Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review

Debate between Baroness Blower and Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Watson has had a good deal more time to look in detail at this Green Paper than I have, but I look forward to some conversations about it with the Minister. My question follows rather well from those of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness opposite. One issue about early intervention is that there is a paucity, not to say an absence, of the study of child development in the initial stages of teacher training and education. Frankly, if teachers are not exposed to that in their period of training, they will be ill equipped to recognise these difficulties early in their career. I implore the Minister to have a little look at initial teacher training and education, just to make sure that everything that we are saying is consistent, so we really can address the needs of all children.

Having said, that, we have had two Statements on education in two days—it is great, is it not—and there is a great deal to welcome in this Green Paper. However, we must all acknowledge that there is much more to do for children and young people with special needs and disabilities. We all, I hope, acknowledge that the challenges are not new. As it says in the Green Paper, the pandemic has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing difficulties. Some of us in this Chamber who have been teachers will know, and will have been having an uphill struggle in saying, that there is enormous unmet need and enormous challenges. However, the Green Paper also helpfully says, on page 13, that

“We need a system where decision-making is based on the needs of children and young people, not on location”.


That is absolutely right. If a child has a need, it should be met.

It may be that the standardisation of the education and healthcare plan will help with that, and it may also help, as I think it suggests in the Green Paper, with some elements of reducing staff workload. But however much we have the ambition, the lived reality for children and young people has to be, as the book says, that they get the right support at the right time, so I applaud that.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Perhaps the noble Baroness could come to her question.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

Is the Minister absolutely confident that there will be sufficient funding going forward? I have one specific question. Why is it that the special schools with alternative provisions will be free schools, when it is very clear that local authorities will have a significant role to play in the delivery of these improvements? Why can they not be commissioners of providers of schools?