Deaf Children and Young People

Debate between Lord Bruce of Bennachie and Edward Timpson

Thursday 17th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) on securing this important and well-informed debate. I take this opportunity, as others have done, to thank him for his dedication and commitment as founder and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on deafness and for his assiduous campaigning for the recognition of British sign language. I know from attending and speaking at the Signature conference that he chaired last year how his inspiring work and unstinting efforts have led to a growing recognition of the support required to help deaf children and young people achieve their potential.

I would also like to recognise the tireless work that the National Deaf Children’s Society does to support deaf children and their families. It manages to balance working with my Department on projects such as I-Sign with powerful campaigning to hold Government both local and national to account. The 51,000 signatures received in support of holding this debate are testament to this campaigning, and to the importance of getting support for special educational needs right.

A whole number of pertinent points and issues have been raised by hon. Members from all parties about attainment, funding, access, support, data, inspection and the wider special educational need reforms. In the short time that I have, I will do my best to address as many of those points as possible, but where I fail to do so, I will endeavour to write to hon. Members to make sure that they have a full response to the questions and points that they have raised.

The Government are clear that the most important service for all children and young people is high-quality teaching. That is why we have ensured that funding is protected, maintaining the amount per pupil at the same cash level this year as last year. In this context, a number of hon. Members rightly raised concerns about the attainment gap between deaf children and their peers. That is a key indicator of whether deaf children are receiving high-quality teaching.

Although we must see further progress in this area, we should recognise the enormous progress that has been made so far. In 2011-12, 71% of deaf children achieved five or more A* to C grades at GCSE compared with just 43% in 2007-08. For non-SEN pupils, the figures are 90% and 75% respectively. Over that period, deaf pupils progressed at approximately twice the rate of their peers, closing the attainment gap significantly—a testament to the pupils themselves, as well as to the work of sensory support services across the country. Improvements in teaching practice and technological advances mean that deaf children are now far more likely to achieve their potential than five years ago.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly raised concerns about the slight decline in good GCSE passes over the past year. We must, of course, be alert to that, but it is important to note that progress in those subjects has also increased markedly over the past four years: 37% of deaf pupils now achieve that standard, compared to 28% in 2007-08. However, that is still not good enough. Clearly, we all want to see progress continue. We are committed to improving the training that teachers and school leaders receive to help them identify where pupils with hearing loss face barriers to learning and to offer appropriate support, an issued raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) and by the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann), who speaks with such authority, based on his own personal experiences.

The National Scholarship Fund provides funding of up to £3,500 for teachers’ postgraduate qualifications and training, including specialist training for teachers of the deaf. Funding of £2,000 is available to support teaching assistants and support staff to improve their skills in SEN. Some 600 teachers have achieved or are working towards a qualification related to SEN and a further 500 have applied for the current funding round. We have also worked with the NDCS to update and increase schools’ access to information on deaf-friendly teaching and on specific issues such as managing the transition to secondary school and teaching phonics for pupils with a hearing impairment. As we reform the SEN system we will work with the National Sensory Impairment Partnership—NatSIP—to provide advice and information to schools on effective support for deaf pupils.

As well as taking steps to improve the quality of education, we are taking significant steps to secure access to it for deaf children and others with disabilities and SEN. Under the Equalities Act 2010, schools and other education providers must make reasonable adjustments for disabled children and young people to alleviate any substantial disadvantage they experience because of their disability, and they must not discriminate against them. If, after those adjustments have been made, children and young people need special educational provision or specialist services, the duties that schools, local authorities and others have in relation to special educational needs come into play. The Children and Families Bill, which includes our reforms to this area, is currently being debated in the other place. I shall say more about those changes a little later.

The NDCS is concerned that, as things stand, services for deaf children risk being undermined by cuts. We have heard some examples of that this afternoon. I want to reassure the House that we have ensured that all local authorities have as much funding for SEN in 2013-14 as they had in 2012-13. The NDCS acknowledges that the Government have protected funding for vulnerable learners. Local authorities decide what SEN services to provide for children and young people, including services for deaf children, and how much to spend on them, from the funding that we supply.

The services that local authorities typically provide, either directly or by commissioning other providers, include services for visual, hearing and physical impairment; specific learning difficulties; speech, language and communication; profound and severe learning difficulties; and autism. Local authorities are reporting that they are spending no less on their SEN services this year than they spent last year. Through their local funding formula, they also include in delegated schools budgets a clear amount of funding intended to meet the needs of pupils with additional needs, including those with SEN or disabilities. Special schools and other schools with special units often use their budgets to develop particular specialist services, including those for pupils with hearing impairments. I have seen that for myself in Springfield special school in Crewe in my constituency. Where necessary, schools receive extra top-up funding from their local authority for the additional support costs of pupils with the greatest needs.

We are committed to ensuring that the needs of children with SEN are met. We have been clear with local authorities—I re-emphasis the point now—that they should prioritise vital front-line services for vulnerable children. However, we should not forget that the current financial climate, as Members have acknowledged today, means that everyone in Government, both local and national, has to make tough decisions to ensure that the limited resources are spent most effectively.

We know that it can be challenging for local authorities to provide services for young people whose needs are less common, so we are encouraging them to work together on such provision. I heard the point my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) made about regional commissioning, and I will certainly look at that as part of the work we are doing and the reforms we are undertaking. Where services have to be changed, that should be done with a careful assessment of the impact on families, and those assessments should involve the families.

With regard to specialist support, local authorities support parents of deaf children to communicate with them through teachers of the deaf and sensory support services. The Department for Education is working with voluntary and community groups to enable local areas to benchmark the support they provide to deaf children and to access tools and information on the most effective approaches. That includes the £1.1 million we have given to NatSIP to carry out a benchmarking exercise.

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and others mentioned the importance of early support. I hope that they will be pleased to hear that we have also funded the development of an early support guide for parents of deaf children and the I-Sign project to develop a family sign language programme. We are continuing to fund the I-Sign consortium to build on the learning from that project and improve the availability of sign language support for parents and families.

As the NDCS has set out, most deaf children attend mainstream schools, some with additional specialist units offering support on site. Assessments on how well those schools perform will be made as part of Ofsted’s school inspection regime. The new Ofsted inspection frameworks, introduced in September 2012, place a clear emphasis on meeting the needs of disabled pupils and pupils with SEN and considering the quality of teaching and the progress made by those pupils.

I know that the NDCS and Members are calling for an alternative approach in which Ofsted would inspect the local authority services that work with schools to support deaf pupils, and there is some initial appeal in that, but the same argument could be made for pupils with autism, speech and language needs or dyslexia. However, I understand that this is part of a wider question about the inspection of the reformed SEN system, and I expect it to continue to be discussed as the Children and Families Bill progresses.

Aside from the role that Ofsted could play, I want to stress that the SEN reforms will preserve and enhance legal protections for families who want to challenge councils through their involvement in determining local provisions. The two deaf young people who are directly advising my Department on our SEN reforms have made it clear that they want to see reforms which provide legal protections; establish a better system for identifying need and commissioning services across education, health and social care; ensure that the services provided match local needs as accurately as possible; and ensure that families do not have to battle to get those services. That is what our reforms are intended to do.

I want to leave a few moments for my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon to close the debate. It is clear that this has been a thoughtful, sincere and passionate debate that has provided us all with an opportunity not only to celebrate excellence where it exists, including in Swindon, but to challenge and question what more could be done to ensure that deaf children and young people get the right support at the right time so that they can flourish and thrive. I will take away the many excellent points and suggestions made by hon. Members, particularly my right hon. Friend, and consider them carefully as our reforms move closer towards implementation. The Government’s message is clear: we share his ambition and desire to give deaf children the best possible start in life and will continue to work with him in that shared endeavour.

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

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