Education: Special Educational Needs

Baroness Ritchie of Brompton Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Brompton]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, on initiating this very timely debate, coming as it does a week after the deadline for submissions of evidence to the Government’s SEN Green Paper. I chair the Local Government Group’s children and young people’s board; my remarks therefore reflect the views of local councils, for whom the needs of the child and the young person are of paramount importance.

I shall concentrate briefly on two important issues: the need for a single system for assessing and supporting children and young people with special educational need; and the important role that schools play in meeting the needs of those with less complex special educational needs. Everyone shares the concern that the current SEN arrangements are too complex and bureaucratic. The Ofsted review said that parents felt that they had to,

“fight for the rights of their children”.

This cannot be right when parents already have to deal with a number of stressful situations. Equally, when there are delays and bureaucracy the people who suffer the most are the young people themselves.

A key part of the problem is that, in reality, there are two different assessment and funding arrangements for children with special educational needs: the SEN system, which applies to children up to the age of 19 who remain in school or in a special school, and then another system for those with a learning difficulty or disability who study outside school settings—for example, at a further education college. The reason for having these two systems goes back to a series of legislative changes that took responsibility for funding further education away from councils and gave it to a series of national quangos: first, the Further Education Council, then the learning and skills councils and now the Young People’s Learning Agency.

The responsibility for commissioning education for young people with learning disabilities aged 16 to 25 has recently been passed back to councils, however, although for now the funding remains with the YPLA. This seems to be an unhelpful and overly complex split. Instead, we need to think of the children and young people whom we want to help. We need a single system for assessing and supporting those with special educational needs up to the age of 25. This would allow us to bring together the contributions of all the agencies involved in a seamless way that would benefit both parents and children. That would be in line with the Ofsted recommendation that future changes should simplify arrangements and make them more consistent across different age groups and levels of need.

Councils can take the lead in this area. They already have a wealth of experience and expertise in leading on SEN assessment and support. Equally, as children grow up, it is councils that take on the responsibility for those who continue to need support as adults. They have also developed local partnerships with other agencies involved in SEN support, such as schools and the health service and with the voluntary sector. I argue that national quangos such as the YPLA, with no local connections and little involvement in local partnerships, are not best placed to have a role in the assessment, support or funding of young people with a learning disability.

This is not about extending the role of local councils, but rather about recognising their democratic mandate and local accountability which can make this process quicker, fairer, less bureaucratic and, above all, improve choice for parents and their children. Recently local authorities have been making decisions about 16 to 25 year-olds with special educational needs. The early evidence is that they are working successfully with providers, increasing the range of local provision, which many young people prefer, and often at a lower cost.

I turn to the important role which schools play in supporting children and young people with less complex SEN. This is particularly topical in the light of the coalition Government’s intention to give schools more freedom and autonomy. Schools already receive funding to support pupils with less complex special needs but, although the majority of school funding—around 90 per cent—is passported directly to schools on the basis of pupil numbers, the funding for SEN services comes from the 10 per cent that is allocated locally, following discussion in their schools forum. This is what is commonly but mistakenly called the “10 per cent centrally retained by councils”. The fact is that this money is spent on schools, or on services provided to schools, following local discussion about whether it can be more cost-effectively spent on services procured by the council. Chief among the services bought in this way is SEN support, with councils buying in specialist services such as educational psychologists or speech therapists on behalf of schools, which then really meet the needs of the individual children.

Schools that are keen to become academies or free schools and which take control of the 10 per cent of the so-called “centrally retained money” need to recognise that the funding is there to support, among other things, children with special needs. If they have this funding, they will have responsibility for making sure that the provision needed is available. Schools have a vital role in supporting children with lower-end special educational needs, and councils should provide the extra support to children with formal statements and assessments. In a system where we have more autonomous schools, we will need to find a way to make sure that they can continue to provide this support and that the children and young people who need it have fair and, above all, speedy access to help and support.