New Clause
1
Information
on school provision
‘(1)
Section 332A of the Education Act 1996 (c. 56) is amended as
follows.
(2) After subsection
(1) insert—
“(1A)
Information provided under subsection (1) shall include information on
all types of school provision available in any local educational
authority area which the authority determines is relevant to
them.”
(3) At the end of
subsection (3)
insert—
“which
shall include the annual publication of information provided under
subsection (1).”’.—[Annette
Brooke.]
Brought
up, and read the First
time.
Annette
Brooke:
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second
time.
I
am conscious of the hour and happy to take guidance so that we can
finish on time and perhaps return to the matter on Report, so I leave
it in your hands, Mr. Atkinson, to indicate whether I have
been talking for too
long.
In 2005-06 and
2006-07, the Education and Skills Committee touched on the issue of the
provision of information for parents. It has already been suggested
that we should be child-orientated, and I do not doubt that we should,
but some parents are more able than others to
establish what provision for special educational needs is on
offer.
I am sure that
the best local authorities provide all the information that the new
clause refers to, but all too often—I think
this will resonate with hon. Members—parents come to our
surgeries and say, “We have been offered only this school, but
having visited it, we do not think it is right for our child.”
The process can be very prescriptive, with the local authority knowing
what is best. Although we have the so-called independent advice within
the local authority, as I have mentioned, sadly there is not a great
deal of trust that that advice will be independent.
The purpose of the new
clause—I must thank the Bill Clerks for putting it in this form
for me—is to amend the Education Act 1996. I simply envisage
each local authority having a clear publication that covers the special
schools within its area, the nature of any specialities within them and
the schools where there is inclusion but perhaps also a special unit on
site.
It
is difficult for parents who do not have a background knowledge of
education and schools to know that there might be a special dyslexia
unit, for example, on the main school site. There might be a special
unit that gives additional support for the deaf. I do not think that
that information is available for all parents, and I feel that the
child benefits when the parent is motivated to do the very best for the
child.
Parents want
the best provision for their children, but feel so thwarted at the
moment and get doors shut in their face. This is
basic information. With more specialist SEN, provision in a
neighbouring LEA may need to be accessed. Each LEA has this type of
information in a very simple form, and making it available would make
life so much easier for parents. Let us face it: parents go through a
constant battle when they have children with SEN. This change would
make life so much better for them as it offers clear, honest and simple
information. It would not place a huge burden on the local
authority.
Kelvin
Hopkins:
I applaud the hon. Lady for raising the issue,
whether or not the new clause is accepted. It goes right to the heart
of the problem of special needs: the interface between the parents of a
child with difficulties and the local authority. The more that can be
done to help at that level, the better we will be able to deal with
these problems in future. Most of us have had serious difficulties with
local authorities when they think that they know best and they do not.
In the end, with my support, parents have won special provision for
their children against the wishes of the local
authority.
A local
authority may not be that keen on presenting information on what is
available because more parents will come forward saying that their
child has problems and wanting them to be dealt with in a particular
way. The issue will go on and we will debate it further. I
want the Government to make recommendations to local
authorities on special needs provision in their areas and not allow
local authorities to backslide, either for financial reasons or, often,
for ideological reasons, because they do not believe that special needs
provision is appropriate and are perhaps blanket inclusion ideologues.
I have come across such examples,
too.
I support the
hon. Lady in raising the issue. It may not get into the Bill, but we
should discuss it for the
future.
Mrs.
Miller:
I want to say a few words on the new
clause. Many aspects of it overlap with issues that
we have already debated in relation to the annual publication of
information, and the comments of the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and
North Poole on provision of information for parents and the importance
of transparency echoed parts of my amendment No. 3. We are not working
together on this, yet there are many similar
elements.
Rather than
pushing the matter to a vote, I urge the hon. Member
for Gateshead, East and Washington, West to look at how the Bill might
be amended on Report to reflect some elements of the new clause,
particularly the importance of transparency in the information that is
available for parents. That is something I know about on a constituency
level. I have had cases of girls with autism and tried to find the most
appropriate ways of supporting them. That is very difficult, and the
information is not readily
available.
Again,
there is a need for information collected under the Bill to be
presented in a usable format for hon. Members and those beyond the
House.
Kevin
Brennan:
I shall be as brief as possible. There is a
laudable aim behind the amendment, which is to ensure that parents of
children with SEN are provided with full information on the range of
provision for such children in their own and surrounding areas. There
is, however, an existing duty on local authorities to provide
information on their arrangements for SEN, including information on
planning and reviewing SEN provision in their
area.
Last year, in
relation to parent partnership services, we published further exemplary
guidance, which set out what we considered minimum good practice and
best practice, and encouraged local authorities and services to aspire
to the latter in relation to providing that
information.
Mr.
Liddell-Grainger:
That is a valid point about the parent
partnership. One problem with the parent partnership is that it is
still controlled by the LEAs. Will the Minister look at a way to
empower the parent partnership in its own right, rather than as part of
an LEA, to do the job that he rightly and eloquently suggests that it
should?
Kevin
Brennan:
Section 332A of the 1996 Act, as inserted by the
Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001, ensures that
authorities must have regard to any guidance from the Secretary of
State in making such arrangements. It requires them to take any steps
that they consider appropriate to make the parent partnership services
known to parents, head teachers and proprietors of schools. As I said,
we have issued exemplary guidance to encourage them to aspire to and
follow best practice in their dealings with parent partnership
services. At this stage, it is appropriate that they should be linked
with the local authority and that the local authority should follow
best practice as laid out in the exemplary guidance that we set out
just last year.
Under
the Childcare Act 2006, furthermore, local authorities will have a duty
from 1 April to provide information, advice and assistance to parents
or prospective parents of children and young people up to
the age of 20. Our guidance makes it clear that
information that may be of benefit to parents includes information on
schools, including details of their location, composite prospectus,
behaviour units and so on. That further strengthens parents’
rights to information, and I therefore encourage the hon. Member for
Mid-Dorset and North Poole to withdraw the
motion.
Mrs.
Hodgson:
The new clause relates to a new section of the
1996 Act that was inserted by the 2001 Act. That new section ensures
that parent partnership services are made available to parents of
children with special educational needs.
The new
clause is intended to increase the information available to parents,
which is a laudable aim, but it is not consistent with the
Bill’s stated objectives. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and
North Poole talked about signposting and her major concerns about local
authorities directing parents to the right schools. The issue is
particularly problematic for parents with children who have SEN but no
statement.
A
statement brings with it more support, and parents can name whichever
school they want, but my concern is about children who do not have a
statement and who do not necessarily get the same support. Different
schools can offer all sorts of facilities, but parents might not know
what is available. I have highlighted that problem in my own borough,
and I therefore have a lot of sympathy with the motive behind the new
clause. It is vital that all parents—not just pushy
parents—get the correct
information.
My hon.
Friend the Member for Luton, North said that, as an MP, he had helped
to secure the provision that parents needed for their children. As MPs,
we are, to an extent, increasingly having to fulfil the parent
partnership role.
The hon.
Member for Basingstoke mentioned the need for transparency and for
information to be available
on schools—this goes back to an earlier amendment—to help
parents to find the right school and secure the right provision. She
asked me to look again at that, and I certainly will. I will have
discussions with the Minister before we consider the Bill on Report to
ensure that if such a provision cannot be included in the Bill, we can
have some assurances on
guidelines.
Mrs.
Miller:
Excuse my ignorance, but will the hon. Lady be
able to introduce more specific regulations on the issue if the Bill is
passed, or is that not part of the
process?
Mrs.
Hodgson:
The Minister will keep me right on the matter,
but I do not think that I could introduce
regulations. I could have conversations with the
Minister, who, in turn, could assure us about the direction in which
the matter may go. Our discussion this morning will help that process,
but I will also hold discussions on what assurances may be given in
that regard.
I hope
that the parent partnership service is already providing information on
locally available services to the parents of children with special
educational needs. If that is not the case, questions definitely need
to be
answered.
11.15
am
Mr.
Liddell-Grainger:
What is the hon. Lady’s
experience of parent partnership services in her area? Mine is that it
cannot do the job that it is set up to do, because of the constraints
of the local education authority. The service is not able to encompass
the parents whom it should cover, because it is still controlled by the
local education authorities, as the Minister rightly said. My
experience is not right, and I do not recognise what the hon. Lady is
saying.
Mrs.
Hodgson:
The independence of parent partnership services
is a matter for consideration. They are supposed to be independent of
the local authority and able to give impartial advice. Whether that is
the case among all local authorities, I do not know. When my son was
statemented in Merton, the parent partnership officer gave me impartial
advice and I felt that there was an element of independence, but I do
not know whether that is necessarily the case
everywhere.
My
main concern about the new clause is that it would require local
authorities to publish annually all the information that their parent
partnership services provide to parents. I do not feel that that would
represent value for money or achieve any significant outcome for the
support available to children with SEN. It is also important to
consider whether any value would be added to overall SEN provision when
obligations are already in place on local authorities to publish
information about such arrangements. Minimum standards are already in
place for parent partnership services and guidance is published by the
Government. Of course we should try to avoid minimum targets and
encourage targets to be set at a level that delivers maximum support
for parents and pupils alike. All those things considered, I ask the
hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole to withdraw the
motion.
Annette
Brooke:
I thank the hon. Lady for her
response. I will indeed withdraw the motion in due course, but I should
like to revisit the issue on
Report.
I
was chairman of education at Poole borough council when the parent
support partnership was introduced, and I was excited that we had the
money and authority to employ such a person. That was probably in 1997.
Eleven years on, I am very sad that constituent after constituent tells
me that they have no confidence that the advice is independent. I am
aware that the system is not
working.
The
other purpose of the new clause is to give parents an idea of what
provision is available, perhaps a mile away, in a separate local
authority.
Kelvin
Hopkins:
I agree entirely. Would it not be a
good idea to have reports from local authorities
throughout the country, so that we could look for examples of best
practice that could be emulated
elsewhere?
Annette
Brooke:
My new clause is not as ambitious as that,
although I am sure that it is a good idea, and I thank the hon.
Gentleman for his
intervention.
The new
clause is intended not to be a burden, but simply to outline the
provision that is available, so that parents may pick up details easily
of the provision that could be only a mile away. In my area, instead of
one county council, there are now two unitary authorities and a county
council. Special schools, for example, have ended up being located not
in the best places for the population or for local authorities seeking
to buy places from one another. Action is taking place to conceal
provision just over the boundary. I should like the Government to
reconsider providing parents with a simple pamphlet, not entangled with
wider information from the information services, that contains details
on surrounding local authorities as well as their own. I understand
that no great progress has been made towards the provision that is
supposed to be coming on stream under the Child Care Act 2006. However,
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
motion.
Motion and
clause, by leave,
withdrawn.
Question
proposed, That the Chairman do report the Bill to the
House.
Mrs.
Hodgson:
I should like to thank you, Mr.
Atkinson, for your chairmanship of our proceedings. The timing has been
exemplary and spot on. I thank all Members present for their
co-operation in getting through the Committee’s proceedings in
one sitting. The Committee has been excellent and the contributions
from Members on both sides have been of a very high standard, which
demonstrates the knowledge available to us on this subject. I thank
them for the time that they took to prepare their contributions, and I
look forward to the proceedings on
Report.
Mrs.
Miller:
I echo those thanks for your excellent
chairmanship of the Committee, Mr. Atkinson. It is good that
such an important Bill has moved through Committee in such a timely
manner. I wish the Bill well on Report, and I wish the hon. Lady well
in her discussions with ministerial colleagues on some of the issues
raised today.
Annette
Brooke:
I add my thanks to you, Mr.
Atkinson—it would be remiss of me not to. We have had very
interesting debates, and I hope that they will move some issues
forward. I look forward to the next stage and, most of all, to the
enactment of the
Bill.
The
Chairman:
I congratulate my near neighbour, the hon.
Member for Gateshead, East and Washington,
West, on the professional way in which she presented the Bill. I wish it
good fortune on
Report.
Question
put and agreed
to.
Bill to be
reported, without
amendment.
Committee
rose at twenty-two minutes past Eleven
o’clock.
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