Children: Special Educational Needs

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Agnew of Oulton

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I completely agree that the first priority is to try to keep children with special educational needs in mainstream education unless they have very severe challenges. To give an example of what we are doing to improve that, we are funding the Autism Education Trust to deliver awareness training for education staff, and we have trained 195,000 people in this programme.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, there appears to be particular difficulty in funding places for children with special needs at special schools—above all when they are residential and may be more expensive. Would the noble Lord not agree that it is vital that funding should be found so that children with special needs receive the most appropriate education?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I agree with the noble Lord that residential special education is extremely expensive. One of our current problems is that local authorities tend to send a lot of children out of area to expensive residential solutions. We are trying to deal with this by increasing the number of specialist free schools around the country; we announced a £50 million capital funding pot in May of last year, bringing the total to £265 million, and in March we announced sponsors for 14 new special schools. In the announcement in December, to which the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, referred, we also agreed to remove the cap on applications for new special and alternative provision free schools.