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.
Annette
Brooke: I want to make a few brief comments on amendment
231, which is important. I am not clear whether, as a consequence of
other amendments, the
number of learners with learning difficulties will be recorded when
adequate and suitable education has not been provided. I would have
thought it vital to collate this information because I suspect that
some local authorities perform better than others and this would
facilitate the spreading of good practice. I am not advocating an
increased level of bureaucracy or dictation from the centre, but it
would be useful information and compatible with the Bill of the hon.
Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West on special educational
needs information, which we wholeheartedly supported last
year.
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.
It is widely
recognised that young people travel across local authority boundaries
when they are accessing post-16 provision. Young people in Christchurch
may
regularly travel over the border into Bournemouth, for example, to
access some of the excellent provision at the Bournemouth and Poole
college. Therefore, it is clear that local authorities will need to
work together to secure the best provision across an area for their
resident learners. That is why we are introducing a requirement in new
section 15ZB, which will be inserted by this clause, for local
authorities to “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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