Oral Answers to Questions

Marsha De Cordova Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Josh MacAlister]

I welcome the hon. Member’s interest in this issue, and the reports from the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee. Children’s social care issues looked at through the prism of profit making in children’s homes demonstrate how much radical reform we need for children’s social care. That is why we are putting £2.4 billion into resetting the system overall so that it intervenes earlier. We will also bring forward plans very soon to set out an expansion of fostering. That is in addition to measures in the Bill that is currently going through the other place to introduce a financial oversight mechanism and a profit cap to address the issues that the hon. Member has mentioned.

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

16. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of SEND provision for blind and partially sighted children.

[The Minister for School Standards (Georgia Gould)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her efforts in so brilliantly representing the interests of visually impaired young people and the time that she has spent with me on this important topic. I am delighted to be attending a roundtable this week that she has organised with the Royal National Institute of Blind People to hear the personal testimonies of young people. All schools have legal duties to make reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils, and special schools must ensure that they cater for those with complex needs. I am really pleased that the teacher training announcement includes support for visually impaired children.

[Marsha De Cordova]

I welcome the work that the Minister is doing, and I look forward to our roundtable meeting. Research by Guide Dogs has found that 69% of non-specialist teachers said that they lacked the confidence and the skills to support disabled children, including children with visual impairments, so I welcome the Government’s new SEND announcement on teacher training, which I know will include blind and partially sighted children. However, training alone is not enough, so can the Minister set out what steps the Government are taking to ensure that schools and local authorities properly understand and implement their legal obligations on reasonable adjustments, so that blind and partially sighted children and young people are not put at a disadvantage?

[Georgia Gould]

We have commissioned research to strengthen the evidence base of what works to improve inclusive practice in mainstream settings, including for sensory impairment, and I look forward to discussing what more we can do together later this week.

Oral Answers to Questions

Marsha De Cordova Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Janet Daby]

We are very confident about what the Government are doing with apprenticeships. Our levy-funded growth and skills offer, with apprenticeships at the heart, will deliver greater flexibility for learners and employers in England, aligned with our industrial strategy, creating routes into good skilled jobs in growing industries. As a first step, that will include shorter duration and foundation apprenticeships in targeted sectors.

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

15. What steps she is taking to ensure that disabled children have access to specialist teachers.

[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

High quality teaching is the most important in-school factor for improving outcomes for all children, including those with disabilities. That is why we are committed to delivering our first step of recruiting 6,500 new teachers to drive high and rising standards in our schools in both mainstream and specialist settings. We are doing that by bolstering pay and conditions, and restoring teaching as a respected, expert profession.

[Marsha De Cordova]

Research in June 2023 found that only 56% of teachers in mainstream schools felt confident about supporting children with a special educational need or disability. Today, that means many children, including in my constituency, are still missing out on learning and leaving school without the skills they need. Does the Minister agree that we need more specialist teachers, including those for multisensory purposes and for children with visual impairments, to ensure every child has the opportunity to fulfil their potential?

[Catherine McKinnell]

All teachers are teachers of special educational needs and disabilities. High quality teaching is central to ensuring that pupils with SEND are given the best possible opportunities to achieve in their education. To support all teachers, we are implementing high quality teacher training reforms, which begin with initial teacher training and continue through early career training to middle and senior leadership. These changes and reforms will ensure that teachers have the skills to support all pupils to succeed, including those with SEND.

SEND Provision

Marsha De Cordova Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) and pay tribute to him for securing this incredibly important debate. The fact that it is such a packed Chamber—standing room only—is testament to both the passion with which he set out his case and the stories that we have heard. We have so many new Members, but those of us who have served one, two, three or more terms know that inboxes and postbags are bulging with stories and heartbreaking cases across the country. In the time available, and given the number who wish to speak, I will not do the customary paying of tribute to the various speeches, but I may refer to various contributions as I go. I would particularly like to recognise those new Members who were formerly teachers. It is so good to have more teachers in the House and it is important that we hear their voice. I thank the hon. Member for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas) for paying particular tribute to the hard work of staff up and down the country who have to battle in this system alongside parents and pupils.

As we have heard, too many vulnerable children who should be receiving crucial support to learn, play and thrive are being let down by a system that is broken. According to the latest Government data, more than 1.6 million children in England have a special educational need—that is almost one in five of our pupils. We have heard of the huge growth in the level of demand in the past few years, with the number of pupils with an education, health and care plan growing by almost 12% in the past year alone. More than half a million children are now on EHCPs. Despite the best efforts and dedication of everyone involved in the sector, including teachers, parents and charities, it is clear that services are struggling to keep up with demand. As a result, too many children with SEND are being left behind.

The new Government have an immense challenge on their hands and, for all their rhetoric, education was not a priority for the previous Conservative Government once they were left to their own devices from 2015 onwards. I have no doubt that the shadow Minister today will point to a plethora of announcements on SEND and promises to build special schools in response to the overwhelming and growing need. Actions sadly never met the rhetoric. The evidence is crystal clear, as has been backed up by the stories we have heard from across the House today: we know that parents and children are stuck in an adversarial system, fighting, and waiting many months—sometimes even years— to get the support to which their children are entitled. The previous Government’s own SEND review in 2022 stated that the system was

“failing to deliver for children, young people and their families.”

As we have heard, the former Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, even described it as “lose, lose, lose”.

We also know that headteachers are at their wits’ end, with teachers and teaching assistants being driven out of the classroom because of the strain on them. Last year, on a visit to Harrogate, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) and I met the SENCO for Coppice Valley primary school, who was leaving because he felt he could not meet the needs of his pupils and provide the support that they deserved. In my own constituency, I have heard about serious safeguarding incidents in schools involving children with SEND who are not getting the support that they desperately need and deserve. It is unfair not only on those particular children, but on the whole class, and it is unfair on the teaching staff who are doing their very best to provide a good education for all.

With school budgets so stretched, I know that many schools are struggling to offer the inclusive education they want to. Many are laying off teaching assistants to deliver the cost savings they need, and it is often those teaching assistants who are providing the support for a child with special educational needs to remain in a mainstream classroom. At the same time, local authorities cannot possibly plug the funding gaps from their own budgets, given the parlous state of council finances.

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Lady on the speech she is giving, and she rightly points out the challenges around the laying-off of teaching assistants. Does she agree that in all the reforms that the Government need to look at, we really must not go back to a special schools approach but should always focus on having an inclusive education system with the right support for those children to learn alongside their peers?

[Munira Wilson]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention and I agree that, where possible, we need to be as inclusive as possible. Equally, there are children whose needs cannot be met in a mainstream setting and we need to have special provision for them—I will touch on that in a moment.

The funding for special needs has fallen so far short of what is needed that local authorities across the country now have a cumulative high needs deficit of approximately £3.15 billion. Many local authorities’ financial viability is being put at risk by these growing deficits. Although the safety valve programme that my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) mentioned, of which my own borough of Richmond upon Thames was an early member, has provided some relief, it is a sticking-plaster solution, kicking the can down the road. Once the agreements run out, those local authorities are projected to start racking up big deficits again.

As well as the cost of providing the support to which children are legally and morally entitled, councils are also seeing their SEND transport bills skyrocket. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) pointed out in the case from her constituency, we know that the number of children having to make long journeys has increased by almost a quarter over the past five years. Vulnerable children are having to travel ever further distances because specialist provision is not available locally for many.

Two thirds of all special schools are full or over capacity. The last Government was incredibly slow in building the special schools that they promised, and they turned down many applications from councils to build and open their own SEND schools to make that provision available. Councils face a double whammy: not only are they paying transportation costs, but they are having to buy in private provision.

Many independent SEND schools are brilliant not-for-profit charities, but there is also obscene profiteering from some special schools run by private equity firms, which are bleeding councils up and down the country dry. I hope the Labour Government will look at that because my calls to the Conservative Government fell on deaf ears.

I want to pick up a point made by the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) about the many families whose children are not eligible for EHCPs or who cannot face the gauntlet of trying to secure one. They turn to mainstream, small independent schools to better support their child because larger mainstream schools cannot support that need, but those families will be penalised by the new Government’s plan to slap VAT on independent school fees from January. Those who will not be able to afford the additional cost will turn to the state sector, putting more pressure on, as we have heard, a system in crisis.

Furthermore, the proposal to have a VAT exemption for those with EHCPs will incentivise even more parents to apply through the system. I have heard from a constituent just this week who will probably have to do that, which will put yet more pressure on a system that cannot cope with more. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about the 100,000 children who have SEND and are in the independent sector.

All of us recognise that SEND provision is an enormous challenge that will not be resolved overnight despite what the Secretary of State hopes to be able to do. I stand ready to support her in any way I can to make sure that we tackle the issue. The recent Liberal Democrat manifesto set out several ideas that I hope the Minister will look at.

First we propose that a new national body be established for SEND that would be responsible for funding the support of children with very high needs. The national body for SEND would pay for any costs above £25,000 for children with high needs. It would reduce risk for local authorities and help to tackle the postcode lottery that we have heard about.