Education and Training: People with Hidden Disabilities

Lord Hill of Oareford Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, I would congratulate my noble friend Lord Addington but I think he has had enough praise already this afternoon. He spoke, as I knew he would, with a great deal of knowledge. We all know the passion that he brings to the subject. I was grateful to him for doing so, and to my noble friends Lady Browning and Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, who spoke with equal authority about autism. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, brought up the subject of diabetes, which I thought broadened the debate in an interesting way. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, spoke about speech and language difficulties, which is another manifestation of some of these issues that we are seeking to find solutions to.

As well as being a good debate, it is a timely one because, as noble Lords have said, the Government are introducing their children and families Bill, which in a way, I hope, sets the framework for much of what we have discussed this afternoon and how we hope to be able to improve things in future, because that Bill seeks to put into legislation a new framework for the education and training of disabled children, young people and those with special educational needs. The whole purpose of that new approach is to seek to promote better and earlier identification of children’s needs—one of the recurring themes this afternoon—and a better transition from school to further education, higher education, adulthood and the world of work, which I think is one of the other recurring themes of this afternoon.

To my noble friend Lord Addington, who was keen that I should muffle some bells, I think was his phrase, I would say—I am sure he knows this—that the purpose of these reforms is not reclassification or trying to knock people off lists but about trying to bring together what has been too disparate a range of provisions into a simpler and more coherent whole.

Perhaps I may set out our overall policy direction, bring your Lordships up to date with the latest position in some key areas, and then try to respond to the main points put to me. We have heard a number of facts this afternoon. It is the case that there are some 220,000 children with statements of special educational needs. Last year, there were more than 165,000 young people aged between 16 and 18 with a self-declared learning difficulty or disability studying in mainstream further education colleges. We know that these children are less likely to achieve well at school and are four times less likely to participate in higher education. At 16 or 17, young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities are almost twice as likely as their peers not to be in education, employment or training. Those figures and others that we have heard this afternoon powerfully underline the case for reform.

As we have been reminded, under the current system, needs are often picked up late, families too often have to battle to find out what support is available, teachers and lecturers feel hampered by bureaucracy and lack the skills and confidence to meet those needs; and young people over 16 with SEN have weaker entitlements to support in colleges than if they had stayed at school, and lack clear routes into independent living and work. I think there is broad agreement that the system needs to change and that the objectives of the Government’s reforms are the right ones. I welcome the support given by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, in that respect. I accept her point that there are practical issues that we will need to work through. However, the direction of travel has broad endorsement.

Put simply, our goal in these reforms is that from 2014 we will have a better integrated assessment process that is more streamlined and better involves children, young people and parents. There would be a single education, health and care plan for children and young people with statements or learning difficulty assessments for post-16 education in the current system. This would help to deal with the important point raised by my noble friend Lady Browning and others about the current cut-off at 16 and the problem that brings. The proposals will include an offer of a personal budget, for those who want it, to give families greater control over the services they use. The plans will give parents the right to express a preference for any state-funded school, including academies, or college. There will be a requirement that local authorities publish a local offer of services for disabled children and young people, and those with special educational needs. We will also introduce statutory protections comparable to those currently associated with a statement of SEN for 16 to 25 year-olds in further education, with access to routes of appeal.

In order to prepare the ground for the new system, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said, we have set up 20 pathfinders, covering 31 local authority areas and their health service partners. These pathfinders are testing out many of the proposals set out in the Green Paper, such as education, health and care plans and the local offer. I listened to the points made by the noble Baroness about some of the practical concerns, and I agree that my department will need to reflect on them and take them into account as the proposals are taken forward. We will publish an interim report later in the autumn, and we will work with a range of different services to take the lessons on board.

We are also keen to make progress with the Bill in order to get the new system in place. We plan to publish draft SEN clauses for the proposed children and families Bill in the first week of September. A period of consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny will follow before the Bill is introduced to Parliament in spring 2013. That will provide an opportunity to pick up on some of these practical issues. Subject to the approval of Parliament, we hope that the Bill will gain Royal Assent in spring 2014.

One of the recurring themes this afternoon has been the importance of early identification. Here we are taking action on a number of fronts. We are, for example, recruiting and training an additional 4,200 health visitors by 2015, and identifying whether a child is disabled or may have SEN is a core part of the training for those health visitors. When parents have concerns about their child’s development and learning, they will be offered additional support and, where appropriate, referred to another health professional such as a speech and language therapist or a paediatrician.

We are also working to bring together the early years progress check at age two in the new early years foundation stage with the healthy child programme health and development review at age two to two and a half. That picks up on a point made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. Our long-term ambition is to develop one properly integrated health and early years review to support children’s development, drawing on the expertise and professionalism of both the early years and the health workforce.

We are working with the Department of Health to see how we can best achieve this. We have asked Jean Gross, the former communications champion for children and young people, to lead a group exploring ways of improving that information sharing, and are expecting findings from that in October this year. Our aim is that the new integrated track, bringing these two aspects together, will be introduced in 2015, when the additional health visitors to whom I have just referred have been recruited.

A number of noble Lords raised the issue of reading difficulties. My noble friend Lady Walmsley mentioned the phonic screening check, the first of which was carried out earlier this month. It will help to identify pupils who have not met the expected standard in phonic decoding, and schools will then be expected to provide appropriate support to help them make good progress and master these essential early reading skills. I think it was alluded to this afternoon that it was the Rose review that underlined the benefits of systematic synthetic phonics for teaching those with dyslexia.

There is also some evidence that schools are getting better at identifying children with autism. The department has been collecting data on the number of children with different types of SEN who either have statements or are on school action plus. The statistics show that, in 2004, 31,000 pupils were identified as having an autistic spectrum disorder. This had risen to 61,500 in 2011, which seems to suggest that there is a greater recognition of autism in the education system. However, there is still a need to recognise and diagnose autism earlier, and we certainly expect local areas to take account of guidelines that are available, such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence’s guidelines on the identification and diagnosis of autism.

I will say a few words about early language, an issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. In March, the Government announced an early language development programme to train practitioners to help children up to five years old, particularly those with SEN, by focusing on improving communication and language skills. The programme will help the most disadvantaged children with a special focus on the under-threes, who are at risk of language delay. The new early years foundation stage framework, which my honourable friend Sarah Teather has been working on and which is to be introduced in September this year, will also make a number of improvements. There will be a stronger emphasis on the three prime areas most essential for children’s healthy development: communication and language; physical development; and personal, social and emotional development. We have commissioned the Early Language Consortium to deliver a three-year early language training programme to train practitioners to identify language development problems and then work with children and families.

That takes me to the importance of teachers and training, which is one of the recurring issues. My noble friend Lord Storey spoke in a very practical way about some of the steps that a school takes in dealing with these issues, which I found helpful, as opposed to some of the more abstract ways in which the issue is explained to me in the department sometimes. We are taking action in a number of ways to improve teachers’ skills in identifying and addressing the special educational needs of children and young people. The new standards for qualified-teacher status include a specific focus on meeting the needs of children with special educational needs or those who are disabled, which was a question raised by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. We have launched a scholarship scheme for teachers to improve and extend their knowledge and expertise when working with disabled pupils and those with SEN, including their knowledge in specific impairments. That scheme has already awarded funding to around 400 teachers to undertake specialist postgraduate qualifications.

My noble friend Lady Browning and others also spoke about the importance of teaching assistants having the necessary skills, so we have launched a similar scholarship scheme for the most able support staff working with disabled pupils and those with SEN. That should enable support staff to gain degree-level qualifications to build their skills and expertise, including in specific issues such as dyslexia.

The Teaching Agency has developed advanced-level materials on autism, dyslexia, speech, language and communication difficulties, and behavioural, emotional and social difficulties. We have increased the number of special school placements available for initial teacher training to up to 900 in 2011-12. We have provided funding for up to 9,000 school SENCOs to complete the mandatory higher-level SENCO award, and we are also funding a further 1,000 SENCOs in 2012-13.

Reference was made to the role of the voluntary sector, and we are supporting that sector as well in helping teachers and schools. Through the voluntary and community sector grant programme we have funded the Dyslexia-SpLD Trust, providing £1.4 million over two years, to raise awareness and support parents. We also provided a grant to Dyslexia Action, with the RNIB, to make more than 650 core texts available in a digital format for dyslexic pupils.

In addition, we are funding the Autism Education Trust to develop national standards for those working with autistic children, as well as training at universal, enhanced and specialist levels, and delivering that to at least 5,000 staff across the country.

Perhaps I may say a few words about the Achievement for All programme, which coaches and supports schools in improving the attainment of their pupils with special educational needs. We know that schools using the programme saw children make greater progress in English and mathematics than other SEND children across the country. In a significant number of schools involved in the pilot, they even exceeded the progress of non-SEND children nationally. An independent evaluation carried out by the University of Manchester showed that pupil attendance was significantly improved, with an average increase in attendance of just over 10%. It also showed significant improvements in behaviour, including lower levels of bullying—one of the issues that we have talked about—stronger relationships between schools and parents, and a greater awareness of and focus on special educational needs. We are now spending £14 million to roll that programme out across the country so that more children can benefit. More than 900 schools have joined the programme since last September and the number is on course to be 1,500 by the end of this year.

We also talked about successful transition into adulthood—an issue referred toin particular by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. We are running a trial of supported internships in 15 further education colleges this autumn. We are providing funding over a couple of years to 25 colleges to test different models of post-16 work experience, and 13 of the colleges involved in the trial will be testing models for young people with learning difficulties.

We are consulting on a more flexible approach to study programmes for all 16 to 19 year-olds, which we think will lead to that whole age group getting more valuable skills and qualifications. We are also providing funding to encourage greater partnership working between clusters of independent specialist colleges, FE colleges and schools so that they work together to improve local provision for young people with learning difficulties and disabilities and share expertise and delivery arrangements. We are going to increase the number of clusters further this year.

Furthermore, the Learning and Skills Improvement Service and the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education have launched specialist qualifications for college teachers working with disabled young people. We think that that will improve the expertise in the FE workforce.

I am pleased to say that more young people with learning difficulties are completing apprenticeships. In 2010-11 more than 17,000 people with a learning difficulty or disability successfully completed an apprenticeship, and that figure has increased in each of the past five years. The number of apprentices declaring that they are dyslexic more than doubled between 2005 and 2010. My noble friend Lord Addington will not be surprised to hear that the success rates for apprentices with dyslexia are similar to those of their peers. Almost 70% of apprentices declaring dyslexia succeed at their apprenticeship compared with 75% of those who do not report a learning difficulty.

The Government will issue an action plan later this summer with a number of measures to increase the accessibility of apprenticeships for young people with learning difficulties and disabilities. That will be aimed at colleges and training providers. I know that my noble friend Lord Addington has been discussing that with colleagues of mine. He has offered to help, I think, with the production of that guidance. We are grateful for that offer and I am sure that will be extremely helpful.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, raised the question about exam adjustments. There is a system of exam adjustments in place; schools and colleges can put arrangements in place to provide things like extra time, supervised rest breaks or assisted technologies.

The Youth Contract, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Walmsley, should support more than 55,000 16 and 17 year-olds over the next three years. It will certainly benefit those with learning difficulties and disabilities because they are disproportionately represented in this group of young people who are not in education, employment or learning.

The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, raised the important point about accountability. The new exclusions process, to be introduced in September, will provide additional safeguards for pupils with SEN. In particular, there will need to be an SEN expert to provide advice to the independent review panel. On the point about exclusions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, I agree that the statistics clearly show that the groups we are discussing are disproportionately affected by exclusions. The Government’s trials, based on an approach pioneered in Cambridgeshire to try to give schools a far greater incentive to tackle the problem at source rather than excluding pupils and leaving it to other people to sort out, are going forward. They had great results in Cambridgeshire. Trials are taking place now in 11 local authorities and 300 volunteer schools, and I hope that that will be part of the solution to tackling exclusion.

The issue of careers was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch; I know that that is a concern of hers. We have been clear in the guidance that, for the kinds of group that we have been discussing, those with learning difficulties and other disadvantaged groups the expectation is that schools and colleges should provide face-to-face guidance.

That has been a slight canter across the terrain, and I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I have not picked up on everything. If there are some specific points, I will follow them up. However, I hope that what I have said conveys the range of activity that is under way and the extent of the Government’s aspirations. As my noble friend Lord Storey and others reminded us, it is easy to forget sometimes just how far we have come. Many people have made that possible over a long period of time, and there is good work to build on.

The fundamental reforms to the system proposed by my honourable friend Sarah Teather is ambitious, but rightly so. I am glad that there is broad support across the House for those reforms, and I hope that they will provide the platform for the further exposition of some of these issues to which the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, referred. I hope also that noble Lords will accept that, in the important area of helping those with hidden disabilities, this Government have been making progress, and I hope that I have shown that we are certainly committed to making more.