Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as set out in the register. I thank my noble friend Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie for securing this important debate.

I make no apologies for the fact that my contribution is going to be based around the education tax. The Government’s impact assessment on levying VAT on private education noted that state schools have statutory duties to provide the correct level of support for SEN pupils. How do the Government propose to do this, given that many of the schools are in financial deficit with stretched resources? As I understand it, the £740 million announced two weeks ago will mostly be for buildings and accessibility in mainstream schools. But what about people with learning disabilities? Who will recruit and train the teachers? Where would we find the speech and language therapists, the occupational therapists and the educational psychologists?

What will happen to the large number of pupils with SEN and without EHCPs who attend private schools and who—I agree with my noble friend Lord Shinkwin—will no longer be able to afford the fees? Many of those pupils have migrated from the state sector for smaller class sizes and to avoid the overwhelming impact of noise and chaos in school corridors.

We are not talking about rich parents; we are talking about parents who can see the difference this makes to their children, and who have found a lack of individual support and teaching assistant capacity in the state sector. We are talking about families where both parents are working in order to pay the fees—parents who have made enormous sacrifices to create the best possible opportunities for their children.

An example of this is a school close to us in east Sussex, which both my daughters attended. It has a pupil on the autistic spectrum who does not have an EHCP. He also needs an individual learning assistant. His parents cannot afford the VAT and the assistant. They are having to pull their son out of the school where he has thrived. They are going to home-school him. They do not consider this a choice; they have no choice. All they want to do is what is best for their son.

I have heard that parents will be making cutbacks and compromises in their budgeting on holidays, the weekly food shop and clothing rather than give up on such private education. Again, many of those people have come from the state sector because it could not cope with their children’s needs. This will lead to further pastoral concern for the well-being of these young people and their families. As Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central, has written:

“When I heard of parents remortgaging their homes and working three minimum-wage jobs to access an environment which the child could engage, placing VAT on fees was a step too far … private schools have become … the safety net for children struggling, melting and breaking”.


To remove this safety net from parents who face exhausting struggles daily to provide the best opportunities for their children demonstrates a lamentable ignorance and a failure to think deeply enough about what life is like as a parent of a disabled child. If the Government would like more enlightenment, I would be only too happy to help.