Special Needs Schools

Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Lincoln]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Baroness Monckton, for securing this debate and offer my admiration for her commitment and eloquence in this field.

I formerly served as the chair of the National Society, as the lead bishop for education. In that capacity, I was given a very wide view of the brilliant provision that is made where specialist schools and colleges exist. I can point to such a school in north Wiltshire where teachers were so dedicated they were prepared to face a 150-mile round trip every day to serve in that special place.

I am also the bishop for the L’Arche community in the UK. With the Church of England, L’Arche, as part of its vision, seeks to educate people to live well together in a community. That seems to me something that is—or should be—a special part of any school, not least our special schools.

Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, I want to see an integrated ecology of special and mainstream schools. When I was Bishop of Ely, we won a bid with the DfE to have a single campus with a free school in partnership with a special school on the same site. I appreciate that there were expense issues in relation to that, but it seems to be an excellent model of an integrated approach.

I understand that the Minister in the other place talked this morning about wanting to have most children with special needs in mainstream schools so they can be with their friends. Of course, if you had an integrated campus, you would not only have friends but perhaps siblings meeting in the same setting as well.

We cannot get away from the fact that, at the moment, 150,000 young people across England attend specialist schools and colleges, but there are 1.9 million children and young people who have special educational needs—a figure identified in January 2024. The special schools we have, doing a marvellous job under huge pressure, are systematically underfunded and underresourced. In its report published today, the National Audit Office calculates that the demand for education and healthcare plans has increased by 140% since 2015. There are simply not enough places and this needs to be addressed in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, eloquently described. Individualised and complex support cannot be provided in blanket terms in mainstream schools. Nor can mainstream schools provide what I have witnessed broadly: the key importance of college places for people with a disability up to the age of 25, and all that has already been said about how important that is for accessing employment and, as part of the vision for education that the Church of England sustains, how we exercise a proper understanding of the rare dignity of all people, not least those living with disability.

The deficit in special needs education in mainstream schools is also very clear. I recently opened a new building at one of our 142 Church schools in the diocese of Lincoln: St John’s, Spalding. The school is experiencing a serious rise in the number of children with profound SEND needs. Clare Robinson, the head teacher, emphasised to me the impossible position that her staff face when SEND funding is entirely insufficient to cover the cost to employ the requisite personnel with training and expertise. This is also where specialist schools come into play, as they can actually send out experts to support mainstream schools in the delivery of special education in those other places. Clare and her colleagues have gone to extraordinary lengths to support their students. For instance, this has involved making a new multi-purpose area to serve as both a kids’ club and a space for interventions with SEND pupils. I saw this for myself, and it is a marvellous development, but the measure merely scratches the surface of what is needed because the school can cater for only its youngest students in this way.

I plead that the Government make sure that special schools not only continue and grow but continue to offer the specialist medical care, occupational and physical therapy, small class sizes, and all the activities and bespoke support which provide and ensure consistency of care for children and mitigated stresses for families.

As I said, the Church is committed to educating for dignity and respect. Given that Church schools are in such demand, I hope that it is possible for the Government to consider the Church being allowed to engage in developing special schools, not least because of falling school rolls and the reallocation of Church school buildings, which could become Church-based specialist schools. This, I hope, would help to improve the access for children in any kind of need.

I submit that denying children and young people with special needs the access to the specialist support they need is in fact a fundamental issue and affects everyone’s human rights. I am delighted that the Government are determined to continue to expand their work in this area, and I look forward to full developments brought to us very closely in the near future.