Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bishop of Durham and Lord Addington

Report stage
Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, and I welcome the support of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham for them. They are both about special educational needs in the further education sector. Special educational needs in further education are a bit like they are in everything else: an afterthought. They are an afterthought with a couple of special bits of legislation attached, including education, health and care plans, which allow some support until the age of 25 but do not apply to higher education. For those who get to higher education with special educational needs, there is a nice, structured support centre based on the disabled students’ allowance—some of the old jobs of which are taken on by the institution.

Why did I need to preamble like that? My amendments are trying to take best practice from the other two areas of education and apply them to further education. If you happen to attend a higher education institution and you have an identified special educational need, the institution must do certain things—for instance, it must make sure that you have information capture available to you. A few noble Lords might ask what that is. It is where students can digitally record a lecture, seminar or whatever and transfer it into a format which they can take the information from. It could be putting it on to a screen or into verbal means. Basically, there are lots of clever things you can do with technology nowadays that you could not do 10 or 20 years ago which mean that just about anybody can access it in any way they want to. This is a duty in higher education.

Some might ask why I have tabled these amendments, as these two areas are different. I think it was the right reverend Prelate’s office which provided me with the fact that over 100,000 students taking higher education degrees are doing it at colleges—100,000 students are able to get this support, but they cannot get it if they are on a level 4 or level 3 course. I think level 5 is covered by it; if I have that wrong, I put my hands up, but the principle is still there. Why are we not taking the best practice from one area of education and applying it to another? Let us face it: making sure that further education is a viable option is central to this debate. Everything in the Bill implies that, and we have an overlap of provider, so why are the Government not doing this?

There is also the question of how to train people to deal with this, and that is also a part of Amendment 44. Virtually everybody with a special educational need or disability that applies in this sector—depending on which end you take it from—will usually have a slightly different learning process. Can they write or read well? Will they absorb the information in the same way? Can they tolerate the same amount of time concentrating within a lecture or tutorial? All these people are slightly different, and understanding that is the way that they can succeed. I once again refer to the disabled students’ allowance, which guarantees support in higher education. So, level 6 and level 4 apparently have two totally different systems which contradict each other, and there is a different structure again within schools. How are we going to make sure that the best is taken from one system and applied to another, especially where there is a very high level of overlap? You will have the expertise and you will have people involved in it. Even if it is not in your institution at the moment, the one down the road will know—pick up the phone and find out. It is not that difficult.

When it comes to Amendment 46 and teacher training in further education, we have an awareness programme for schools and those trained in them. It does not include that much, and I think it should be much wider. It is based upon the most commonly occurring problems that a teacher will have to account for. I should have identified my interests: I say once again in this Chamber that I am dyslexic, the president of the British Dyslexia Association and the chairman of a company that organises packages of support for people in work and education. In the school system, there is an awareness package which means that teachers have some basic knowledge of those most commonly occurring conditions. Dyslexia comes at the top of that list, but it is only the top. To highlight how difficult it is for the person providing the training, co-occurring difficulties are almost the norm. For example, it is very common for a dyspraxic student to also be dyslexic. There is a conglomeration of little oddities and changes in patterns of learning which are difficult to meet for both the student and the teacher giving the support. Teachers must have some knowledge, because more of the same is a guarantee of failure in many cases.

To give a little example in the case of dyslexia, if you say, “Oh, if we give him lots of spelling tests, he will learn to spell”, no, he will not. He will just forget more words. Give him the same spelling test a lot, and he will learn a few. That is the tip of the iceberg. Teachers need to work differently and need the knowledge to understand why somebody will not respond in certain ways. They at least need to know that they should find out more. If that degree of knowledge is not provided, there is almost a guarantee of failure or delay. This is fair neither to the person doing the teaching nor to the person receiving it.

Both these amendments call upon the Government to institute actions which have been done in other areas of the education system. They should make sure that they take examples from there. I would like to go further and institute better back-up and support. When the Minister replies, she will undoubtedly have a list of lots of regulations and all the things that should happen, but they do not, because there is no way of going forward and co-ordinating them. I also hope that the Minister from the second-half team for this Bill will carry on from the first-half team in recognising that we are not just talking about high levels of need. We need to make sure that somebody who is in danger of doing less well and possibly failing receives the same attention as somebody who is a dramatic failure. At the moment, requiring that stamp of approval from the plan or the official diagnosis—saying that you are of a sufficient level of severity to need X level of help—means that we are worrying about those on the edge, who might just get through on a good day but probably will not. With small adjustments to their behaviour or the way information is presented to them, those people can actually get through.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. I hope I do not have to press either of these amendments, but that is now in the Minister’s hands. I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, this is my first opportunity to welcome the Minister to her new role, and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, to hers. In my own role as chair of the National Society—which I declare as an interest—I look forward to working with them both on many matters relating to education and the Church of England’s place as a major provider.

Turning to Amendments 44 and 46, which I was pleased to add my name to, I thank both noble Baronesses for the time they gave us recently to discuss them. The need for specific provision to be made to better meet the needs of students with specific learning needs and disabilities at all levels has been made—not for the first time—with great expertise by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I wholeheartedly support these amendments. Given the range and varied nature of the learning needs among FE students, their lecturers, tutors, assessors and other staff must have the skills to recognise those needs to be able to adapt their own approach to teaching, learning and assessment, and to be able to promptly and appropriately refer students for more specialised or intensive support.

Amendment 44 does precisely what is required and, in addition, poses a challenge. Such high-quality support is very widely available in HE, often in the departments of FE colleges which deliver HE provision and from which it might be made more widely available. Is it not both educationally and ethically desirable that those on FE programmes should have the same access as their fellow students in HE?