Assistive Technology
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts(5 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for recognising me being quite helpful—I am starting the day as I mean to go on. He makes an important point; if he is particularly referencing the disabled students’ allowance then I understand his point. More broadly, the Government are bringing together people who need to use assistive technology, alongside tech companies and others, in the assistive technology working group, which is an important way to identify not only how quickly people can make use of assistive technology but how that technology can be developed to help people further.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as the chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland. A vast amount of a child’s communication development takes place in the first two years of life. Without AAC specifically in these years, these children are already at a significant disadvantage, yet too many children are not referred to speech and language therapists until after the age of two. The practice of having to prove competence in order to receive an AAC system, for example, is one unnecessary barrier. How will the Minister ensure that the assessment for and availability of AAC mirrors that of typical language development and is a priority for these early years?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness raises a specific point, although her broader point about the need for earlier assessment is one that the Government wholly recognise. We are, for example, providing further training for those in early years settings to be able identify needs earlier. As she says, we need to get better at the specifics around how we identify a need for assistive technology. That is part of the reason for training teachers, for example. I will take back her point about how we ensure that that happens as early as possible.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts(5 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, I rise very briefly in support of the proposed new purpose clause from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. This is an enormous Bill on children’s well-being and schools. It could be two enormous Bills. What we have seen in this House with many other Bills is that, when we have an enormous Bill, all sorts of people and organisations want to hang things on it like Christmas tree baubles and it becomes unworkable, so I welcome this proposed new purpose clause to give us some sort of sustainable and impactful legislation, hopefully, at the end.
Nobody has mentioned children with special educational needs, which, as the noble Baroness knows, is my special interest in this. I support the proposed new purpose clause because it brings us back to the interests of all children, including those with profound needs and disabilities, who are very difficult to accommodate in the usual school system. We are not alone in that. I can point to studies from Sweden, Denmark and all across the world about the difficulty of grappling with this challenge.
Profound disability remains strongly associated with poor educational outcomes. We know from experience—although sadly not from data, because we do not collect it—that these children achieve lower overall grades than children without profound disabilities. This cannot be put down just to people having a learning disability. For example, only one in two children with CP has a learning disability. I know that there are children with high-functioning cognitive abilities who have been accommodated in mainstream schools throughout their entire lives, but when it comes to choosing GCSE subjects they are offered only a very restricted choice. Why is that deemed acceptable?
Studies have shown that parents of children with profound disabilities lack confidence in their local authority’s ability to make suitable arrangements for their children. The two sides look at it from very different perspectives. Parents view the system as being obstructive, inconsistent and unaccountable. Provision often tends to reflect what local authorities are able to provide. As the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, mentioned, it is vital that health and education professionals come together in this space and form expertise around what the child concerned requires to have the best possible life chances. As families wait for EHCPs to be agreed and as children develop and needs change, this is a fluctuating and ever-changing system.
If the Bill can do one thing to remove those barriers, which often are not understood by educational providers, it will improve the safety and well-being of children. But we need to remember, which is why I support this proposed new purpose clause, that the Bill covers all children with all abilities, whether or not they are in school and whether or not local authorities can provide the services they need.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, if the Bill is to succeed in breaking down barriers to opportunity and severing the link between background and success, let me give the Government a warning from Scotland. These aims have also been a much-publicised priority of the Scottish Government. However, over the past decade, despite a 13% increase in funding, the SNP’s centralising of control has seen falling educational standards, as evidenced—as other noble Lords have said—by the OECD’s PISA league tables. What went wrong?
The amalgamation of the inspectorate with Learning and Teaching Scotland to form Education Scotland removed its independence; it became answerable to government. There is no bulwark against falling standards and no voice to be raised against ineffective teaching methods, inadequate curriculum content or restrictive curriculum structures.
The implementation of our new curriculum for excellence—as it is called—was ill thought out. One of its original purposes was to broaden the secondary school curriculum, but evidence reveals that students in S4—the equivalent of GCSE level—are studying fewer subjects, and enrolment in non-compulsory subjects such as modern languages and expressive arts continues to decline. Choice has been restricted. Most damningly, the attainment gap between Scotland’s richest and poorest schools has increased.
An attempt to give all children in Scotland a “named person” was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court because it breached the right to private and family life. The Bill is in danger of making some of the same mistakes.
In contrast, I have looked at England’s increasingly improving and diverse education system with a degree of envy. We do not have the choice of academy schools. There is only one mainstream school in Scotland not run by a local authority—Jordanhill—which consistently tops the league tables, even this weekend. However, houses in Jordanhill’s catchment area are some of the most expensive for any Scottish school, doing nothing to close the attainment gap.
I am also, therefore, concerned at the constraints on academies in this Bill, and specifically the proposals for qualified teacher status. There is a difference between a qualified teacher and a competent one, and if we want to attract people into the profession, the ability to “try before you buy” will be lost. Perhaps an amendment to limit the time that unqualified teachers can teach in schools to, for example, two years could be helpful. By then, both parties should know whether it is right and whether it is worth the effort and expense of qualifying.
Other issues that concern me are the implications of provisions in this Bill for SEND children, and in particular, the lack of appropriate school places and the consequences that this has for families. The powers in Clause 30, where parents have to obtain a local authority’s consent to remove their child from school, allow the corporate parent to erode parental responsibility and override the rights of parents and families to decide what is best for their children.
With such a large Bill and such a crowded list, however, there is not an inordinate amount of time to go into too many details, which I will look forward to addressing in Committee. Having given my warning from Scotland, I dearly hope I make it in time for the last flight home tonight.