Education: Special Educational Needs

Lord Williamson of Horton Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, the Minister will recall that the Academies Bill, which I believe was his baptism, was one of the first Bills of the coalition Government to go through this House. There was concern that it did not make specific provision for special educational needs pupils in the new academies. The Government rightly responded to that omission during the passage of the Bill, but that demonstrated that this House is watchful of special educational needs, and today it is good to have this debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, for initiating it following the very full report from Ofsted that was published last month. Like the noble Baroness, I stress that, although there have been criticisms of the report, the sample taken was a large one and that must be taken fully into account.

The report evaluates as best it can how well the legislative framework and the arrangements serve children and young people with SEN and/or disabilities. In my view, the report points clearly to areas where we can do better. I will refer to those areas, but I do not do so in a critical way because I recognise that the problems confronting children, parents, teachers, schools and local authorities are difficult, diverse and therefore often not easy to solve simply by setting out a structure for action. However, I will highlight some points to which the report draws attention and which underlie, in some cases, more than one of their recommendations. In particular—I know there has been criticism of this—is the identification of pupils with SEN, currently 1.7 million of school age, appropriate? In short, is the division between school action, in the form of additional support within the school or school action plus in the form of additional support bolstered by outside help and those with a statement of SEN who clearly need intensive support, working well? The report makes specific criticisms of the workings of the system. I have to say that I do not object to the definitions and the action which ought to be taken because the vital question is how schools and other authorities respond to those needs. We know from a number of sources how unhappy parents are with the way that the arrangements operate on the ground. We know that we should take account of it.

What the report is really about is the working of the system, and we ought to concentrate on that. I shall now pick up on the points made in the report about the system to which I attach most importance, and I hope that the Minister will comment on them. First, the report shows that some schools have thrown the net of school action very wide and have attributed SEN to some pupils very broadly. It states that half the schools used low attainment and relatively slow progress as the principal indicator of special education needs, while in other schools SEN pupils had needs that were no different from many other pupils in that they were not being taught well enough and, perhaps even more important, their expectations were allowed to be too low. On page 8, the Ofsted report states quite forcefully that any change in the system should focus inter alia on—here I give the only quote that I shall make from the report—

“ensuring that schools do not identify pupils as having special educational needs when they simply need better teaching”.

Secondly, I am concerned that the quality of effective identification and good-quality provision was not common. In particular, where a child was identified as having SEN requiring school action plus or even at statement level, further resources were provided from outside the school but this was often—I repeat, often—not of good quality and did not lead to a better outcome for the child or young person. That is certainly a disappointing conclusion and we ought to take account of it.

Thirdly, monitoring and evaluation were, in some cases examined by the inspectors, insufficient or almost non-existent. I am sure that some excellent work is being done, but when the inspectors use the word “often” in relation to provision not of good quality, it is again a cause for concern. It seems that some agencies concentrate on ensuring that a service is being provided, which is a good thing, but less on whether it is effectively meeting the need. On the contrary, where there was close evaluation of the outcomes, the additional support was valuable. So the potential is there. I conclude on this point that that is not basically a fault of the system but more a call for greater emphasis on the effectiveness of what is provided.

In some other areas of legislation and guidance it seems that the cumulative effect of minor changes has made things difficult for all of us, particularly for the parents and the children with SEN, who are the ones who run up against all the problems in interpreting and navigating the system. This is also an important point and we ought to do our best to remove this difficulty because it is depressing to hear that the parents of these children take that view in many cases.

I hope, therefore, that the Minister will reflect on all these questions: the too broad a use of the term SEN; the quality of additional provision for school action plus and statemented children and young persons with SEN; better evaluation of that provision; and, possibly, the simplification of legislation and guidance.