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Baroness Darcy (de Knayth): I thank the noble Baroness, Lady David, and the as ever down-to-earth and sensible noble Lord, Lord Addington, for their support. I also thank the Minister and his department who were very helpful beforehand in this matter. I appreciate the Minister's comment about this matter not being in primary legislation. A circular would be extremely satisfactory. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 185 to 188 not moved.]
Lord Tope moved Amendment No. 188A:
After Clause 62, insert the following new clause--
(" . A careers adviser shall, in making available careers education to a registered pupil who has special educational needs, have regard to any Code of Practice issued under section 313 of the Education Act 1996.").
The noble Lord said: The intention of this amendment is to probe, and secure clarification from, the Government on an issue debated in the other place in Standing Committee D on 16th January. The question was whether it was adequate simply to rely on guidance which the DfEE intended to issue to careers advisers that they should take account of the code of practice on SEN, or whether there was a need to insert the new clause, which forms this amendment, on to the face of the Bill to secure that widely shared objective. In a debate on an identical amendment moved at the final sitting of Standing Committee D, the Minister of State, Mr. Eric Forth, initially gave assurances he was confident that,
However, in his subsequent remarks the Minister appeared to equivocate on his opening position and acknowledged that he would be prepared to consider the matter further. He gave a commitment to see whether there would be any need to remedy the situation in practice. The Minister stated his intention to secure for himself further advice on this issue.
This new clause is intended merely to establish whether the Government consider that there is any need to make additional references to the SEN code of practice in the Bill. I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify the position. In that spirit, I beg to move.
Lord Henley: I can give an assurance that the appropriate legal duty to take account of the code in
Lord Tope: I am not convinced that that deals with the issue that I raised, but given the time of night I will wait to study it until a little later this morning. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 189 not moved.]
Lord Pearson of Rannoch moved Amendment No. 190:
"the statutory duty to ensure [that] the code (of practice on SEN) takes account of that is already in place".--[Official Report, Commons, 16/1/97; col.618.]
Before Clause 63, insert the following new clause--
(" . In section 316(1) of the Education Act 1996 (Children with special educational needs normally to be educated in mainstream schools), after the word "needs" there shall be inserted the words "who does not have a statement to the effect that he is mentally handicapped or that he suffers from learning disabilities and".").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 190 I should declare an interest as the father of a 16 year-old mentally handicapped child. Section 316 of the Education Act 1996 places a duty on LEAs and others to educate all special educational needs children in mainstream schools. That duty is qualified by the following four provisos. First, such mainstream education should not be incompatible with the wishes of the child's parents. Secondly, the mainstream school must be able to provide the special education that the child's learning difficulty calls for. Thirdly, the child's presence must not compromise the education of the other normal children. Fourthly, resources must be used efficiently. This amendment would remove mentally handicapped children from the scope of Section 316 and thus from the present presumption that they should be educated in a normal school. The amendment would do nothing to suggest that they would instead have to be educated in a special school. It would merely help to remove the very considerable difficulties that parents face when they want a special school for their child. Nor would the amendment do anything to frustrate the reasonable wishes of parents who want their mentally handicapped children to go to an ordinary school, which can work well for appropriate children in an adequate special unit. Of course, much may depend upon the degree of handicap of the child. By mentally handicapped children, I mean those who have a statement to the effect that they suffer from what are known in the jargon as learning disabilities.
The amendment would not affect other categories of SEN children who, as the Committee will be aware, amount to a very broad range of difficulty, disability and handicap. It refers only to mentally handicapped
I moved a similar amendment on 29th April l993 (Official Report, cols. 516 to 533) nearly four years ago, when we debated the Bill which introduced Section 316, as it now is. The Committee may recall that there was widespread sympathy for this amendment from all sides of the Chamber, but, to my regret, I did not ask for the opinion of noble Lords then. I say this because in the intervening four years it has become clear that the amendment was necessary then, and that none of the four provisos in Section 316 is working as the Government hoped that they would. The amendment is therefore even more urgent today.
At this late hour I shall not weary the Committee with too much detailed evidence, but as to the first proviso, the wishes of parents who want their mentally handicapped children to go to a special school are often being frustrated. As to the second proviso, those children are therefore often being forced into ordinary schools where adequate special provision is not genuinely available; and for the third proviso, this situation must clearly have a disruptive effect on the education of the other children in the schools in question.
Finally, the fourth proviso does not appear to be working either, because it is not necessarily proving cheaper to educate mentally handicapped children in mainstream schools. For example, I hear that one of the three special schools for children with severe learning disabilities in Doncaster is to close, although demands for its service remain as high as ever. It is not being closed because it is too expensive, but because some 960 non-teaching assistants are being employed in mainstream schools in the area to help in looking after those most unfortunate children, and those assistants' costs have to be met from the general SEN budget. I cast no aspersion upon Doncaster which is doubtless doing its best as a victim of the mainstream-at-any-price ideology which now so regrettably grips our education system.
But I cannot help wondering how those 960 non-teaching assistants are really helping the education of the special children in their care. Would the budget not be better directed towards special schooling with all the economies of scale and availability of special teaching which that would surely bring?
I hope that the Committee can accept that, as the father of a mentally handicapped child, I am not basing my case on saving money; I merely point out that even the fourth proviso of Section 316 is not working as perhaps it was hoped that it might. The other three provisos have proved to be the failure which nearly all noble Lords who spoke in our debate four years ago forecast they would be. Section 316 is therefore very frustrating and unfair to parents who wish to escape its effects. It is often damaging to their children, and it is then damaging to normal children in mainstream schools with whom they have to share 12.30 a.m.
Lord Rix: I read the amendment with incredulity. It seems to me to cast children with learning disabilities back into the dark ages before the Education Act 1970 to a time when we parents had to raise the money to build a school into which to put our children and partially trained teachers so that they might learn a few rudimentary facts of life. How far we have come since then can be judged by the fact that our children with special educational needs can now go to mainstream schools with appropriate support. Some do very well with GCSEs, jobs and even driving licences. Of course, parents, being naturally protective, wish to be able to choose between a special school and a mainstream school, but with the right support in the latter the choice is made easier. To bar them or their child from the possibility of that child entering a mainstream school seems to me both punitive and discriminatory.
The Committee may be interested to hear a few statistics about special needs education which I obtained today from the Library. In January 1996 there were 1,084,126 children with general special educational needs, of which 126,813 are in primary and secondary maintained mainstream schools in England with a statement. Amendment No. 190 would cut a swathe through those figures. It must be clear to the Committee that I hope that it and the Government will reject the amendment with little further ado.
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