Academies Bill [Lords]

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hancock]

I am wholly in favour of trusting parents; it is the silver-tongued politicians I am worried about, who make the suggestions to people that this is like manna from heaven and that the whole world will be changed. Politicians have more than once talked with forked tongue and parents have been misled into believing that a certain direction was the way to go only to fall foul of a politician’s promise, which was usually made before or during, rather than after, an election campaign. Very seldom have such promises been made after an election campaign, and very seldom have they been fulfilled.

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

I can talk from the experience of being a parent of a child with special educational needs, and also as an MP representing lots of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. My eldest child had trouble with his arithmetic; he would get 3s and 7s the wrong way round. I was told by the teachers that it would be okay and he would work his way out of that, but I became concerned as he got older and reached the ages of eight, nine and 10. I therefore asked about getting the SEN specialists and an educational psychologist to take a look. That did not happen; the school refused to do that because they said there was nothing wrong with him. After another academic year went by and nothing happened, I decided to employ an educational psychologist myself, and it was clear that my son had SEN issues. The local school and local authority were quite happy to take and run with the document from the independent educational psychologist —for whose services I and my family had to pay several hundred pounds—and the SEN statement was therefore put in place.

The Bill will change the way things happen, and they did not work in the past, certainly in my area. I hear what the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) says about his concerns and the remarks of the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), but I believe this Bill will put checks and balances in place to prevent what they fear from happening. The system does not work now and it did not work in the past, and this Bill is an opportunity to sort it out.

[Mr Hancock]

I have nothing but admiration for the hon. Gentleman for having both the ability and the courage to take on the system on behalf of his children. Parents get worn down by the system, having been frustrated by it time after time. They are physically worn out—as young people, in some instances—because of the struggles they have had to make. He was lucky that he had both the courage and the resources to take on the system, because so many parents do not have that and are always relying on somebody else to fight their battles for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Carmichael]

I am sorry about that. I am deaf in my left ear, and I always assume that that is some excuse. Very many apologies. I am from Stroud, and that sometimes gets mispronounced, although not as significantly as the hon. Gentleman’s constituency can be.

Amendment 71 has a couple of problems. Funnily enough, the shadow Minister—I shall not make my mistake again—emphasised that. It is too much about assessment rather than provision. Assessing things raises the question of how long it will take and what the implications are. The problem with the amendment is that it will delay the arrival of academies. I believe that a step is being taken in the direction of improving special educational needs provision, and that is one of the points that I want to make. We need to talk a little about history.

[Graham Evans]

I agree very much with my hon. Friend. I want to share what happened recently in one of the schools in my constituency. A severely autistic child had been in the mainstream for many years—from reception and through years 1, 2 and 3. It was becoming apparent that he needed more care than could be given in that school. The community is close-knit; everybody knew the child and the family. However, the length of time that it took the local authority to come up with the statement was a complete disgrace. Eventually, it made the right decision and said the right things, but we could see the angst on his parents’ faces when they came to collect him from the playground. Do we have to put parents through that, when even as lay people we know what the answer will be? Why cannot the authorities that currently have to make the decisions make up their minds more quickly?

[Neil Carmichael]

My hon. Friend’s point is exactly correct; local authorities can and must start addressing those issues.

I also want to talk about special schools, which have been mentioned. Of course going into mainstream education is preferable to going to a special school, but the fact is that there is a place for special schools. Some time ago, when I was a parliamentary candidate for Stroud, we were fighting a battle to save Bownham Park, a special school that was providing an excellent education—not for a huge number of pupils, but for a number large enough to justify its continuation. It provided education to a range of children from the ages of seven to 16. That school was closed. The parents wanted to keep it open, but the Government were effectively behind its closure and the local authority, under a Labour administration, was pivotal in ensuring that that happened. That is the sort of history that we have to bear in mind when we consider the performance and decision making of local authorities. It emphasises my hon. Friend’s point. Local authorities are sometimes responsible for poor decisions, and we cannot allow that to continue.