Assistive Technology: Support for Special Educational Needs

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for his tireless work in this area and for tabling this important debate. People talk about your Lordships’ House and the expertise that resides within it, and this debate was an example of very deep experience and insight.

As we heard, many of your Lordships have personally benefited from assistive technology or know people who have. Such technology can help reduce barriers to learning for students with special educational needs and disabilities. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, reminded us of how things were—not in a good way—with the episode of her fellow student and the tape recorder. We all hope that such episodes are behind children and students in classrooms today.

As your Lordships noted, we published a rapid literature review of assistive technology in 2020. That found that assistive technology is underused in education, and it identified strong and exceedingly clear evidence of the benefits of specific types of assistive technology, such as alternative and augmented communication devices.

My noble friend Lord Holmes challenged me to assure the Committee that all students who need access to devices will get it. As he knows better than anyone, the question is more complicated than that. It is about getting not just the devices but the support to make sure they are used effectively. I hope my noble friend will join me in recognising that the Government made a huge investment for all children during the pandemic, of over £0.5 billion—£520 million—to provide just under 2 million devices for learning and training, including on the effective use of assistive technology. The technology sector has also invested heavily in developing built-in accessibility features. That means that schools and colleges, now more than ever, have greater access to mainstream assistive technology.

The specialist assistive technology market is also growing at pace, with products such as alternative and augmentative communication devices becoming cheaper, smaller and easier to maintain. However, we want to develop a more robust understanding of the potential benefits of using built-in assistive technology features to seamlessly support SEND learners, as well as their peers—including, for example, those for whom English is an additional language.

We also know that, for a long time, teachers have found assistive technology difficult to use. In our 2021 edtech landscape survey, 57% of teachers said that software was only sometimes or rarely supporting their SEND pupils. That is why, last year, we went ahead and piloted training to increase school staff confidence and capability in using assistive technology. We initially trained staff at 79 mainstream schools in England and conducted an independent evaluation, which gave us promising results, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross. Some 75% of participants said the training had contributed or would contribute to improvements in the support for pupils with SEND to a great or moderate extent. Three-quarters of participants also thought it would remove barriers to learning for children with SEND.

Following those promising results, we are running a second training programme over a longer period, with about 150 schools. The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, challenged why this was a smaller increment. There will also be a more in-depth evaluation. The difference in the second study is in exploring the longer-term impact of assistive technology training on schools, staff and learners, so that we have the fullest possible picture of how we can support wider SEND CPD before potentially rolling it out further. There is clearly an option, once we have all the evidence and understand what the evaluation is telling us. One option is to build this kind of training into SEND CPD or wider staff training, and we will also consider how to apply it within FE colleges and special schools.

We learned a great deal about the use of technology in education during the pandemic. We learned that education requires more than a device and an app. We are clear that the use of technology in a classroom should be pedagogically driven and informed by best practice. We are working with leaders, researchers and industry to build the strongest possible evidence base for the effective use of technology and to make sure, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, that we give students the right tools, at the right time.

We also need and appreciate the work that the edtech industry does with us to make sure that the evidence base is as robust as possible. That includes thinking hard about what data we collect and at what level of granularity.

Of course, effective assistive technology use also requires strong SEND provision at every level. That is why our SEND and alternative provision improvement plan sets out the work we will do to ensure that all children receive the support they need early in their educational journey and, crucially, that the support stays with them for as long as they need it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, emphasised the importance of early identification, and we agree with them absolutely. We believe and hope that our national standards will create a system which allows for earlier, more accurate and more consistent identification of need so that support can be targeted most effectively.

As for the issues around employment, my noble friend Lord Shinkwin raised some powerful examples in his speech. I would be delighted to write to him in response to his question about the APPG’s report. I also very much welcome his emphasis on careers and on the co-creation of materials with people who have special educational needs and disabilities.

A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Holmes, raised the issue of an adjustment passport. I think noble Lords will be aware that we have been working with the Department for Work and Pensions to pilot such a passport to smooth the transition into employment and to support people when they are changing jobs, including people with special educational needs and disabilities. That passport will capture an individual’s in-work support needs, including their assistive technology requirements, and empower them to have more confident discussions with employers.

I know that the Department for Work and Pensions has also been working in partnership with colleagues at Microsoft to train work coaches on accessibility features such as Immersive Reader and Magnifier, using technology to create accessible experiences for jobseekers with special educational needs and disabilities.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, talked about the importance of staff training and referred to the new SENCO NPQ. We believe that this will play an important role in achieving the goals we and the Committee have to improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND by ensuring that SENCOs receive consistent, high-quality, evidence-based and practical training. We are working with the Education Endowment Foundation, and we have a SEND expert in the role of lead drafter in the drafting and preparation of the qualification.

My noble friend Lord Holmes asked about work in relation to DSA; I thank him again for his report. As my noble friend knows, students have told the Student Loans Company that the current process is extremely long and complicated. We heard examples of that in the Committee this afternoon. Students have had to contact multiple companies to get the equipment they need. We really believe that the new service will be much more streamlined, and that the experience for students will be very much improved, including in relation to the delivery of assistive technology, familiarisation and training in its use, and ongoing support afterwards.

In relation to my noble friend’s question about the disability pay gap, the data I have about the median pay of disabled and non-disabled employees is that the gap in 2019 was 14.1%. It fell slightly to 13.8% in 2021.

My noble friend Lord Holmes also asked about the centre for assistive technology. We have a commitment in the National Disability Strategy, but it is currently paused due to the High Court ruling because of the consultation not complying with the rules. I am happy to write to him with more detail on that.

I close by thanking all noble Lords for sharing their experiences and for their questions. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, talked about pressure needing to be applied to His Majesty’s Government to focus on this issue. I stress that no pressure is needed: this is very much in our sights, and we share the aspiration of the noble Lord and of my noble friends Lord Holmes and Lord Shinkwin that this is a way we can unleash the talent of people with special educational needs and disabilities and free them to achieve their potential. We will work tirelessly to do that.

Committee adjourned at 4.51 pm.