light of the recommendations
of Her Majesty’s chief
inspector.
The second
part of the amendment says that we should provide schools and local
authorities with the information that we publish. The Department
already ensures that published information is available to schools and
local authorities, and much of it has been provided directly by them
through the school census and the SEN2 survey. In that sense, the
amendment is
otiose.
We
continue to look at how we can encourage schools and local authorities
to make use of their data to improve planning and evaluate provision.
For example, during 2007, the national strategies SEN team, working
with local authorities and the Department, developed a self-evaluation
framework to help local authorities to benchmark their own performance
across a range of indicators and, most importantly, to identify areas
for review and action to bring about further improvement. I hope that
those remarks are of assistance to my hon. Friend the Member for
Gateshead, East and Washington, West and to the
Committee.
Mrs.
Hodgson:
A wide range of data is already collected on SEN.
I hope that the Bill will increase the quantity and quality of the
data, which I hope to see published by local authority area if the Bill
becomes law. That would be dealt with under regulations and guidelines
issued by the Secretary of State. My main concern with the amendment is
that publishing data at the level of individual schools would mean that
we could not ensure the anonymity of pupils, as is the obligation of
the Government under the Data Protection Act, as outlined in detail by
the Minister.
Hon.
Members who have read the comments that I made in the House and in the
media will know that I sincerely hope that one consequence of the Bill
would
be to place a spotlight on the performance of local authorities, which
would enable us to identify and roll out best practice. I believe that
there are plans afoot to review the information contained in the
statistical first release on SEN, as the Minister mentioned, as a
result of the Bill’s possible
implementation.
In
addition, it remains my hope that the Government will use the Ofsted
review of SEN, due to take place in 2009-10, fundamentally to review
current practice concerning the collection of data. I was heartened
that the Minister said that that will be the case. Clearly, a data
deficit is holding back the development of SEN provision and the
ability of the general public and of elected representatives to
scrutinise progress through such mechanisms as written
questions.
We
can all bear witness to having received answers stating that those
“data are not collected centrally”. The TreeHouse study
highlighted that as well. I hope that, within the framework set out in
the Bill, the Government will work to ensure that best practice is
identified and implemented to improve SEN outcomes, particularly at
local authority level. It is my understanding, and my hope, that data
will be published at local authority level unless the data sets
recovered are few in number. However, bearing it in mind that under the
amendment we could not ensure that the Government met their statutory
data protection requirements, I hope that the Opposition will withdraw
it.
Mrs.
Miller:
I thank hon. Members for their responses. The hon.
Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West talked about a data
deficit. We have heard today that there is a particular data deficit in
teacher training, and in understanding what has been made available to
teachers to support their training needs. There are a lot of data
available, but not in certain important areas, and those areas do not
impinge on the privacy issues outlined by the
Minister.
There is a
need to be much more open with parents about what schools can and
cannot deliver. Parents expect, quite rightly, that when their children
go to school, that school should be able to meet their needs. Parents
need to be sure that they are furnished with the necessary information
to be able to assess whether that is happening day to day in the
classroom.
I will not
press the amendment, but I hope that the hon. Member for Gateshead,
East and Washington, West, as she presses forward with the Bill, takes
on board the need to ensure that any information made available is in a
format that parents can use, and broken down in a way that enables them
to evaluate whether their child’s school is meeting the
child’s needs. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
‘(4) The
Secretary of State shall, in each calendar year following that in which
this Act is passed, lay before both Houses of Parliament a report
including published information secured under section 332C(2)(c), and,
within 7 days of laying that report, make a motion in both Houses
expressing approval of the Government’s policy on children with
special educational
needs.’.
The
amendment is simple: it requests that special educational needs gets
the voice it needs in Parliament.
I have been a Member of Parliament since 2005. Many parents have come
along my surgeries to talk about the problems that they have in
ensuring that their children with special educational needs receive the
support that they need day to day. More parents have come to see me
than I had envisaged; the constituency has relatively good provision
for that type of
need.
All too often,
we debate things as and when they come along, and
perhaps some issues need to be reviewed regularly. Special educational
needs falls into that category. It has been a Cinderella issue for too
long. Perhaps some of today’s responses, though supportive and
encouraging, indicate that there is still a small desire to push this
one under the carpet and hope that it does not raise its head too
regularly. I hope that regular debate will mean that the
Government—whatever their political colour—are held to
account on this important
issue.
This
Government—along with every other one, in perpetuity—have
been promising an improvement on special educational needs. Members of
the Committee can cast their minds back to the first lot of data that I
went through today, which showed a yawning achievement gap between
children with and without special educational needs. That gap is driven
by many and varied factors, including, perhaps, lack of aspiration
among those who support the children, lack of access to the right
support in school and lack of support for parents. Regularly to throw a
spotlight on the issue would be an important addition to the Bill, and
particularly valued by
parents.
There are
examples of reports and documents being regularly laid before
Parliament, some of which—with the greatest respect—are
not as important as in this case. The Animal Health Act 1981 calls for
an annual report of expenditure under the Act to be submitted to
Parliament. That reporting is important, and I am sure
it was important when the Bill went through
Parliament. We could all support debating special educational needs
annually and regard that as a positive way to move forward such an
important
debate.
10.45
am
Kelvin
Hopkins:
I have some sympathy with the amendment, because
whatever my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington,
West does with her Bill, and whatever the Government might accept, it
is important to focus each year on special educational needs. It became
clear on Second Reading that there is a range of special educational
needs and each of us has different experiences of them. Indeed, the
hon. Member for Bridgwater referred to the problem of a local authority
not doing well on special educational needs. A focus on such matters,
probably based on a report in Parliament each year when such problems
could be debated, would be helpful. The debates would not need to be
long.
The ability to
put pressure on local authorities would also be helpful. In the past, I
have had problems with my local authority not doing what I thought it
should do for children with special educational needs. Information is
vital, and the Bill is extremely valuable in that respect. We need a
focus once a year when we can put pressure on local authorities if they
are not
measuring up to certain standards and when we can
express special concerns that have arisen in our
constituencies.
I am not sure
whether the hon. Member for Basingstoke will press her amendment to a
Division, but I have sympathy with her argument. I hope that my hon.
Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West, who has
presented such an excellent Bill, will take account of what has been
said.
Annette
Brooke:
We have sympathy for the idea behind the
amendment, but I am not convinced that it is the proper route to take.
It is relevant to note that, following an Opposition day debate, the
Chairman of the former Education and Skills Committee suddenly became
aware of the fact that there had not been an investigation into special
educational needs for a long time. That is where my sympathy lies,
because it is something that we can lose sight of in Parliament, so the
idea of publishing an annual report is important. I shall listen with
interest to the responses to the debate because the concept is
certainly right, but how we go about it is
important.
Mr.
Liddell-Grainger:
The Minister said eloquently that one of
the ways in which such matters will be dealt with is by taking a
broad-brush approach, and that we cannot go to certain levels because
of the need for anonymity of children. That is absolutely right, but
the problem, as the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole said, is
that we have no mechanism for dealing with such matters in the longer
term. I have asked constantly for debates on dyslexia, as have other
hon. Members. It is always difficult, given time constraints, for the
Minister to give a meaningful reply that will cover the United Kingdom
because between 15 and 20 per cent. of all schools have some experience
of dyslexia, dyspraxia or autistic difficulty. It is a massive
problem.
The Minister
said earlier that a lot of action will be taken by the counties, the
unitaries and the educational authorities in self-administered
programmes. In other words, they will consider what each school needs
and how to go about it. That means that unless we can
question the counties—we must have a
relationship with the education authority—we shall not get to
the bottom of what is happening. As Members of Parliament, we can only
ask questions of the education authority, and if it said that the data
did not exist or that they were in a certain form because of certain
matters or if it hid behind the statement, “Sorry, we cannot
tell you because the Government said that it is going down to too low a
level”, which I appreciate, we would not be able to do
anything.
It is
important that we can question the Minister of the day on how matters
are reported, even down to our personal situations. My hon. Friend the
Member for Basingstoke is right. Parents come to us constantly—I
am sure they contact the Minister, too—because they cannot find
what they require elsewhere. It is difficult for us to arrive at a
benchmark, but this is the place, the forum and the right location to
get the message across. I support my hon. Friend’s
amendment.
Kevin
Brennan:
I have sympathy with the idea of debating special
educational needs at any time in the House. Indeed, a number of such
debates have been
held in the past couple of years. I give credit not
only to Labour Members but to those on the Opposition Benches
for raising such issues, which is entirely appropriate. It is always
beguiling to be sympathetic to suggestions that we should lay down in
primary legislation that Parliament should do certain things at certain
times. Clearly that has happened before, as the hon. Lady for
Basingstoke has pointed out.
However, I am not convinced
that the best way to retain a spotlight on special educational needs is
by having a set-piece, ritual, annual debate, which would soon become a
routine type of debate on special educational needs, when there is
already flexibility in the system for the Opposition, the Government or
other hon. Members to raise debates in the House at any time. We also
have the opportunity at Question Time and in Select Committees to raise
issues about special educational needs in a timely and appropriate
way.
As
a general principle, it would be easy to extend considerably the number
of such debates without necessarily producing the impact we want, but
we can make that impact when we debate specific measures and specific
problems in relation to special educational
needs.
Mrs.
Miller:
But set-piece debates are exactly the way that we
push issues up the agenda in this place; they are a
known, tried and trusted mechanism. Gender equality, which includes
women’s issues, is very important. We hold a debate on
international women’s day, which has become exactly what the
Minister described—a set-piece debate—and it works very
well in making sure that those issues are debated on a regular basis.
Does the Minister not feel that there is room for a similar set-piece
debate on
SEN?
Kevin
Brennan:
As I have already made clear to the Committee, I
do not think that is the best way forward in relation to special
educational needs. I very much welcome the increased priority that is
being placed on special educational needs by hon. Members and they are
a very high priority for the Government. It is good to see that there
is a growing and strong consensus across the House in relation to those
needs.
However, in
relation to parliamentary time, hon. Members already
have regular opportunities to challenge the Government on their record,
through written and oral questions and all sorts of other related
debates. I do not think that it is appropriate in the Bill to commit to
a set-piece annual debate that may or may not be held when it is
appropriate or necessary. I know that the hon. Member for Basingstoke
feels strongly about the issue, but my sense is that we could make
better progress if we worked together across the House to
ensure that we keep special educational needs on the agenda and
keep a spotlight on the issue throughout the parliamentary year, rather
than relegating it to a particular annual
slot.
Annette
Brooke:
Will the Minister consider publishing an annual
report, because the matter is so nebulous that we need to see what it
will actually mean in practice? Then there might be a mechanism to deal
with it through a Select Committee, which could go on to a debate. I am
obviously making this up on the spot, so I do not expect a strongly
affirmative answer, but I would be interested in hearing the
Minister’s views.
Kevin
Brennan:
It is the hon. Lady’s privilege to make
things up on the spot, although obviously, as a
Minister, it is not mine. However, I will undertake to consider her
suggestion carefully, to see if it is an appropriate way forward.
During the later stages of the Bill, there may be an opportunity for us
to return to that idea and have a little look at it. I make that
undertaking, but in the meantime I ask the hon. Member for Basingstoke
to withdraw her
amendment.
Mrs.
Hodgson:
As those who were present will testify, we had an
excellent debate on the Bill on Second Reading. In addition, looking
back through the records it seems that there have been six debates in
which SEN has been discussed in the last three and a half years, which
amounts to more than one debate a year. We must balance the need for
debate with the need for action. Hundreds of issues jockey for
inclusion in the parliamentary timetable and it is the job of the
Leader of the House to decide what hits the Floor of the House and
when.
Although I
obviously support any attempt to ensure that SEN issues are debated in
Parliament, I do not believe it is right that we use the Bill to force
debates on the Floor of the House. I am sure that the
Minister agrees that there are plenty of opportunities for hon. Members
to hold the Government’s SEN policy to account. That is why we
have regular departmental questions and written parliamentary
questions. However, I add the caveat that I hope the Bill will ensure
that those mechanisms prove more fruitful in future. All hon. Members
can apply for Westminster Hall and Adjournment debates on SEN, or
request that one of the new topical debates is on SEN. In addition, the
Opposition can secure—and have done so—Opposition day
debates on SEN.
Parliament is often criticised
for being a talking shop that generates a lot of hot
air but does little. We all know that is not the case—far from
it—but the amendment would further the cause of those who
propagate such arguments. I know from my work on the Bill and from my
conversations before the ballot that most of us are fully aware of the
issues at stake. We also know what needs to be done to improve the
situation, and we all work hard to pursue that cause. Debate will
continue behind the scenes at varying degrees of ferocity, and I
welcome that. It is not necessary for us to restrict ourselves to one
annual debate, because we are getting a better deal without such a
statutory requirement.
The hon. Member for Basingstoke
said that SEN is a major concern, especially among parents who are
affected. It has a huge impact on their lives, and that is when they,
rightly, seek the help of their MP to support them through it. My case
load consists of some heart-rending cases in which parents have come to
me as a last resort. In such cases, MPs can have some success in
putting pressure on local authorities. My hon. Friend the Member for
Luton, North said that an annual report and debate would give us the
chance to put pressure on local authorities, but we should do that all
the time, not just once a
year.
Kelvin
Hopkins:
I have some sympathy with the amendment, but I do
not propose to vote for it should it be pressed to a Division. Above
all, we should ensure that the Bill becomes law, and we should not put
it at
risk by inserting things that the Government might not
be too keen on. I would vote with my hon. Friend on
this, even though I hope that we have serious debates—more than
one a year—on SEN. As I said on Second Reading, it is a major
problem in our educational
system.
Mrs.
Hodgson:
I agree. I hope that we have at least one such
debate a year, and perhaps more. One good aspect that we can take from
this debate is that we should all work together, on both sides of the
House, to ensure that we secure plenty of opportunity for SEN to be
debated through the instruments at our disposal. Clever cross-party
working could achieve such results. [Hon.
Members: “All-party groups.”] Yes; between
us, we are members of various all-party groups that relate to SEN
issues. We could secure all sorts of advances through those
groups.
In my opening
remarks, I did not thank the hon. Member for Bridgwater for his help
with the Bill’s inception. He is the chair of the all-party
group on dyslexia and specific learning difficulties, and we spoke
about SEN early on, when I was drawn in the private Member’s
Bill ballot. He supported me enormously through those early stages, and
I want to place on record my thanks to him.
Given my comments, I hope that
the hon. Member for Basingstoke will withdraw her
amendment.
11
am
Mrs.
Miller:
The debate has been useful. Sometimes the
amendments that one feels are of less consequence draw out deep-seated
concerns from hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. We heard
from not only my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater, but the hon.
Member for Luton, North. Even the Minister said that he has some
sympathy for what we are discussing. I will of course not forget to
mention the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, who was
speaking for the Liberal
Democrats.
I think
that there is a grain of concern in all parts of the Committee that the
issue of special educational needs does not always get the focus that
it requires and that the information that would be generated as a
result of the Bill being passed needs to be presented in the form that
is most usable. As has been mentioned, the Select Committee on
Children, Schools and Families found it difficult to look at the issue
regularly, perhaps because there are so many education issues that it
has to investigate at the
moment.
Perhaps the
hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West will consider
today’s discussion further and see whether it resonates with her
a little more between now and consideration on Report. However, I do
not want to jeopardise this important Bill and will withdraw the
amendment, although I hope that she has time to reflect on the debate.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Clause
1 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause 2
ordered to stand part of the Bill.
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