Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Baroness Sharp of Guildford and Baroness Perry of Southwark

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

The noble Earl’s concern for vulnerable children is well known and entirely to his credit, but I wonder if he would acknowledge that the alternative to failing and failing and failing again is to succeed academically. The one thing which has bedevilled educational attainment over many decades has been low expectations: saying, “What can you expect? It is because of their miserable backgrounds and troubled families”, and all the rest of it. The answer is that we must have expectations. These young people deserve to achieve. I agree entirely with the noble Earl that pushing them too hard, too soon can be counterproductive, but the alternative of just sitting back and saying, “Well, they have such awful backgrounds, they are so vulnerable and they find life so difficult that we must not push them at all”, is something I could not go along with. I really believe that raising expectations is the whole thrust to success that this Government are so determined to achieve—and that is raising expectations for all children.

I know that noble Lords opposite have pointed out that some academies are failing. No one disputes that—of course there will be failures in any system, and they will made to stop failing and start succeeding. But if we are to give every child genuinely the best education, we have to look at what some academies have done brilliantly with the most vulnerable children in the most difficult circumstances and then pull the others up so that instead of 7%, 8% or 11% getting decent GCSEs, 90% do so. Listen to my noble friend Lord Harris of Peckham and look at what he has done. Some of us have visited several of his schools and have seen what can be achieved.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)]

I point out to the noble Baroness that there are also local authority-controlled schools where one has seen a very similar turnaround. High expectations are not the preserve of academies alone. Good teachers always have high expectations.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

Absolutely. I would be the first person to say that there are some wonderful maintained schools and some very good local authorities. Nevertheless, it is true, and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, made this point, that local authorities have had decades to get this right and have allowed far too many schools to fall below the standard and taken no action to improve that. It was right that central government should move in to try to do something about it. I am sure that noble Lords opposite would have alternative ways to do that; the Labour Government did a great deal when in power as a central authority to help to raise standards, and they are to be highly praised for the legacy that they left in London and so on. There is a good history of central government moving in when local government is failing, and there is no question that plenty of schools that have been taken out of local authority control have succeeded. That does not mean that there are not lots of excellent local authority-maintained schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

This is a probing amendment and it comes from the Royal College of Speech and Language specialists, who are quite worried about the present position of special educational needs in schools.

As noble Lords will know, following the enactment of the Children and Families Bill, which we dealt with in the previous Session, there have been considerable changes in the treatment of children with special educational needs. What used to be called statements are now education, health and care plans. Approximately 2.5% of children in schools have the equivalent of a statement. Many local authorities are way behind with the issuing of education, health and care plans. Therefore, at the moment there is a mix of the two. Somewhere in the region of 15% or 17% of children have special educational needs. These are now dealt with in the school framework, and we have done away with the categories that used to be called school action and school action plus. Now, it is the responsibility of the school to identify children with special educational needs and to make provision for them.

The speech and language specialists are particularly concerned with those who have special educational needs in speech, language and communication. Something like 7% of children have such needs, and around 50% of those will come from disadvantaged homes—those who are eligible for free school meals. This is the most prevalent group of children with special educational needs in primary schools.

One can see that if children come to school not able to talk properly—in some cases, not talking at all—they cannot be taught to read. The first thing you have to do is to get children chatting away. This is what many reception classes are all about: getting the children to interact with each other and talk to each other and, from that, learning how sounds are formed and so forth.

As I said, the speech and language specialists are very concerned that children with SEN, particularly those with speech, language and communication needs, who do not have statements or EHC plans may not receive the specialist support that they need to enable them to fully engage with their education. Without that support, they are at risk of not having the best start in life and may be unable to achieve their potential, both at school and in life. The speech and language specialists are trying to get the Government’s thoughts on this.

The amendment does two things. First, it is designed to address whether schools will be encouraged and supported to collaborate where an individual school does not have the necessary level of specialist support for children with special educational needs and disabilities, including speech, language and communication needs. Secondly, it deals with how academies will provide support for those children with EHC plans and, crucially, given the vast number of children with special educational needs and disabilities who do not have EHC plans, those without them. It also addresses whether the Government will keep under review specialist provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities in schools of all types, both for children with EHC plans and for those without.

As I said, this is a fairly straightforward amendment. It requires reassurance from the Government that where in the past children have had specialist support, they will continue to get the support that is necessary. This is particularly true in primary schools, where the help of the specialists is particularly valuable to teachers, some of whom do not have the competence to cope. I beg to move.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I am very pleased indeed that the noble Baroness has tabled this probing amendment. I have for some time been very closely involved with a charity called I CAN, which works with children with severe communication difficulties. Working with the charity, I have been made aware of how extremely specialised this treatment is. Many of these children are speechless, not because they have any physical disability but because of severe emotional difficulties, and getting them to the point where they can engage in any kind of intelligible conversation is a hugely long and difficult path.

One of the most moving experiences was when the people who work with these children in specialist units demonstrated that these children can sometimes sing when they cannot speak. About eight or nine of these children came in front of us and sang, and you could hear how rusty and unused their voices were because that is the only time they use them. I am therefore very conscious of how important it is that specialist help is available. Of course, good teachers will work hard and some of them will succeed in getting these children to speak, but the idea of making sure that through collaboration they are able to have really specialist help is very important, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Sharp of Guildford and Baroness Perry of Southwark

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, I can imagine myself as a parent of a child with special educational needs; I have listened to the debate trying to put myself into that person’s shoes. I can imagine taking my child along to discuss with the local education authority what provision could be made and being told, “I am sorry that you may want this, that and the other, and your child may have that particular set of needs, but we’re meeting the minimum standards set down. They do not happen to suit your child, but I’m afraid they are all that we can afford”.

My noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Storey passionately described the dangers of minimum standards and the stifling of any innovation or adaptability to the local needs of parents and their children. They also described the danger of saying, when money is tight, “We are sorry we can’t help those other parents and children, but we are meeting the minimum standards. That is the regulation, so that is all there is”. You do not encourage response to people’s needs or collaboration between a local authority and the parents and children in its region by regulation and by national minimum standards. You encourage it by leaving local authorities and parents free to talk together.

I note that the Bill carefully states that the comments received from parents and from the local community must be published every year. That is a strong system of accountability, and is much better than trotting out a bit of inspection from time to time and issuing that report. To coin a phrase, it seems a triple lock if parents’ comments about the provision that they receive from the local education authority, with their own deep and often tragic experience of children with special educational needs, must be published in a form that all can see. Local authorities will be required to respond to local needs, and it gets us away from this dreadful idea: “A minimum standard is all that we can afford and therefore, even if it does not suit your child, that is all that you will get”.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)]

My Lords, I return to the introduction that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, gave to Amendment 25E and the issue of accountability. Government Amendment 33C is good so far as it goes, but it puts the onus on parents and young people using the service to police the sufficiency of the local offer. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister could correct me if I were wrong, but so far as I know there is no obligation on local authorities to publish the findings of their own reviews, which, as was emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, they are obliged to make under Clause 27. Therefore, there is not the obligation to proactively improve their services that might arise from looking at whether their own reviews were sufficient, and acting on that. That picks up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that there are ways and means whereby innovation comes organically and internally. Equally, she made the point that for most parents there is not the opportunity to move authorities: whether they like it or no, this is the authority that they have to work with.

Again, I pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, that, when we are talking about special educational needs, we do not mean only the few who have statements and will have the EHC plans now—about 3% of pupils. Something like 15% of pupils are regarded as having special educational needs and are treated under school action and school action plus.

It is now the schools’ responsibility to meet the needs of these pupils. We shall be talking later about the training that is necessary for SENCOs, and so forth. Most schools rely very much indeed on local educational specialists being available. One of the problems with the situation at the moment is that if there is no follow-up on whether or not there is a sufficiency of provision, there is a great danger that local authorities, whose finances, as we know, are being squeezed at present, will not find it necessary to provide outside the needs of those who actually have EHC plans, and that specialists in language, communication and behaviour will not be available to schools for them to be able to recruit to help them with the problems that they meet.

So I am somewhat concerned. As I say, the government amendment is good so far as it goes, but it is unfortunate that it does not follow through to requiring action on the reviews that the local authorities themselves have to make of their own provision.