Religious Education
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this is a very interesting report. As I started to go through it, I was very impressed by how it designs a method for improving the training of teachers and broadening the information they have.
To start with the practicalities—I will come to my philosophical point in a moment—the report has the right approach: make sure that the people who teach the subject have a good understanding of it; otherwise, you will be trying to push water uphill from a very early point. The fact that we have got into a system where we do not take this subject seriously is probably at the heart of it—it has lost status. The noble Lord will be familiar with the criticism of EBacc. It has downgraded many subjects and religious education has merely joined a list. I am normally in a room supported by people who talk about the creative subjects—things that we make money on. Avoiding conflict and stress in society might be a very good way of saving money but we actually make money from them. However, those subjects are downgraded by the EBacc. The road to hell is undoubtedly paved with good intentions, and, trust me, you are on the road to purgatory when you insist on downgrading useful subjects. I am afraid that the EBacc misses the mark.
I turn to the philosophical point. It is probably presumptuous for a dyslexic—I join the noble Lord, Lord Stone, in the mafia of the mis-spellers; we would take over the world but we forget exactly who we are and where we jotted it down—to point out that the “s” on the end of the term “world views” is where this report scores. The first step towards a more civil and co-operative society is knowing what other people think and how they think. It is deciding that another person is well intentioned or it is thinking that they are wrong most of the time as opposed to evil, whether because of religion, politics or anything else. When we reach out from inside ourselves, politics works well. Those are good things to do, and this report says that we should do them and prepare other people to do them. The methodology is very similar to that devised by—back to the mafia of the mis-spellers—the British Dyslexia Association for training people in schools to deal with those in neurodiverse communities. It is important that there is expertise and support in this area.
If I were an Education Minister, I would instinctively go for two strategies. One would be to hide under the biggest desk in the room; the other would be to punt it down the road. We are talking about making a structural shift. My noble friend Lord Alderdice hinted at one or two of these things, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, suggested that the current system would be okay if only we would put a bit more effort into it. I think that the system is broken. It is out of date and reflects the old times. Politicians tend to be reactive—they say, “That was the problem yesterday. Let’s fix it today”—and we have a system that fixes the problems of some time ago. We have to try to address this situation in a new way, and this document gives us the platform to start thinking about that.
We do not need to reinforce faith. Jedi got on to the census. To the English, religion is a movable feast that does not go down certain tram-lines. It does not even go on branch lines; it is hiking across hills somewhere. Then we have groups that want to acquire an identity. Those of Islamic faith seem to defend themselves and their identity by hanging on to aspects of religion. We have to try to make these people see each other as the norm and not as alien. If you are alien, we can disagree with you and persecute you because you are not us. We are right and, if you are not us, you must be wrong.
This approach is a good one; if the Minister can give us some idea about how the Government are starting to address some of the ideas, I would be very grateful. However, the point of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice—throwing a few more pounds at the problem, training three or four more teachers and saying everything will be fine and quoting a couple of statistics about a pass rate at, say, GCSE—does not begin to touch this. The important bit will be in primary schools to get the base of understanding.
If the noble Lord can give us some idea, I will be very surprised—it is a difficult question and this may be the opening shot—but primary is where we must put the emphasis on. Understanding will probably lead to great rewards in the future.
Young People
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, when we talk about young people in a debate, we tend to go in one of two ways. One is, “It were tough when I were a lad. They don’t know what anything is about nowadays”, and the other is all gloom and dreadfulness. The answer is always somewhere in the middle. We are facing a world that is changing faster than anything anyone in this Chamber has experienced. Through the digital revolution, everything is happening more quickly. I think that the best thing the various bits of government could do is look at how we tell people what is out there and what the opportunities are.
At the moment, we have an entire society that seems to be going through something similar to the familiar story we hear in this Chamber from people who have held office about the red box with the one piece of relevant information tucked away at the bottom. You do not know where it is and you cannot find it. If you understand the systems you are dealing with, you will get the best out of society because the variety of information will come through in waves. If you do not know where to look, you will not. If you have guidance from family, friends and so on, it will help you to get the best out of society. It has always been the case that if you know what you are looking for, you will find it.
At the moment, the huge opportunities of the modern world are often missed because the people we are talking about have no one to show them where to look. There is a changing variety of opportunities in the types of work available in the creative industries, but we are not training people to tell young people how at least to get their foot in the door. If you do not get that sort of information, you stand very little chance of being in a position to exploit what will happen tomorrow. We must at least react to what is going on today.
In my experience, democratic government is at its best when it reacts quickly to what is happening now. Future-gazing has a bad record of getting things horribly wrong, but if we react to what is happening today, we tend to get better results. At the moment, we are not getting the best out of the environment around us because not enough people know how to get into it or access it properly. We need to accept that the old structure of careers guidance and advice, which asks young people what they want to do next, has to be better.
We may well have to provide better structures for lifelong learning in this rapidly changing world, but unless someone tells a young person what is available now and helps them to think about their jumping-off point, they will miss out. If we continue to underinvest in the knowledge of what is out there and the guidance to take people through, the groups with the least input from those around them in the form of family and close-knit support structures will continue to underperform on a massive scale. Unless people are at least informed about what is available, we will not get the best out of them.
I could go on for longer on this subject and one or two others, but I will leave it by referring to a debate from a few days ago. We found ourselves talking about another problem we face today: people going to the gym, pumping themselves up and taking drugs. I could not find anyone who could tell me exactly what these drugs do to you and why they are bad for you. I know that they are bad, but I could not find out how exactly. If that can happen to someone reasonably well-informed, heaven help a 17 year-old who has not been told anything about the subject.
Special Educational Needs and Funding
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Lord Addington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of concerns raised by Ofsted about the education of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND); and what steps they will take to improve the funding and delivery of SEND services in the light of those concerns.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, in asking the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I remind the House of my interests with the British Dyslexia Association.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, we are working to improve quality and services for children with special educational needs and disabilities. We are listening to parents and we have introduced new SEND inspections. We are investing to embed SEND in school improvement. We have commissioned an external review of exclusions. High-needs funding has risen by £1 billion since 2013, but we recognise the pressures on budgets and are monitoring the impact of the national funding formula on local authorities.
Lord Addington
I thank the Minister for his reply. Does he agree that, when those in the biggest group in this category have not received a plan and, Ofsted says, struggle to receive the appropriate help, there is something fundamentally wrong? Does he also agree with the next page of Ofsted’s report, which says that when you have a special school with structured lessons, you get good results? Is this not an example of how we should invest more in support in the mainstream classroom?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, we have done an enormous amount for this category of vulnerable children over the last few years. One of the most important introductions was that of education and healthcare plans, supported by inspections of local authorities by Ofsted and by the Care Quality Commission. We now have increasing visibility of where good service provision is occurring and where it is not. We will continue to pursue that.
Schools: Funding
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, on her excellent introduction and on bringing this subject to our attention. I can find almost nothing to disagree with in her analysis of the situation.
It will surprise no one in this Chamber that I want to concentrate on special educational needs, which both the previous speakers have mentioned. When you have, as we do, a crisis of funding and the fear of a lack of funding, which is affecting planning and structuring, it is not surprising that it is funding for the groups that are seen as being the most expensive that causes some of the greatest consternation. In his Oral Question a few days ago, the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, raised the fact that very high costs are being incurred by local authorities fighting, usually unsuccessfully, against education, health and care plans, the successor to statements. People are winning on appeal and local authorities are running up at least tens of millions of pounds—I think the Times said £100 million but I do not know how accurate that is—in debts, so we are effectively subsidising a branch of the legal profession as opposed to helping those in the education system. In such a situation, the children who end up getting helped are those with a “tiger parent”—I was lucky enough to have one—who will go out and fight for them. So those who will benefit the most are, let us put it this way, the exam-passing classes. They are the ones who will get the help, and money and energy are absorbed into that battle as opposed to being spent on the rest of society.
In the past we wrote off large sections of our population academically, but there were jobs for them to do and they did not need a qualification. That is no longer the case. If you look at the dyslexia world in the round, you see the very high needs of this community. I should mention that I am president of the British Dyslexia Association, and my other interests are in the register. There are large numbers of people who discover late on that they have the problem, and it becomes apparent that that is why they have never passed an exam and probably why their brothers and sisters have not either. You cannot get away with not passing exams or filling out forms now. You cannot work on a building site without doing a health and safety check and knowing how to fill out the form correctly.
People with other special educational needs have similar problems, although not quite the same. One of the personal revelations that I go through is, “Oh, you mean you’re like us but you’re not”—there is always a slight change. However, all of them have problems with the classroom and going through the system.
Information provided to me is that 20% of the primary school population have problems with reading. Reading is a problem that in many cases tends to correct itself later on but is never quite as good as other people’s. Spelling is usually a more permanent problem. However, we are now discovering that in secondary school that group seems to disappear; I think the figure for those registering with a need is just under 3%, where the figure is something like 20% in primary education. However, we then discover new people in universities. So what is happening to support in the secondary system? Something is not right. We are ignoring a whole section of that group. Our system is confrontational and expensive. I am one of the few left in this Chamber who was around when we initially discussed statements. They were designed for the few high-end needs that had been identified at the time. The system really had not established that this was a mass problem.
Dyslexia accounts for about half of the neurodiverse community, both those who have it by itself and those who have it as part of their problems. That is 10% of the population who have a different learning curve and will learn in a different way. How do you get the best out of them? You do not do that by taking them off to a small area at the side for specialist help. Everyone who has worked in this field knows—this is not just a problem today but a historical problem—that getting a teaching assistant without proper qualifications who sits and nursemaids someone is a very common experience. Indeed, a member of my family—surprise, surprise, neurodiverse problems run in families—who has now successfully got himself through his A-levels remembers that his statement meant that that was what happened.
We must ensure that we invest in highly qualified teachers, the very people who become expensive and are being got rid of or sidelined at the moment. The only way we can do this with the existing stock is by improving continual professional development. To address this problem, we must ensure that we have teachers with a better understanding and who know how to deal in the classroom with commonly occurring conditions: the 3% of the population who are dyslexic, perhaps 5% dyspraxic and 2% or 3% who are suffering from dyscalculia. They will be present regularly and there needs to be training to handle different learning patterns. Otherwise—this is another example where if you do not invest, you get more costs later—you encourage the parent to fight to get special provision under the plan, encouraging legal costs, slow development and being in conflict with teachers. Just think about what that does. Little Johnny does not have a problem—he is a problem. The parents who are supportive and helpful are the problem. The conflict being built up here is massive.
We can address this only if teachers are equipped to deal with the situation in the classroom. When we talk about educational attainment, we ask, “What’s his spelling like?” I am sorry to return to dyslexia again, but it is my subject. You are not going to pass a spelling test by putting extra effort in, you need to know how to deal with it by different learning patterns—for instance, increasingly, using computers. Even the standard computers that we are given here have a special needs support package. True, I have not been taught how to use it properly, but I am waiting to be taught. I am told that the specialist set I have on my computer is still better. These things are available.
How do you work that into a classroom? How do you take stress off the child’s mechanical skills so that they can do work that leads to examination success? These are all known and existing pathways, but we do not teach our teachers how to get the best out of our children. At the moment, the most expensive block is becoming a problem that people are trying to avoid.
I pray in aid our discussion inspired by a document from Warwickshire County Council which said that dyslexia does not exist. To be fair, the entire House took a huge intake of breath and said that that was not on, but the council published that. It found the one academic who supports that point of view. Think how much money you could save if you took 10% of your problem out of your schools or did not have to do anything special for them. Which group will be next if we allow that to happen? I thank the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, because he intervened and helped. If that is the culture, we must do something to address it very quickly. I suggest that finding a bit more money for education and investing in staff to enable them to handle the problems that they are statistically almost guaranteed to meet day to day would be a very good start.
Schools: Mental Health Support
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, there are always going to be individual incidents such as that, and that is why we have made such a big commitment to increasing mental health funding over the few next years, including for children’s mental health. As I mentioned in answer to an earlier question, improving awareness of mental health issues, such as the trauma just mentioned by the right reverend Prelate, will help us deal with these cases.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that having a few people trained in every school does not mean you will get throughput unless you have basic awareness among the staff? That can be achieved only by continuous professional development structured in an awareness package, so that you get to the people you are training.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, we are introducing mental health training as part of teacher training. We are beginning a voluntary scheme in September next year, and that will become a compulsory part of teacher training programmes. Returning to the earlier point about funding, we aim to add another 8,000 mental health professionals to the system over the next few years.
Health: Spectrum Conditions
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Addington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the importance of identification of spectrum conditions, such as dyslexia, ADHD and dyspraxia, on (1) educational, and (2) other life outcomes.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and remind the House of my declared interest as president of the British Dyslexia Association.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, our data collections do not separate outcomes of dyslexia, ADHD and dyspraxia, so we are unable to make such an assessment. In terms of destinations, after completing key stage 4, for those with SEN, overall in 2016-17, 90% of pupils with a statement or education, health and care plan were in sustained education, employment or training compared to 88% of pupils with SEN without statements, and 95% of those without SEN.
Lord Addington
I thank the Minister for that reply. I have made him and his office aware of the document brought forward in February this year by Warwickshire Educational Psychology Service, called Teaching Children & Young People with Literacy Difficulties Practice Guidance, which is very similar to a document that appears on the Staffordshire site. This states that dyslexia effectively is not something to worry about. It effectively undermines the whole basis of the support which the noble Lord has been talking about. Will he give an assurance that the Government will make sure that accurate diagnosis, which can be life-changing, is maintained for this group because it helps through education and throughout life?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, the document to which the noble Lord refers recognises that early identification and intervention is important to meet the needs of children and young people with literacy delays. On the necessity of a dyslexia diagnosis, I do not have expertise in such matters. However, the noble Lord and the British Dyslexia Association do, and I would encourage Warwickshire local authority to consider carefully its advice on this point, and on the document generally. I share the noble Lord’s frustration that it has not responded to the British Dyslexia Association’s letter written over two and a half months ago.
Relationships and Sex Education
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and for the meeting that he held beforehand, which I managed to get to even if my noble friend did not.
Whenever we go through this, we may find that the three-terms exemption to parents being able to remove their children is where the potential conflict is going to occur, and where it is going to be difficult to manage the balance between the right of parents’ controls and the rights of the child. I am quite in sympathy with what the Government are doing and probably agree with it; I am someone who more or less likes everything that is there. A little more might have been more to my taste, but we support what the Government are doing. However, the people who are going to have to implement this are the teaching staff. Have the Government given any guidance as to whether a parent has to be informed if a student opts into this process having been previously excluded? If there is an objection, what sort of support are we giving to the teachers and headmasters when they encounter some form of conflict? This may well be a tiny minority of people, but it will be a very vocal one because—let us face facts—it always has been. Have the Government given any thought to how we support teachers through that process, ensure that what they are doing is the law of the land and not something the teacher has decided upon, and make that clear to the parents of students who are in conflict over this? That is a point that will ultimately affect what happens on the ground.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for his comments and indeed for his contribution yesterday. He asks a very practical question. This is something that needs to be handled sensitively, and we will be looking in the consultation response for any sense that we need to strengthen the guidance to schools. Broadly speaking, head teachers are experienced at engaging with parents, particularly on difficult topics, so we trust them to put the right processes in place for their schools. We will see if there is a sense in the consultation that they do not feel well enough supported, and if that is the case then we will address this point further.
Schools: Exclusion of Disabled Children
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, we have done a lot over the last few years to improve the training for teachers in order to increase their awareness of both autism and other issues. The department issued a new framework for initial teacher training content in July 2016, and we are now funding the Whole School SEND Consortium to build a community of practice involving 10,000 schools. A new SEND regional lead, supported by a deputy, will bring together practitioners and networks in their local area to build a community of practice.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, there has been a 72% increase in exclusions from primary schools. Does this not suggest that something is fundamentally wrong in the system as it stands? If the Government are not prepared to take the action suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, will they make sure that teachers are better trained and prepared for handling these children in the classroom? Those are the only two options that we have.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, the noble Lord is correct that it does not prevent a pupil with SEN being excluded, but any exclusion must be lawful, reasonable and fair. Schools must also balance their responsibilities for children with SEN or disabilities with their responsibility to ensure that all children are able to experience good-quality teaching in a safe environment. The guidance is also clear that, when a pupil is identified with SEN, head teachers need to consider what extra support is needed to identify and address their needs. Lastly, I remind the House that we have commissioned a report from Edward Timpson specifically on exclusions.
Children: Special Educational Needs
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I cannot answer specifically for young children in custody, but I will add that to the answer to the other noble Lord.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that it has been something like more than two decades since we brought in the statement system? The statements or plans often deal with very commonly occurring conditions which we know are going to be there. Why are we dependent on something outside the school to deal with a condition which we will know will occur? Should we not be investing in better teacher training and in support within schools?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
To answer the first part of the noble Lord’s question, the changes we brought about were to join the system up so that we were not dealing in silos for children who often have complex needs. One of the most important changes was to ensure that there was cross-agency working, not just with education but with health and social care. The other important change was to be much more focused on outcomes for children in need of this sort of support with flexibility in, for example, being able to provide a personal budget for children and families who need this support.
National Autism and Education Strategy
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, we have invested £373 million for local areas to implement SEND since 2014 and have just renewed a grant to the Autism Education Trust to help improve the training of education staff. It has trained some 150,000 staff since 2011-12. Awareness is very much rising in the education sector.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, the Minister talked about awareness. Awareness only goes so far. Have the Government identified how many specialist support teachers they need—people trained specifically to meet the needs of this group—and at what density? Without that, you can have all the awareness you need but not know how to implement it properly.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, the approach has very much been to include autistic children in mainstream education, and 72% of autistic children are. As I mentioned a moment ago, we are rolling out the training to staff to ensure that awareness of the condition is more widespread. That is certainly the intention. We have also invested substantially in the creation of special schools. Some 600 local authority maintained schools have a specialism for autistic children.