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Mr. Hayes: I think that I can be fairly brief on this subject, although it deals with important matters. As the Minister implied, it concerns eligibility for learning difficulty assessments, and we spoke about the importance of engaging people with learning difficulties who are not currently engaged.
The Committee took evidence from Clare Tickell of Action for Children and Anne Longfield from 4Children, who said that the Bill would not go far enough in examining the needs of disadvantaged and disabled young people. My question to the Minister is threefold. Do these proposals go far enough on eligibility and engagement? Are they clear enough about implementation? What are the “arrangements” that are talked about in the proposals?
I am mindful of the amendments we discussed earlier, which were tabled by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole. I am concerned about whether the needs of disabled learners and those with learning difficulties will be defined clearly enough and early enough, and whether the provision—how it is quantified and specified—will meet those demands. The Minister should say something more about that.
Will enough be done to ensure that assessments are updated? The Minister knows that I have said repeatedly in Committee and on the Floor of the House that these needs are often dynamic and, because of that, there must be dynamic provision. Responsiveness is critical. Is he satisfied with the state of play in this area? We must be careful how we proceed on the basis of existing good practice and less good practice. How do other educational institutions that may require learning difficulty assessments fit in with these provisions? We heard the witnesses I mentioned questioned by Members from all parts of the Committee and I have details of that but for the sake of brevity I will not go further. I hope the Minister will be able to offer assurances on the matters I have raised.
Mrs. Hodgson: I, too, tabled amendment 231 intending that it would be a probing one. I hope it gives the Minister the opportunity to explain how LEAs will perform their duty towards learners with difficulties and how that performance will be audited, especially in relation to failure to provide suitable education to learners with more complex needs and how that will that be monitored and addressed. It is all very well making sure that the onus is on LEAs to perform but we have to be able to measure that performance for all children especially those with the most complex needs. My private Member’s Bill—now the Special Educational Needs (Information) Act 2008—places a duty on the Secretary of State to collect and publish better information from local authorities on all children with SEN and to monitor their outcomes. That legislation applies to children of school age, so this amendment fits nicely with it, extending the duty to young people over compulsory school age to ensure that when children with SEN leave school they and their needs do not just drop off a precipice into a ravine of unmet need, which can lead to a bleak and rather unfulfilled future.
Jim Knight: The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings asked three questions. The answer to the first two is yes. In respect of the third—who will be eligible for a learning difficulty assessment—local authorities have a duty to arrange for a learning difficulty assessment for a young person who has a statement of special educational needs and who the LEA believes will leave school at the end of his or her last year of compulsory schooling and will go on to post-16 education or training or higher education. Local authorities also have a duty to arrange a learning difficulty assessment for a young person who is over compulsory school age and has a statement of special educational needs and whom the local authority believes will leave school to receive post-16 education or training of higher education. Local authorities have the power to arrange for learning difficulty assessments where a young person has a learning difficulty but does not have a statement. Clearly there are many instances where an assessment is appropriate for that last group and local authorities could be legally challenged if there is an unreasonable failure to exercise their power. Statutory guidance, which we will be publishing shortly for consultation, will make it clear that where a young person would benefit from an assessment they should get one.
I pay tribute to the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West through her private Member’s Bill and other campaigning in respect of information relating to special educational needs. Thanks to her Act, we plan to publish in September and at least annually thereafter information in respect of SEN. In the first year, we will rely heavily upon existing sources of information and relevant resource findings, but they will be packaged in ways that will make them much more accessible and useful to those interested in SEN.
This year’s work will include developing ways in which information will be made more available. Professionals and partners are advising us on how best to use a range of media, but over the long term we plan to develop and make available much greater ranges of information. Those ranges will perhaps include information on areas where children live; regular data on attainment at national and local level; indicators of parents’ experience of the services that they receive; and how children with SEN feel about various aspects of their lives. Much can be obtained by adapting existing surveys and by merging databases while paying strict attention to data protection, confidentiality issues and so on. On the basis of those reassurances, I hope that the Government’s amendments will be approved.
Mr. Hayes: There are two other matters that the Minister either forgot or avoided. The first relates to existing practice on the issue and the possibility of developing better practice; the other matter centres on the provision’s consistency in relation to schools and other education providers. Will the Minister comment on those points?
Jim Knight: I have responded once already and have set out the existing practice in terms of information and legislation on assessment. The assessment and its implementation will inform the young person’s action plan, which will continue to be refined and is outlined in the draft statutory guidance on which we will be consulting. Many of the answers to any outstanding questions that the hon. Gentleman may have will be found in that guidance once it is published.
Amendment 264 agreed to.
Amendment made: 265, in clause 40, page 25, leave out lines 1 to 3.—(Jim Knight.)
This amendment is consequent on amendment 282.
Jim Knight: I beg to move amendment 266, in clause 40, page 25, line 12, leave out from ‘order’ to end of line 13.
This amendment is consequent on amendment 271.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to take Government amendments 270, 271 and 280.
Jim Knight: These are technical amendments.
Amendment 266 agreed to.
Annette Brooke: I beg to move amendment 118, in clause 40, page 25, line 15, after ‘other’, insert
‘, further education colleges, sixth form colleges, schools with sixth forms and academies with sixth forms,’.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 119, in clause 40, page 25, line 16, at end add—
‘( ) The Secretary of State must specifiy areas into which England is to be divided for the purposes of section 15ZA, and must publish any specification or revised specification under this section.’.
Annette Brooke: The two amendments, of which amendment 118 is the most specific in terms of the Bill’s content, seek clarification on how sub-regional groups work. Under the new system as we understand it, local authorities will directly fund and commission education in sixth-form colleges. Approximately 43 sub-regional groups of local authorities will be established to commission the 16-to-19 education and training in further education colleges, although the funding will still come directly from the local authority. It has been suggested that that model could create complications and the possibility of duplication and conflict between different agencies. That could potentially absorb management time and take resources away from teaching and learning. There is also a perceived risk that different levels of commissioning will create a two-tier relationship in some areas, with the local authority favouring one group of institutions over another. Therefore, the institutions involved in this system are really seeking some reassurance about how it is intended to work and indeed how it will work in practice.
12.30 pm
I just want to make some general points about the sub-regional groupings of local authorities, and I believe that meetings on this subject have already commenced. Clearly, these groupings could potentially perform a very helpful role in areas where there is significant travel across local authority boundaries and where the local authorities are prepared to work together to achieve economies of scale, which is particularly true for my part of the world, in fact.
It is also important that local authorities consider their plans collectively and that the regional forum will actually be useful. Decisions must be made about specialist provision, courses for students with learning difficulties and capital projects. One can see the point of the regional focus. The concern is that the regional layer must add value to the system by acting quickly and the problem that is perceived is that it will be too bureaucratic and that the regional manager will start trying to micro-manage, in the same way that we perhaps have central Government micro-managing at the moment. So there are genuine concerns.
Furthermore, in relation to amendment 119, it will be very difficult to get the sub-regional boundaries right first time. In fact, I have already had representations from people saying that it is perceived that the sub-regional boundary is not really a sensible boundary and that it does not fit with travel to study. So it is rather important to establish that the boundaries are not written in stone and that they have got to be changed to meet with the reality on the ground. I would suggest that it is very, very difficult to draw those boundaries up in Westminster.
Having made those comments, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and reassurances.
Jim Knight: I will seek to give the reassurances that the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole seeks by providing a more detailed explanation of how the proposed sub-regional groupings of local authorities will function.
“co-operate with each other in performing their duties”.
In fulfilling that requirement, local authorities will come together in these sub-regional groupings, which will broadly reflect the travel to learn patterns of young people and represent a strong correlation with the way that learners move around the country.
The hon. Lady is right that we do not want to impose this system from Whitehall; we want authorities to come together willingly to help to create the system. In her area, which is also my area and indeed your area, Mr. Chope, the authorities of Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole have come together themselves because they want to form a sub-regional grouping, and that seems to be extremely sensible.
There are 41 such groupings that have emerged and we are discussing some of them. As I say, we do not want to impose things; we expect sub-regional groups to govern themselves, but not so rigidly that changes cannot happen. So we are scrutinising these proposals with local authorities, but we do not want to create instability by saying that they will not happen as they are currently drawn up and that there might be some necessary changes right on the margins.
Annette Brooke: I think that I may be about to ask a question that has some relevance to Christchurch. Of course, Brockenhurst college serves the Christchurch area and part of the Bournemouth area, but it would fall into the Hampshire grouping. Perhaps, therefore, the Minister could just explain how that would work. It would be very helpful for us locally if he could do so.
Jim Knight: Brockenhurst college is a particularly interesting example, as it is in not only a different sub-regional group, but a different regional group. That is where the role of the YPLA can have some importance: as a national agency it has the ability, if it is not possible to have a discussion between local authorities, to broker that so that Brockenhurst college can continue to have a single conversation. One would assume that that conversation would be with officials in Winchester, because they are in the Hampshire authority area, and about the commissioning needs. That will have taken into account the needs of learners in the east of Dorset and those few who might be in the Bournemouth and Poole area. Their local authority would anticipate the demand that would need to be commissioned from Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole.
With regard to those who want to go to Brockenhurst college, that would be understood by the YPLA, which can then feed those needs into the discussion within the sub-regional groups of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Southampton and Portsmouth about the commissioning required from Brockenhurst. Once all of that has been agreed and crunched through, facilitated by the YPLA, it will be like a serene swan: on the surface there will be one nice conversation between Hampshire and Brockenhurst college, but beneath the surface there will be a certain amount of activity between the various authorities that have learners who want to learn in that college.
I am absolutely confident that the delivery mechanism that was set out, which is not so radically different from that which we have at the moment, will be much more receptive in meeting the demands of learners and anticipating those demands so that this planned approach is more accurate than the current system, which is very much based on history, rather than a good understanding of local demand.
Amendment 118 would extend the requirement on local authorities to co-operate with providers as well as each other. Local authorities will ultimately be responsible for taking provider mutual decisions on what provision will best meet the needs of its learners, and sub-regional groupings will then have a role in ensuring that individual local authority commissioning decisions reflect the full needs of learners across local authority areas and are well planned at a sub-regional level.
We are clear that colleges and other providers will have an important role to play by entering into ongoing dialogue with local authorities through the commissioning cycle, but as I have said, it will be a question of local authorities being able to understand the supply of provision, anticipating and planning demand well. All of that must be informed by history and by other intelligence that only local authorities will have, and that will be a step forward from our current position. That brokering will then be carried out at a sub-regional basis, facilitated by the YPLA.
Amendment 119 would require the Secretary of State legally to designate the sub-regional groupings. We do not think that it is necessary to do so, because of all the flexibility we have set out. I hope that that reassures the hon. Lady on how local authorities will come together and that she will withdraw her amendment.
 
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