Independent Schools: VAT

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)]

My Lords, independent schools add greatly to their wider communities. They take the strain from the state sector through the willingness of parents to fund their children’s education, often at great personal cost. In many cases they offer a haven for children who struggle in large classes.

However laudable the Government’s aim to provide more resources in the state sector is, the means of funding this is questionable. This is not a theoretical debate. This affects real children and real choices. The changes to the system are bound to be complex, but enacting those changes in just five months and in the middle of the school year will have profound consequences for children in both the independent and the state sector. Philip Britton, the head of Bolton School, where I was educated and am a governor, has said that these changes need

“time and care and it really is a moment to press pause and think harder”.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

Amendment 107 not moved.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will be taking part in the next group remotely, and I invite her to move her amendment.

Amendment 108

Moved by

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the National Deaf Children’s Society for its support on this amendment.

I said in Committee that the Bill requires improvements if the Government are to meet their ambitions around inclusion for children with SEND. I still feel that very much to be the case. It will also still need improvement if the Government are to reach the target that they have set for 90% of children to achieve expected outcomes in reading, writing and maths by 2030.

In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, rightly highlighted the existing duties of local authorities to ensure that appropriate support is available to meet the needs of children and young people with sensory impairment, as they do for all children with special educational needs. We did not hear in Committee how those local authorities’ duties will fit with the changed educational landscape that the Bill and other changes in the schools White Paper and SEND Green Paper proposes.

Focusing on the flexibility that they have on how they use high-needs funding to meet those needs misses a vital point: around 78% of school-age deaf children are attending mainstream schools, and the vast majority of them do not have an education, health and care plan. The support for these children is not cast in stone in a legally binding EHCP. It is very much coming under local authorities’ general duties under the Children and Families Act 2014 and the SEND code of practice, for all children with special educational needs who do not meet the criteria for EHCPs. Those children without EHCPs do not automatically receive top-up funding from the high-needs funding allocation. The help that these children receive will be funded by a mix from within the school’s notional SEN budget and outside support services, which are usually provided and funded by the local authority.

With budgets stretched and higher needs funding having to provide for more EHCPs and more specialist claimants, it is this support to mainstream schools which has been cut back and sadly has resulted in them often being totally lacking. For instance, there has been a 17% decline in the number of teachers of the deaf since 2011, a trend which shows no signs of being turned around. We surely need to reverse that trend if the Government are going to meet the aims of inclusion and keep more SEND children in mainstream schools.

I think many will rightly view this new clause as very much part of a wider debate as to how we are going to ensure these services are delivered and who will pay for and provide the specialist roles, such as teachers of the deaf, who support schools, teachers and children. Nothing in the Bill, in the schools White Paper or in the SEND Green Paper protects or enhances these services which are critical for mainstream inclusion. That is why I feel a special duty is required for local authorities and the Secretary of State to ensure there is sufficient funding for specialist educational services for children and young people with sensory impairments.

The Special Educational Consortium supports the amendment because of its concerns about the funding of specialist support services for children and young people with a sensory impairment; 42 organisations have indicated their support for this amendment. The erosion of funding for specialist support services surely needs to be halted and services need to be restored to ensure that children get the support they need to enable them to learn and make good progress. I beg to move my amendment.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely, and I invite her to speak.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. I completely agree with his Amendment 62 on the high needs budget for children with special educational needs. I have signed Amendment 63 in the name of my noble friend Lord Storey, on financial assistance for purposes related to mental health provision in schools, and have laid Amendment 107 in this group on pupils with medical conditions.

I start by thanking the Minister for the various meetings she has held with noble Lords. The fact that this Bill is so heavily contested has required considerable discussion, and I suspect that the stamina of the Minister and her officials has been somewhat tested by a lot of very quick turnaround meetings. The Government have made some concessions, which has also been very helpful.

On Amendment 63, I hope the Minister has something positive to say. In Committee it really was noticeable that almost all parts of your Lordships’ House, Ministers included, agreed that ensuring appropriate mental health support was available for children in schools was vital, especially after the surveys showing that their general mental health condition has worsened as a result of the pandemic. The problem is that mental health support will not appear from any magic money tree, so we argue in this amendment that there must be a duty for the funding of said mental health provision. I look forward to hearing my noble friend Lord Storey’s slightly longer exposition of this amendment.

I turn now to Amendment 107 in my name and signed by my noble friend Lord Addington. It is important to explain why, under Section 100(1) of the Children and Families Act 2014—on the duty to support pupils with medical conditions—we need a duty that

“the appropriate authority for a school must follow the medical advice provided by an individual pupil’s doctor”.

When I raised this in Committee, the Minister replied:

“The department’s statutory guidance on supporting pupils with medical conditions at school is clear that school staff, healthcare professionals and parents should work together to agree the support that a child needs in school to effectively manage their condition and take the best approach. That includes fully considering the advice of healthcare professionals, including doctors.”


She went on:

“We believe the position in the guidance is quite clear that the needs of these children must be met, and it would be useful to talk through some of the specifics where the noble Baroness thinks that might not be happening.”—[Official Report, 20/6/22; col. 64.]


I thank the Minister and her officials for the meeting yesterday morning. We did indeed spend some time debating the different publications of statutory guidance for pupils with medical conditions over the last eight years. I was hoping for a reply from the department following my forwarding of my original version to it, but unfortunately that has not happened.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Ramsbotham]

I am very grateful to the Minister, but I am extremely concerned about that because this group introduces very serious issues to do with speech, language and communication needs. I cannot promise to be short over this because there is a number of things to say, and I know that a number of noble Lords wish to speak. I am concerned that we should rise and continue when we resume because, as I say, I have serious timing problems.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, it may help the Committee if I say that it is possible under certain circumstances to finish part way though a group and then resume on the next Committee day. I hope that will not happen, but should we get to 7.45 pm, that may assist.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, slightly unusually, I shall speak to Amendments 76 and 78 before I speak to Amendment 70A, because Amendment 70A, as it were, is an issue connected with some of the things that I am going to say. I have already mentioned my concern that we are looking at all children and not just the 2.8% who have special educational needs. In saying that, though, I presume that the Government’s aim is to continue the Education Act 1996 and what was said in it. After all, that is where the statements stem from that are now being turned into EHC plans. The Education Act 1996 says:

“A child has ‘special educational needs’ for the purposes of this Act if he has a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made for him”.

In recent years, a number of us have set out to raise the profile of speech, language and communication needs as a 21st-century scourge. They have crept up on us increasingly because of the lifestyle that is lived in the 21st century—the electronic lifestyle, the parental neglect lifestyle, the lack of communication in families lifestyle, the lack of communication between people lifestyle—and the fact that there are simply appalling figures about people who are identified as having speech, language and communication needs when they start school. I found, for example, when going to do an experiment with speech and language therapists in two young offender institutions, funded by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, that 67% of the young offenders had some form of identifiable speech, language and communication need. They had reached the age of 15 before this was discovered, hence the fact that the conclusion from our studies was that if only that had been identified early, they might not have been in the young offender institution because they would have been able to complete their education. Think of the waste of the numbers who had been excluded or evicted, quite apart from those who had truanted, because of their inability to connect with the education system.

In recent years, we have learnt that successive Governments have made considerable movement on this. I am particularly glad about the early years foundation stage scheme, which has every child assessed at the age of two to see whether there are difficulties and disabilities. During the study that I have already mentioned to the Committee, we were very pleased to take evidence from Northern Ireland, where speech and language therapists are involved in the training of health visitors before they go to carry out that assessment to make certain that those particular needs are identified.

The purpose of Amendments 76 and 78 is to draw attention to the need for such early intervention. If the general intent that I mentioned earlier is what I saw behind Clause 19, particularly Clause 19(d)—namely, that every child should be enabled to be educated to the best of their ability—while early identification is the key to improving the educational outcomes for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs, some of whom will also have other needs, such as physical needs, I would have thought that the educational need to involve themselves in and engage with education should be at the heart of an education Bill, which is what this is.

The speech, language and communication needs can be easily missed or misinterpreted. In fact, it is said that almost 90% of the children who have them also have some degree of literacy difficulty; a high proportion of them end up being excluded. The trouble is that this has gone unidentified, very often for far too long. You even find people getting to secondary school who cannot communicate there, having failed to communicate during primary school. If we are talking about 0 to 25 pathways, we are presumably thinking about the transition from education into employment. I have been very interested to see the identification by employers and others of the problems of speech, language and communication needs with potential employees. So I am very keen to see that speech, language and communication needs are included in the Bill as special educational needs, because without the language and communication you will not have the education anyway.

On the subject of special educational needs, we have been talking a lot about disabilities and other things that impact on people’s educational abilities, but we are talking about education abilities. It was said in the other place that 33% of children arrive at school without the requisite communication and language skills to take part in education. That is a terrible figure, and I suspect that it could be an underestimate. There are factors such as learning delays, and so on, to be taken into account; 1 million, or 10% of all the children in the country, have identified speech, language and communication problems that are not caused by neglect, having English as an additional language or other external factors. In other words, it is an endemic problem. As I say, it is the scourge of the 21st century.

Amendments 76 and 78 would seek to strengthen the words in the legislation. I was horrified to hear my noble friend Lord Low question the term,

“to use its best endeavours to identify”,

which was given to me by the Communication Trust. I am more than happy, after we have had this discussion in Committee, to consider other words that might be more appropriate, but I do not think that it is good enough to have a Bill of this magnitude, and the opportunity that it presents to do something of real significance, and put at risk the opportunity to put speech, language and communication needs at the very heart of everything that is done with all our young people. That means spelling out in detail what local authorities’ responsibilities must be; it is not good enough to leave it with a phrase such as “with a view to”. I do not think that that is nearly strong enough.

That covers Amendments 76 and 78. I now come back to Amendment 70A, which refers to a very particular condition—attention deficit disorder. It is phrased as it is because, at present, ADHD is picked up only when a child has been excluded for the second time. People have quite rightly mentioned the marvellous report that my noble friend Lady Warnock produced all those years ago in which she listed some of the conditions that were to be examined. ADHD was not on the horizon at that time. I contend that a large number of conditions have developed since then which ought to be looked at and included. I mentioned earlier the definition of neurodisability. We talk about learning disability and learning difficulty, but let me describe what neurodisability means in childhood terms. Childhood neurodisability is,

“occasioned when there is a compromise of the central or peripheral nervous system due to genetic, pre-birth, birth trauma, and/or injury or illness in childhood. Such a disability may therefore affect the brain, spinal cord, cranial or peripheral nerves, or muscles, with common symptoms”,

including learning difficulties, specific learning difficulties, lack of inhibition regarding inappropriate behaviour, difficulties related to speech, language and auditory processing, and cognitive delays. It is said that they incorporate autistic spectrum disorders, acquired traumatic brain injuries, epilepsy, learning difficulties, specific learning difficulties, communication disorders and ADHD.

Education Bill

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Grand Committee

I conclude by saying to my noble friends that, when in the previous Parliament an Early Day Motion was laid in the other place calling for a relaxation of the code of practice and for flexibility to enable providers to charge necessary, sustainable fees for those who could afford them above the free entitlement, it was signed by half the present Cabinet, including the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State. I do not know what has changed since then—I suspect that some in the private and voluntary sectors would like to know—and I beg to move.

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

My Lords, my name is on these amendments as I very much support their purpose and agree wholeheartedly with the views so well expressed by my noble friend Lord True. In doing so, I declare an interest as a governor of Bolton School, where we have a nursery which I helped to establish and which, luckily, is flourishing. That is a matter of luck because, as my noble friend said, it can vary from authority to authority.

In my Second Reading speech, I welcomed the extension of the free provision to disadvantaged two year-olds but sought reassurance from my noble friend the Minister on whether nursery providers had been consulted regarding their ability to deliver the Government’s ambitions. I asked this because under the previous Government—although I genuinely believe that this was never their intention—good, long established, private, voluntary and independent providers either went out of business or reluctantly shut their doors to free provision. They simply could not reconcile the service that they provided with the changing dynamics brought by free provision. That is a tragedy because parental choice should be central to nursery education. Without the diversity that a strong and resilient private and voluntary sector provides, there is no real choice. These amendments seek to redress the unforeseen consequences of free provision. I hope that they will find favour with my noble friend.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I support my noble friend Lord True in what he said about allowing providers flexibility in what they charge parents. I had a discussion with a manager of a children’s centre—in fact, she had responsibility for 10 children’s centres across London. She said that we need innovative ways of finding the money to keep these services going in the current recession. In particular, she highlighted that we should encourage parents who can pay to pay, so that parents who cannot can get a service. That seemed to be line with what the noble Lord, Lord True, said. It seems sensible. I will perhaps need to look more carefully at his proposal but hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively to what he said.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

My Lords, it gives me the greatest pleasure to acknowledge the excellent work of Montessori practitioners by putting my name to this amendment. As my noble friend Lord True explained, that goes for Steiner schools too. Montessori schools have provided solid teaching for the nursery and school workforce for almost 100 years. In the early-years foundation stage, as my noble friend told us, 88 per cent of Montessori schools were judged to be outstanding or good—so much so that the Department for Children, Schools and Families, as it was then called, paid for a booklet saying how good the Montessori method was.

The national framework of accredited qualifications fully recognised the Montessori and Steiner qualifications but, as my noble friend Lord True explained, the Children’s Workforce Development Council appears to want to change this. I am sure that that is not what the Minister would want.

We must ensure that Montessori and Steiner schools, which provide parents with real choice and children with an excellent education, are allowed to flourish. We should celebrate their difference and ensure that a creeping bureaucracy, with its attendant craving to fit everyone in the same box, does not prevail.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord is trembling on the edge of withdrawing the amendment. However, I remain rather anxious about the extension to 2012 and a possible extension after that. I would like to hear from one end of this Bench or the other what the effect of that would be on recruiting people for training in this area of teaching if there is a possibility that the railway will end a mile or two down the line.

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

I cannot understand why there has been such consultation given that we are still in a temporary situation. I cannot understand why it cannot be put on a firm footing—I hope before the Bill leaves your Lordships' House.

[Lord True]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for those interventions. Having veered away from using the phrase “stay of execution”, I think my noble friend will understand where I am coming from. As there seems to be such universal recognition of the value of this sector, surely we can give certainty to it. I hope that before Report my noble friend will consider further what noble Lords have said in this debate and find a way to extend that period of certainty beyond 2012. Perhaps the word “perpetuity” could come into that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Education Bill

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

My Lords, it is a genuine pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Edmiston and to congratulate him most warmly on his excellent maiden speech. Not only was it sympathetic, inspiring and humorous, but my noble friend’s passion for education and for helping others shone through his words. My noble friend is an extraordinary entrepreneur and a hugely successful businessman, having built up major motoring and property companies from the £6,000 redundancy payout he received from Jensen Motors. It is what he has done with his wealth that is truly amazing.

One of the meanings of “philanthropist” is “a good-hearted person” and my noble friend has a very good heart. His charitable works are extensive and range from helping children in Africa and sending full-time youth workers into some of the most deprived areas of the UK to, as we have heard, the opening of his three Grace academies, which are built on the Christian ethos. It is this country's good fortune that the well-being, nurturing and educating of children and young people is at the heart of my noble friend’s philanthropy. He has demonstrated today that he is down to earth and not in the least pretentious and that despite his great and deserved success he understands what drives ordinary people. He will be a great asset to your Lordships' House, and we look forward to many more speeches from him on these topics, which are of such profound importance.

It is with some satisfaction that I support this Bill today. When I had the privilege of sitting on the opposition Front Bench as a shadow Minister for Education, I spoke frequently on the issues covered by this legislation. Indeed, speaking was all I could do, as anyone in opposition knows only too well. However, much cross-party consensus was achieved, and however many times our scrutiny helped improve a Bill, there was never any getting away from the fact that, as Tony Blair once put it, we could only say, we could not do. So it is a real pleasure to rise in support of a Bill that seeks to put the fine words of opposition into action in government. As I do so, I declare my interests as a governor of Bolton school, a trustee of the Transformation Trust, which supports extracurricular activities in schools, and as chancellor of the University of Bolton.

This Bill deals with a wide range of vital issues—discipline in the classroom, investment in early years education and cutting back the forest of bureaucracy that has grown up in the sector—but at its heart is a commitment to the scale of reform necessary to improve standards and give our young people the best possible start in life that we can provide for them. That objective is by no means limited to this side of the House, and the desire to raise attainment is strong on all sides. It is simply a question of the means towards that end, but it should be clear by now that a new approach is needed. As my noble friends the Minister and Lady Perry of Southwark reminded us, in the last years of the previous Government, stark evidence emerged that our children were falling behind their peers in other countries. The international PISA study, which compares the achievement of pupils around the world, showed a profoundly worrying trend. By 2007, we had moved from fourth to 14th in world rankings for science, seventh to 17th in literacy and eighth to 24th in mathematics. By last year, we had slipped still further to 16th in science, 25th in literacy and 28th in mathematics—I see a shaking of heads, but that is how I read the statistics. Those are frightening statistics not just for the students but for the country. For our future competitiveness as a nation, we have to do better.

It is not just the global comparison that matters. Increasingly, it is the comparison and, more importantly, the gap in attainment between pupils here at home that should concern us. Our schools should be engines of social mobility, but despite all the worthy intentions of the previous Government that mobility has stalled and may even have gone into reverse. We cannot allow that to remain unchallenged. Every life unfulfilled is a waste of potential and a personal tragedy. Spreading opportunity and raising aspirations for all are essential matters of social justice.

Education, as the Prime Minister has said many times, should be the ladder up which all can climb, and I am pleased to see this Bill strengthening the bottom rung, with the proposed entitlement to free early years provision for disadvantaged two year-olds. I think that is a move that will be widely welcomed. Can the Minister reassure me that this initiative comes after wide consultation with early years providers? I ask this because when the previous Government introduced free nursery provision and then, at a later date, increased the hours, the effect was to drive many excellent providers in the private, independent and voluntary sectors out of business and to cause others to drop, very reluctantly, their provision to those on free places. I had much correspondence and many meetings with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, who was then the Children's Minister, and I know that that was never her or the Government’s intention, but it was, unfortunately, one of the consequences. I hope my noble friend agrees that it is vital that we retain mixed provision and real choice for parents in the nursery and childcare sector.

The measures to extend teachers' powers to deal with violence and intimidation are also important and go a long way towards rebalancing a relationship that had tilted too far in favour of disruptive pupils. In that regard, the replacement of exclusion appeals panels is an even more significant reform that will have a profound impact by putting head teachers back in charge of their schools, as they should be. It has been a Conservative pledge for many years, and I am delighted that its day has come. It is also right that there should be better mechanisms for overseeing standards, more effective inspections and fewer quangos diverting money away from the classroom.

All those things alone are worthwhile and will make a big difference, but the backbone of the Bill is the vital opening up of choice and innovation in schools. With the Secretary of State and his team having accelerated the academies programme, we are already seeing the seeds of a revolution in the provision of new high-quality schools. Some critics suggested that there would be no demand for free schools, but with several hundred applications having been made already, that is clearly not the case. Parents across the country have embraced the idea that a lack of good school places is not something they have to put up with; it is something that they can change.

This is an exciting agenda, and it is not without its supporters on the Benches opposite, as we know. Tony Blair, whose modest attempts at introducing choice through the academies programme were heavily obstructed by opponents in his party, once famously said that every time he introduced a public service reform he wished in retrospect that he had gone further. I think the Bill before us today does indeed go further; it goes further towards creating more good schools for children from our poorest estates, further towards helping them up that ladder of opportunity and further towards helping them realise the better life that too many of them are denied today. That is why this Bill is so important, and why it has my enthusiastic support.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

I am grateful for that clarification, which is extremely important. Forgive me if I have misled the Committee in any way.

The Bill, as drafted, could mean that many of the safeguards and programmes that drive improvements in SEN provision in communities would simply be dropped or made no longer relevant. That would redesign the SEN approach taken by government to date and completely disrupt the important work of local authorities in this area. There are also serious concerns that SEN provision could be harmed both by the establishment of academies on such a large scale and by the new academies being drawn from those schools that are already strong and which in many cases would be the best place to take on more SEN pupils and deliver real improvements in SEN provision.

As it stands, and as we have discussed, the legislation completely removes local authorities from consultation on academy status. The central funds for SEN provision will be handed out to many schools in a given area. If that is the case, it is vital that we create a framework that gives local authorities, parents and children with SEN, as well as other academies in the area, some certainty and consistency in relation to other schools in the area about what provision each will provide for special educational needs.

Amendments 18, 100 and 110 deal with the issue of special schools by seeking to remove reference to them in the Bill. The way in which we treat less fortunate members of our society is a good measure of any civilised society. The interests of people with SEN are currently addressed primarily by local education authorities. We are greatly concerned that this Bill will damage the ability of local authorities to fulfil their important role in this field and will run the risk of damaging the education, and therefore the life chances, of a great many pupils with special educational needs—the very last group of pupils whom a civilised society should place at risk.

Earlier, I was mistaken in saying that special schools would become academies in September, which would be much too early. I am glad that that is not the case. However, I still think that the Bill is being taken through its legislative process in haste. Although I now understand that special schools would not have even the permissive right to become academies in September, many issues relating to special educational needs need to be better thought out before such schools are enabled. Perhaps we need to see provisions in the Bill that assure us that all these complex details will be properly worked out before schools for special educational needs can become academies.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morris of Bolton)]

If Amendment 18 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 19, 20 or 22 because of pre-emption.

[Lord Rix]

My Lords, perhaps I may jump the queue and say a few words about Amendment 55. I am afraid that I cannot support it with any degree of warmth, but it raises a number of questions that I want to put to the Minister.

In contrast to funding for mainstream schools, most funding for special schools is place-led, with the number of places agreed with the local authority and reviewed every year on the basis of local needs. Recognising that academies are funded directly by central government, I seek clarification as to the source of the upfront funding for what the Special Educational Consortium assumes will be referred to eventually as special academies.

As the Minister will be aware, special schools will frequently have a pupil intake from across a number of local authority areas, which could have major implications for the future funding arrangements for special academies. For example, some funding for special school placements will be determined locally, while some will be funded centrally. How can we ensure that the two systems work together in harmony? Will it be for the Department for Education to decide on the number of places at a special academy that should be funded each year? Will special academies be in a position to seek financial reimbursement if a child is placed in a special academy from outside their home local authority?

There are further questions on Amendment 113, but to a certain extent the Minister has already answered the first of them. I believed that it was the intention to allow the schools outstanding in the judgment of Ofsted to become academies by September this year. I seek assurances that “outstanding” in the judgment of Ofsted includes consideration of special educational needs and the outcomes for children with SEN.

As regards Amendment 188, I recognise that one of the principal intentions behind the Academies Bill is to ensure that schools are increasingly able to remove themselves from local authority control. However, academies will still have to continue to co-operate with local authorities in a range of different ways if they are effectively to meet the diverse range of needs of children in their area—for example, in meeting the needs of a child with a statement. The local education authority is legally responsible for arranging that the special educational provision specified in a statement of SEN is made, although the actual delivery of the support will be mostly at school level.

In maintained schools—and I recognise that the current system does not always function effectively—there is a degree of leverage for the local authority to ensure that the special education provision is made. However, because academies are in effect independent schools, local authorities have no levers by which to ensure that academies work in partnership to meet those needs. Parents with children in maintained schools currently have the option of complaining to the local authority, and then the Local Government Ombudsman, if they believe that a school is not meeting the specification in a child’s statement.

The coalition Government propose that parents with a child in an academy must complain directly to the Secretary of State. Where a child with a statement is not receiving the right support and is missing out on their education, parents are naturally desperate to see the issue addressed. I believe that the coalition Government should look carefully at whether handling all complaints about academies via the Department for Education is the most effective way of ensuring that parents get the quickest access to the right support for their child. I seek assurances from the Minister on that point and the others that I have raised.