Schools: Special Needs Pupils Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Touhig
Main Page: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Touhig's debates with the Department for Education
(5 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberTo ask His Majesty’s Government how often they review the level of support given in schools to special needs pupils.
My Lords, provision is reviewed regularly through school and local area inspections. Schools must demonstrate that children with SEND achieve good outcomes in order to be judged good or outstanding. We also strengthened local area inspections in January 2023. Annually, we collect and review data on education, health and care plans, including timeliness and volumes. We have also started collecting data from local authorities on capacity in special schools, SEND units and resourced provision. We also plan to introduce new local inclusion dashboards to improve local accountability.
That is most helpful indeed; I am grateful. The Children and Families Act defines a child as having special educational needs if he or she has a
“learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made”.
Some 69% of teachers surveyed by the Pearson school report said that our education system is ineffective in supporting these special needs pupils. They said that we need more teaching assistants, better teacher training, more resources, and most importantly, easier access to diagnostic testing. Do the Government agree?
The Government are acting on a number of those issues. On diagnostic testing, as the noble Lord well knows, our approach is that the child should not need a diagnosis to be eligible for support. Early identification is incredibly important, and the Government are doing a great deal to train up the early years workforce and provide more specialist educational psychologists. More broadly, the shape of special educational needs has changed a bit over the last five years, with a much greater prevalence of social, emotional and mental health needs and of children with an autism spectrum disorder, and we are working closely to address that.