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Session 2009 - 10 Publications on the internet Children, Schools and Families |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Sarah
Davies, Sara Howe, Committee
Clerks attended the
Committee WitnessesBrian
Lamb, Chair, Special Educational Consortium and author of Lamb
Inquiry: Special educational needs and parental
confidence John
Friel, Barrister at
Law Graham
Badman, author of a report to the Secretary of State on the
Review of Elective Home Education in
England Fiona
Nicholson, Trustee, Education
Otherwise Chloe
Watson, Chair, Home Educated Youth
Council Sir
Paul Ennals, Chief Executive, National Childrens
Bureau Beth
Reid, Policy Manager, National Autistic
Society Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 19 January 2010(Afternoon)[Mr. David Amess in the Chair]Children, Schools and Families BillWritten evidence reported to the HouseCS01
National Childrens
Bureau CS02
Mr. Imran
Shah CS03
Family Planning
Association CS04
Mr. Imran Shah and Ms Betsy
Anderson CS05
Mrs. Roxanne
Featherstone CS06
Family Education
Trust CS07
Mr. Imran Shah and Ms Cintha
Anderson CS08
Mr. James
Chilton CS09
Edge
Foundation CS10
National Union of
Teachers CS11
Education
Otherwise CS12
National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women
Teachers 4
pm
The
Committee deliberated in
private. 4.5
pm On
resuming
That
the programme order agreed by the Committee this morning be amended, to
add the Oxford Centre for Family Law and Policy to the list of
witnesses for the second evidence session on Thursday
afternoon. In
light of what Mr. Gibb asked this morning, we have agreed to
amend the programme motion to allow a change of witness on Thursday
afternoon. It is my intention to run the Committee in as conciliatory
and reasonable a way as possible. It is a reasonable request, so we
have amended the programme motion accordingly.
Question
put and agreed to.
4.6
pm
The
Chairman: I welcome our two witnesses. Kindly introduce
yourselves, and perhaps you would comment briefly on the
Bill.
Brian
Lamb: I am Brian Lamb, chair of the Special
Educational Consortium. I also chair the Lamb inquiry into parental
confidence in special educational needs. Although the Committee will
obviously want to go into some detail, both the SEC and I, in my role
as chairman of the inquiry, welcome the Bill.
What is
particularly heartening from the inquirys point of view is that
the Bill legislates in two key areas in which we were keen to see the
Government take action. The first is the right of appeal against a
local authoritys determination of a statement. Currently, when
the local authoritys statement is reviewed, if the
parent is not happy with something in it or wants to make amendments to
it, they cannot. The Bill will change that. Secondly, the Bill will
ensure that Ofsted does inspections specifically for the content of
special educational needs provision within schools, whereas that was
not part of the 2005 Act. On those two points, we particularly welcome
the Bill.
More broadly,
we are interested in the concept of parent guarantees and how that
might interface with the SEN framework. We have questions that we would
like to discuss about how home agreements will work, especially in
relation to behaviour. We also have some concerns about home education,
but we broadly welcome the
Bill. John
Friel: Good afternoon. I suppose that I am one of the
two main people behind the idea of the 1993 reforms, which were
presented by Lord Campbell of Alloway and me on behalf of a large group
of education charities, producing the current system and reforming the
1981 Act. As you have probably read, I have a long association with the
field. I myself have a learning difficulty, as do all my children to
one degree or another. Some have statements, some do not. I can claim
that my eldest daughter is one of the few dyslexic educational
psychologists in the field. I practise in the field and am still a
trustee or governor of a number of charities.
I, equally,
think that the Bill is a good idea. It could be far more extensive, but
reality must be considered. The proposals are good, but they have
substantial defects. They could result in a fiat for litigation, so I
would like to address some sensible suggestionsI hope that they
are sensible; that is your decision, not mineas to how they
could be improved and tightened. The proposals were long needed. A
number of reforms are probably just as needed, but they are not capable
of being put through in a Bill such as thisone must be
sensible. However, the proposals ought to work sensibly and
effectively, and I would like to talk about
that.
Q
5252Tim
Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con): The proposals
in the Bill are quite modest and cover just two clauses. They have
generally been met with a wide welcome, but given Brian Lambs
very worthwhile study in your inquiry, and that we are limiting the
proposals in the Bill to seeing how well schools take account of
special educational needs and statements, are your comments about what
is not here, Mr. Friel, rather way down the line? What may
be required is better attention to how we provide statements of special
educational needs, how appropriate they are and how well they are
monitored by the parents and councils of the children involved. Will
the proposals, in your view, stand alone in bringing reasonable
improvement, or are they only scratching the surface? What specific
things could be added, notwithstanding your comments about how that
might take a Bill all on its own, Mr. Friel? What could
enhance the proposals we are considering in the
Bill? John
Friel: Well, I take the view that they are providing
much needed, additional effective methodology in the current
systemwithout looking at the issues you have just
addressednamely: how local authorities monitor the
effectiveness of statements, whether statements are
themselves appropriately subject to a decision-making process that is
fair and proper and whether the system itself needs a considerable
review. That is something Mr. Lamb looked at in his inquiry.
It has been looked at by the parliamentary Education Committee in much
more detailtaking evidence from a much wider perspective, I
have to sayand by Sir Robert Balchin. Both those conclusions
were in favour of greater change, but Mr. Lamb not so,
although he made a number of significant recommendations, many of which
have not been adopted. For the purposes of the Bill, one needs to say
that the fact that there are only two major statutory proposals does
not mean that the statutory reforms proposed in the Bill should not be
more
extensive. You
have talked about statements. I remind the Committee about the majority
of children with special needsthere is great debate over the
percentage, but there are far more of them than the 2 per cent.
identified in the code of practiceand I particularly agree with
Mr. Lamb, who produced slight, written bullet points on the
subject, that the home-school agreement provisions should include
reference to special educational needs and provision, and that the
omission of such a reference is a great defect in the system. However,
if you are going to do that, you need to think in my viewpurely
personalabout the small Bill proposed in Mr.
Lambs inquiry. That is a separate Bill, which includes
reconsideration of the exclusion of young persons with special
educational needs if they are about to be
excluded. My
concern is that section 317 of the current legislation, which is
unamended, requires the identification by the local authority of the
governing body of a school. After identification, there is a
lets hope we do something provision and then a
complete gap. If we are going to provide that we review the situation
on exclusion, my view is that the additional special needs Bill creates
one statutory provision that is out of step with the rest, and does not
link with identification, assessment and provision. There is a large
gap in the legislation dealing with those without a statement, which is
precisely on the issue of identification, assessment and provision.
While I welcome Mr. Lambs proposal, because far too
many children with special needs are being excluded, we need to stop
getting to that point. Therefore, I suggest that the home-school
agreement provisions should require, under, I think, section 4, a
parental home-school agreement. I forget what it is called under
statute, but we want the provision to refer to the schools
intention to identify and deliver provision for a child with special
needs. In addition, after it has provided for the identification,
section 317 would need an amendment to review the reasonable
adjustments under the proposals based on Mr. Lambs
inquiry and the making of provision for those with special needs. There
is a lamentable gap in the legislation in that area for those who do
not have a statement. There may be room for covering some of the
defects by looking at those
provisions.
Brian
Lamb: Obviously, I could have recommended more
legislation. I thought that the key thing we needed to address,
whatever else happens to the system, was looking at the whole
statementing process. We have a lot of consensus about that, but what I
recommended. and what has been accepted, is that we look much more
at how statements are actually written and produced, and much more at
specifying what outcomes we are trying to intend in statements rather
than, as at the moment, the inputs that go into them. In my view and
that of the inquiry, there has been too much argument over the amount
of learning support assistance time, for example, which has almost
become the currency of statements, rather than looking at the outcomes
we were trying to achieve for the child, and what provision therefore
needed to be put in place to achieve those
outcomes. It
seemed to me that if we could get much better focus on how statements
were written and their specificity, it would go a long way to
addressing some of peoples concerns about what parents do not
get from statements. Having acknowledged that, I also recommended
evaluation, which there will be, of local authorities that have put
assessment at arms length from their provision of services.
During the inquiry, we identified a number of authorities that to
different extents have started to separate assessment from
provision.
The other
accusation has always been that some authorities actually skew or
fetter the statement in some way to match it to the available
provision. We found only anecdotal evidence of that, but it is very
difficult to get at because who would admit it if they were doing it?
We found what we called a settled culture of sometimes assessing
against what they knew the local authority already provided. There was
not enough evidence to legislate for some overturning of the framework
at that point, but we were very interested and recommended evaluating
whether splitting the two could actually lead to greater improvement.
Again, there is activity on that and if the evidence actually supported
it, there is certainly a lot of consensus that we should move more in
that direction, but until we have the evidence, it needs to be
tested. Lastly,
Mr. Friel alluded to the other legislation that is going
through. The Government have accepted our recommendations that through
the Equality Bill we will move the exemption on auxiliary aids. That is
fundamentally significant in bringing together the SEN framework with
the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 framework, as was, and filling a
very big gap in the area that Mr. Friel was talking about,
which is auxiliary aids and early intervention in
schools. My
other key point, which was drummed home to us again and again in the
inquiry, is that parents do not want to avail themselves of the
framework unless they have to. They want as much provision delivered
as early on in the process as possible, so that less and
less they have to go up the system looking for the support
they
need.
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©Parliamentary copyright 2010 | Prepared 20 January 2010 |