Schools: Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

Lord Warner Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be able to congratulate, and follow, the noble Lord on securing this debate on a subject that is too often out of public awareness and under the political radar. He has been a stalwart champion of people in these groups and regularly draws our attention to the shortcomings of many of the services in responding to their needs.

I shall focus my remarks on the autism spectrum and the children on that spectrum. Here I declare an interest as the grandfather of a six year-old diagnosed with Asperger’s and sensory processing disorder. I should make it clear that, for the most part, the support that he has received from the local authorities and from the school involved, which is an academy, has been excellent, so whatever I say today is going to be not about him but about the people who have not received the kinds of services that he has received. There are very many families and carers up and down the country who are struggling to interrelate with public services when their children are on the autistic spectrum.

We know that autism is a lifelong condition that affects how a person communicates with and relates to other people. If that condition is overlaid, as it often is, with other conditions, as my grandson’s is, when children go to school they will not relate to that school environment in anything like the same way as the vast majority of children. Their spatial awareness may be very different, the noise and bustle of the school may be very frightening, and they may well be highly restless and unwilling to sit and obey instructions. Indeed, they may well not understand the instructions. They may interrupt and disrupt lessons because they do not understand how to behave and how to relate to their environment. I could go on with many other examples. If the school and its teachers have little or no understanding of the possible behaviour of children on the spectrum, the stage is set for conflict between the educational system and the child and his or her family. It is only a short step then to educational failure for the child, and another disadvantage to be added to those that he or she already has.

There is no objective test for autism. A diagnosis is made by observing behaviour, but that diagnosis may still not settle the full scope of the child’s condition, and continuing observation of the child’s behaviour may well be very important in determining how best to respond to the child’s needs. School is a very important part of that observation process, and teacher awareness and responsiveness is critical to the autistic child’s development. If their initial training does not cover adequately the special needs of these children with developmental problems, they are far less likely to respond with understanding and compassion when they encounter these children in their classrooms. Indeed, they are much more likely to do harm to that child, because they are unaware of what the consideration should be.

The excellent briefing from the National Autistic Society tells us that there are an estimated 120,000 school- age children on the autism spectrum. That is more than one child in 100. The vast majority, more than 70%, of these children are in mainstream education, like my grandson, who, I have to say, has so far flourished for nearly two years in a mainstream school, so it can be made to work when the staff are trained and aware and the support systems are put in place.

This means that every teacher is likely to have children with autism in their classes at some time in their career. It is therefore no surprise that teachers say that they need more training. A survey by NASUWT in 2013 found that 60% of teachers believed that they did not have enough training in autism to meet the needs of the children they teach. Without that understanding, classroom conflict is almost inevitable, because the child with autism is almost certain at some stage to behave in some way that the teacher does not expect. I have to tell your Lordships that my grandson regularly surprises the teachers. Government figures show that children with autism are four times more likely to be given a fixed-period exclusion than pupils with no special educational needs. That is massive discrimination. The inadequacy of the coverage of autism in initial teacher training is clearly causing significant problems for children and parents, as the NASUWT briefing shows. In a survey conducted in 2015, 58% of children on the spectrum said that the single factor that would make school better for them was “if teachers understood autism”. In the same survey, parents overwhelmingly rated teachers by good autism knowledge, felt that training was the most important factor in their child’s school experience, and reported improvements when a teacher received training.

Clearly I welcome the announcement yesterday that the Government have encouraged Stephen Munday, who is conducting a review of initial teacher training, to include a recommendation on autism in his report on the reform of initial teacher training. However, this is only a tentative first step, so I have some questions for the Minister. First, when can we expect the report to be published and there to be an announcement by the Government of their response to Stephen Munday’s recommendation? Secondly, what is the earliest date that the framework for initial teacher training could be amended and training start to be changed? Thirdly, and perhaps as significantly, what are the Government going to do in respect of teachers who are already in place and who will not be going through initial teacher training? Finally on this issue, what can the Government now say about putting funding in place to make implementation practical?

I shall now make a few remarks and observations relating to the new EHCP system and the role of local authorities. First, I draw the Minister’s attention to the content of Sir Michael Wilshaw’s powerful letter of 10 March to the Education Secretary about the poor performance of some academies in multi-academy trusts, the inflated salaries of their chief executives and their large cash reserves. Sir Michael makes very clear in that letter that disadvantaged children are making poor progress in English and mathematics—and here, let me say, without being accused of being a proud grandfather, that my grandson is making better than average progress academically and that I am not opposed to academies where appropriate.

However, the parents of any child with autism attending some of the academies criticised by Sir Michael would have little confidence that their child’s needs could be met, so I have another question for the Minister: what is the Secretary of State going to do in response to Sir Michael’s letter of 10 March?

I have another couple of points to keep the Minister interested and gainfully employed. She may have seen the results of the survey by the National Autistic Society last January on the operation of the SEN system in England. This survey, of over 1,400 parents and carers of children with autism, showed a nearly 50% dissatisfaction rate with their experience of the new system. What are DfE Ministers doing on the NAS’s recommendation, as a result of that survey, that the Government should conduct and publish a review of the implementation of the new system?

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, made graphic mention of the position of educational psychologists. These people are critical to making the new system work and helping both schools and parents to use it. The staff shortages of educational psychologists, with over 200 vacancies in England, is damaging the new system’s operation. Given the parlous state of local government finances in many places—largely, I have to say, the result of actions by the current and previous Governments, especially, if we were being unkind, some of the actions of the Chancellor in relation to local government—what is the Education Secretary going to do to ensure that there is sufficient educational psychology capacity available? As more schools cease to be the responsibility of local authorities and it becomes her responsibility, what can we hear from the Minister about how the Government are going to tackle the serious problem of a shortage of educational psychologists, as more and more schools move to academy status and outside the remit of their local authority? I think there is enough of an exam paper there to keep the Minister interested.