Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Penn Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, just to pick up briefly on what—

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid the noble Lord was not here at the start of the debate on this group, so we should move to Front-Bench contributions.

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[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss further education and take the opportunity offered me by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, to say how much the Government value further education and its part in the educational landscape.

I turn to Amendments 91A and 91B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and start with a general point. The framework set by the Bill does not intend the content of the funding formula to be specified in legislation itself. As such, any detailed provision would not be dealt with here. More specifically, schools are already fully able to make arrangements with colleges to allow their 14 to 16 year-old students to undertake part of their education at college, so there is no need for further legislation.

The funding arrangements in the Bill are designed for schools and could not be readily applied to colleges. The noble Lord will know that there is a separate approach to funding the relatively few 14 to 16 year-olds on full-time courses at colleges, aligned to their post-16 funding. However, I agree with noble Lords that we need to ensure that funding for 14 to 16 year-olds in colleges is sufficient. Noble Lords will know, and I hope be reassured by the fact, that the basic rate of funding per student will increase by 8% next year as part of the work to close that gap.

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[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I looked at these amendments and what struck me is that there did not seem to be an awful lot of trust in the Government on this area. I think we are all very worried about this because we have all spoken to families. I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on her speech, which was quite a difficult listen. The cases she described were harrowing in the extreme. However, reflecting on the conversations I know many of us here have had over the years with parents in not completely dissimilar situations, we recognise that sense of desperation. Reluctantly removing your child from school because you feel their needs are not being met is such a big thing to have to do as a parent. It should trouble us all that families are put in this situation.

It gets to a pretty fundamental issue about who is entitled to support, how much they get, what it is used for and how it varies so wildly across the country. We are obviously used to locally determined provision on various things, but this seems to be so fundamental to a child’s well-being that it should not be dependent to the extent that it is on where you happen to live.

When I looked further into this, I came across a report from the House of Commons Library, which explained that in January 2007 there were 1.6 million children with special educational needs in England, which grew to 1.7 million in 2010 before declining and reaching its lowest level of 1.2 million in 2016. This fluctuation suggests that something is going on here that is about not just the child’s need but assessment, local availability of support or some other change of approach. Clearly, we want children to be supported appropriately and consistently.

It would have been helpful to have had the benefit of the SEND review ahead of this Bill, because there is very little in the Bill on this. Amanda Spielman has said that the 2014 SEND reforms, which were some years ago now,

“had the right aspirations, but did not have the intended impact because insufficient attention was given to their implementation.”

She was absolutely right about that because, according to the National Audit Office, between 2014 and 2018—so after the last set of reforms—

“the Department increased high-needs block funding by £349 million (7.2%) in real terms. This rise was larger than the 2.3% real-terms increase in schools block funding for mainstream schools, meaning that the Department has shifted the balance of funding towards high needs. However, because of a 10.0% rise in the number of pupils in special schools and those with EHC plans in mainstream schools, high-needs funding per pupil fell by 2.6% in real terms”

over that period, after the last review. The NAO’s report continues:

“Per-pupil funding in the schools block also reduced over the same period, despite a £754 million real-terms increase in total funding”.


We are very concerned that this new review does not fail on its implementation in the way Amanda Spielman says the last one did—I know many people would agree with her. We wonder whether we will look back when we get the SEND review and think, “My goodness, if only there was a Bill coming before us.” It is not too late for the Government to set out the concrete steps they might want to take to get this provision right. To be positive with the Minister, we would very much welcome government amendments on this on Report or when the Bill enters the other place. These children are often our most vulnerable. They need our support as soon as possible. It is a shame that we are not getting the benefit of the consideration that will take place as part of the review before the Bill reaches Report.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to discuss further issues related to SEND on this Bill. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, said, some of the individual examples and stories were quite harrowing. It is an issue that the Government take very seriously and, through the process of the SEND Green Paper, are committed to improving. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, my noble friend Lord Holmes and others that this Government are just as ambitious for children and young people with SEND as for every other child and young person.

Amendment 97 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, highlights the importance of local authorities providing specialist educational support services for children and young people with sensory impairments, and there being sufficient funding to do so. As we have heard, local authorities have existing duties to ensure that appropriate support is available to meet their needs. To enable them to do this, they have flexibility on how they use high-needs funding, including to support those with sensory impairments. The budget has increased by £1 billion this year to a total of £9.1 billion. In a number of contributions, we heard about the pressures on the high-needs budget. This is something that the Government acknowledge and have tried to take action to improve. We have seen unprecedented increases in high needs funding. The SEND and alternative provision Green Paper proposals for changes are also intended to establish an improved system that is financially sustainable, as well as securing better outcomes for children and young people. We are really clear on the need to do that.

Within the current system, Ofsted and the CQC report that some areas, such as Barnsley and Hounslow, are highly successful in offering good provision for children and young people with sensory impairments. We want to spread good practice such as this to all areas and, as several noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to, remove the postcode lottery that can be associated with special needs. That is why we are consulting on introducing national SEND standards as part of our Green Paper.

Amendment 99 from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, proposes a new requirement that all local authority “children not in school” registers must include information about any special educational need or disability that child may have. I know that we will speak in much more detail later in Committee about those registers, but I assure noble Lords that we plan to legislate via regulation to require local authorities to record information about any special educational needs and disabilities a child may have within their register.

Turning to the amendments from my noble friend Lord Holmes, Amendment 163 seeks clarity on the Government’s plan to improve outcomes for pupils with SEND and report on those pupils’ attainment in key examinations. The Government have plans to reduce the attainment gap and improve the SEND system in, as I said, both the SEND and alternative provision Green Paper and the schools White Paper. Taken together, these papers contain ambitious proposals to improve outcomes. Regarding my noble friend’s point on data, the Government already publish information on the attainment levels of children and young people with SEN.

I share my noble friend’s view, set out in Amendment 164, of the importance of ensuring that all students eligible for disabled students’ allowance are made aware of it. That is why existing legislation already requires local authorities to publish information about disabled students’ allowance in their local offer, which must be accessible to all those with SEND and their families. In addition, the Student Loans Company provides information about student finance to schools and colleges, actively engages with higher education providers about student finance, including disabled students’ allowance, and supports higher education institutions to publicise it through events.

On Amendment 165, on every child having access to the support they need and the role that the right documentation can play in this, which the Government would acknowledge, children and young people who require them will receive EHC plans, which are statutory documents describing their needs, and the educational, health and social care provision required to meet those needs. Mainstream schools may, when complying with their existing statutory requirement to deploy their “best endeavours” to secure special educational provision for children and young people with SEN, use appropriate documentation to do so.

Finally, my noble friend’s Amendment 166 would require the department to consult academics, including those who subscribe to the social model of disability. I assure him that one of the key principles underpinning the SEND system is the social model of disability. Where a child or young person needs additional support to access education, their educational setting must put in place appropriate support. The nature of that support is not contingent on any particular diagnosis.

Finally, Amendment 171V in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, would require schools to follow medical advice provided by a pupil’s doctor. I assure the noble Baroness that the Government are committed to supporting pupils with medical conditions at school. That is why we already set expectations that schools consider the advice of healthcare professionals.