Schools: Special Needs Pupils

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for the work she does as chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland. She raised an important point and is absolutely right. In our schools and colleges, support should be in place to address the identified need, barriers and level of impairment, as she described it, so that children and young people can not just participate but thrive in their education and preparation for adulthood. That should not be dependent on the nature of the diagnosis.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister comment on a meeting I had earlier today, in which representatives of different ethnic groups were saying that it is much more difficult for them to get diagnosed with dyslexia? This is because the teachers do not know how to pick out dyslexia from things such as second-language problems, and the fact that those parent groups do not know that diagnosis and assessment is for them and not just for white boys.