Oral Answers to Questions
Anna Dixon Excerpts(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Janet Daby
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very good question. It is important that kinship carers, as well as the children they are looking after, have the support they need. Through the process of family group decision making, families will come together to have conversations about how best to support children in kinship care. Respite and other related matters will be discussed to ensure that the right provision is in place. This Government are committed to getting it right for children, especially where the previous Government failed.
Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Education (Bridget Phillipson)
The previous Government left behind a skills system that was fragmented and failing: falling numbers of apprenticeships for young people; adults unable to find the training courses they need; businesses confused; and no plans to equip people with the skills for the economy and opportunities of tomorrow. We are turning the page by establishing Skills England to unify that fragmented landscape, and bringing forward a plan for post-16 education and skills, which will deliver the education and training pathways that our economy, employers and learners need.
Anna Dixon
Some 3.8 million people aged 19 and over benefit from skills education in England every year. I pay tribute to all the hard-working professionals employed in further education, including at Shipley college in my constituency. However, businesses in Saltaire tell me that they struggle to recruit people with the digital and tech skills that they need locally. I welcome steps taken by the Government to address skills shortage vacancies. Will the Secretary of State assure me that the benefits of Skills England will be felt by businesses in Shipley?
Bridget Phillipson
I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the staff at Shipley college. She is right that it is time that we, as a country, took skills much more seriously. We were left with skills shortages in many key areas, including those she identified. We will be giving businesses the flexibility they have been asking for, to unlock growth and drive opportunity through the reformed growth and skills levy.
Home-to-School Transport: Children with SEND
Anna Dixon Excerpts(2 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
It is an honour to speak under your chairmanship, Sir Mark, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for securing this debate.
As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I have had to scrutinise the National Audit Office’s report on SEND. According to that report, local authorities spent some £1.4 billion on home-to-school transport in 2022-23—an 80% real-terms increase since 2015-16. I am delighted that this Government have brought forward an additional £1 billion in the recent Budget for SEND funding, which will go some way to covering the high costs faced by local authorities, but we know that we need to change the provision.
In Bradford, the council’s travel assistance service spends £54,000 per day on home-to-school taxis alone. Those numbers are eye-watering. Only through prioritising SEND support in our mainstream local schools will we alleviate those financial pressures on local authorities, and I welcome the priority that the Government have given to that. The main point that has been made in this debate is that it would help all the many families in this situation if their children were in local schools. That would not only reduce expensive transport costs, but improve outcomes for disabled children and their families.
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on securing this important debate and on her very good speech. This subject impacts families up and down the country every day, and I am glad that we have been able to debate it. We have heard about the need for local provision, more specialist schools and a well-funded system, with access to education a common theme.
As Members have acknowledged, under the Education Act 1996, local authorities are under a duty to provide free school transport to eligible children. That was intended to mean that no child is prevented from accessing education due to a lack of transportation, a view that I believe is shared by everybody here today. However, demand is growing, and as the hon. Members for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) and for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) identified, the ballooning numbers really are a problem.
I will run through the numbers, as they set out the problem we face. Nationally, council spending on SEND transport increased from £728 million in 2019 to £1.4 billion in 2024. It is projected to reach £2.2 billion by 2027-28, an increase of 57%. The average cost per SEND pupil nationally for transport has also risen by 32% between 2018 and 2024, and the number of pupils requiring transport is also growing. Councils transported an average of 1,300 pupils in 2023-24, up from 911 in 2018-19, which is an increase of 43%. I know that the Minister will be thinking about the cause of the demand, as well as what we need to do about it. I hope she can provide an update for us today on Government thinking in this area.
As Members will know, the local government financial settlement for next year is looming. I must correct the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins), on this point. She should look at what happened to local government funding when the Lib Dems were in government and then what happened after they left. It is important to emphasise that the Conservative Government increased the high needs budget by over 60% in 2019-20 to £10.5 billion and put in place a statutory override so that SEND-related deficits did not overwhelm council budgets. With that set to expire in 2026, what is the Secretary of State’s message to local authorities, particularly in rural and county areas, where these pressures are most acute?
Laura Trott
I want to make sure that there is time for a wrap-up, and we are quite close to the end of the debate, so I will continue, if the hon. Lady does not mind.
Is the Secretary of State pushing the Chancellor to extend that protection or for deficits to be written off? How are the Government supporting local authorities to explore innovative solutions, such as shared transport services or alternative models, to help to manage rising SEND transport costs more effectively? Can the Minister also update us on what the total cost will be to local government of the national insurance contributions increase announced in the Budget? What is the cost of the national insurance increase specifically for home-to-school transport? Will local authorities be fully compensated for those costs?
The hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) mentioned the need for capital funding. Many Members here will remember the 15 specialist schools pledged in the last Conservative Budget. Can the Minister confirm that those will be going ahead?
I am conscious of the time, so this will be my final word. I pledge that we will be a constructive Opposition. I think everyone here today will be clear that we support local provision, support for parents and more capital funding, and we will support that with the Government if they bring it forward.
The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on securing this incredibly important debate—its importance clearly marked by the number of contributions. I know how passionate my hon. Friend is about the need to secure the right support for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Indeed, she and I made a wonderful joint visit in her constituency to a fantastic school that demonstrates what brilliant education delivered inclusively for the whole community can look like. I know she works really hard in her area to make sure that that is available to as many children as possible. That is a vision that the Government very much share with her, because as a Government we are absolutely committed to creating opportunities for all children so that they can achieve and thrive.
I think we all agree that no child should struggle to get to school because of lack of transport. The testimonies that we have heard show the remarkable job that hon. Members have all done in putting forward so powerfully the voices of their constituents in only a minute. To be able to accommodate 30, or just under 30, speakers in a debate of just an hour on this incredibly important issue is quite a feat, so I think everybody should be commended. Their constituents will need to understand the constraints of these debates and that they have done an incredible job in the circumstances. It has come across so strongly how important it is that the transport system supports all young people to access educational opportunity. This is something that I am very keen to look at in the role I now have in the Government. I thank all Members for their contributions today, and you, Sir Mark, for keeping such good order.
I apologise in advance if I am not able to respond to all the individual issues raised. Some of them relate to local authorities and need to be addressed in the correct way to local authorities, where there are the right people to respond to these issues. Others will be for the Department, and we will do our very best to follow up—if we do not, please contact us, because I am really keen and genuinely committed to making sure that all the voices that Members represent here today are heard as we look at how this system is working and how we can fix it.
As has been mentioned, the Department’s home-to-school travel policy is aimed and designed to ensure that no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport, but the challenges in that regard are significant and have been well set out today. There are also particular rights for low-income households to have support in order to exercise choice. Local authorities are obliged to arrange free travel for children of compulsory school age—I appreciate that hon. Members have raised concerns about pre-school-age children and post-16 children, and I will do my very best to address those concerns in the time that we have available—but we know that local authorities are really struggling to fulfil their duty to provide free transport, even for currently eligible children, and the cost of doing so has escalated sharply in recent years.
We thank local authorities for the work they do to try to support children to get to school. We know they provide a valuable service for the children and the families who can access it, particularly if those children have special educational needs and disabilities.
However, there are many reasons for the steep increase in costs in recent years: fuel price inflation and shortages of drivers, passenger assistants and transport operators have all pushed up costs in the market. But we also know that this huge increase is related to challenges within the school system itself, and specifically the way that the school system currently educates children with additional needs.
More children have an educational, health and care plan, and more of those children have to travel long distances to go to a school that can meet their needs. In addition to their journeys being longer, which in itself obviously makes them more expensive, there is a reduction in opportunities for economies of scale. Fewer children are likely to travel on a particular route, which means that more individual journeys need to be made.
Local authorities also try to help young people aged between 16 and 19 to access education or training. That help is extended to the age of 24 if a young person has a special educational need. We recognise that there are similarly significant financial pressures on the transport budgets for post-16 students. The cost and availability of public transport can also be an issue for some young people between 16 and 19 if they are going to travel to sixth form.
Catherine McKinnell
I would like to, but I also want to respond on many of the issues that have been raised, so I apologise that I am not able to take an intervention.
Many local authorities offer subsidised transport and there is also the 16 to 19 bursary, which is intended to provide support to young people in households with the lowest incomes. However, we know that for far too long far too many children have been let down by a special educational needs system that is not working. We are determined to fix it and to restore parents’ trust that their child will get the support to flourish and have their needs met within the education system.
As hon. Members have said today, we urgently need to improve the inclusivity and expertise of our mainstream schools, so that as many children as possible can go to their local community school with their peers. In and of itself, that would reduce some of those transport pressures. However, we must also ensure that support is available for those children who have more complex needs and need special schools. Fixing the system will also help to fix the home-to-school travel challenges that we are seeing. Ensuring that children can be educated locally will reduce that pressure, so it is a key priority for this Government.
However, there are no quick fixes. This issue is absolutely core to our opportunity mission; addressing special educational needs and disabilities must be part of ensuring that every child has the barriers to opportunity broken down for them. We need to work together with parents, schools, councils and the expert staff who we know go above and beyond every day to support these children, but we recognise the challenges in the system.
Home-to-school travel is obviously an absolutely core part of ensuring that children receive the education that they need and that will help them to thrive. However, we know that the eligibility criteria have been unchanged since the 1940s. Clearly, they are meant to ensure that children can access education and that lack of transport is not a barrier to children accessing education, but I am really keen to understand how they are working in the modern context and how we can change the education system to reduce the pressures and ensure that we have a transport system that is fit for the modern age.
Post-16 eligibility has been raised a number of times today. I have mentioned the bursary fund; more than £166 million of bursary funding has been allocated to institutions for the 2024-25 academic year. It is intended to support young people with travel, books, equipment and clothing, if needed. An additional £20 million is also specifically allocated to support vulnerable students: those in care, care leavers and those supporting themselves or in receipt of social security funds. Those funds should be available, but clearly they are not always getting to the children who need them. In addition, local authorities have discretion to make the transport arrangements that they deem necessary for post-16 students in their area, taking into consideration local circumstances, local budgets and local priorities.
I recognise all the challenges that have been identified today and I urge hon. Members to work with their local authorities to try to improve the situation on a local level, just as we are clearly working to do so on a Government level.
We know that children’s earliest years make the biggest difference to their life, which is why we recognise the importance of early years and early education. We know that that is how to deliver the best outcomes for children. Having access to those appropriate childcare settings in the early years is key to meeting those early years development goals and to breaking down any barriers that may arise later on in life. We know that special educational needs access in particular, and identifying needs at the earliest stage possible, is key; many Members have outlined the challenges that transport can pose to making sure that children have access to those opportunities.
We absolutely want children and young people to receive the support they need to thrive. We want local authorities to be able to provide suitable places for children and young people. We know that the capital funding for high-needs places is a key concern for Members, and we will set out plans on that funding shortly. I am out of time to respond, but if I have not addressed a particular issue, I ask hon. Members please to get in touch.
I thank hon. Friends again for bringing this matter forward, for ensuring that everybody had the opportunity to speak, for being so respectful in this debate, and for allowing everyone to put their constituents’ views forward. I know that this is a challenge that far too many face, and that we have to work together in our determination to fix this system to give every child the best start in life.
SEND Provision
Anna Dixon Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Dr Shastri-Hurst
My hon. Friend is entirely right; the delays in EHCP assessments are a hindrance to a child’s access to the national curriculum. We are failing them by not doing those assessments in a timely manner, and we need to improve on that. I agree with her comments entirely.
A constituent has told me that the nearest school with the necessary facilities for her son is 31 miles away. That means that she and her child have had to settle for a school that is not fully equipped for his needs, simply due to geography. My constituency surgery, like those of other Members, is regularly visited by parents with similar cases. Evidently, the current system is not working.
Therefore, I wish to propose three changes that I believe will lead to a significant improvement for schools and families affected by SEND provision. The first is something that everybody in this room is already leading on: raising awareness of SEND. It is heartening to see so many Members engaging with this topic, and it is only by doing that, and by educating ourselves and others, that we can hope to make a change for the better.
The second is identifying children with special educational needs at an early age, which is vital to maximising their life chances. That is why I would like to see better training and resources provided to teachers to help with earlier detection.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
I will not give way, purely because of the amount I have to get through in the time.
Aside from family members, children spend most of their developing lives with their teachers. It is important that the teaching curriculum is sufficiently flexible to enable children to reach their true potential.
I would also like to make special reference to those military families whose children suffer from special educational needs. Having served in the military myself, I know of several families who have encountered adverse effects as a result. With regular school moves, often between different local authorities, there is an inevitable need to reapply for an EHCP, thereby delaying access to the provision that is so desperately needed.
My final request to the Minister comes as no surprise: to achieve all these improvements, it is important that local authorities receive the funding they need. In particular, I ask that my own council receive its fair share of funding, because Solihull council presently takes in SEND children from Birmingham but receives much less funding per pupil. That matter needs to be rectified.
Those three things—awareness, training and funding—will have a real, tangible impact on young people, their families and their life chances.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Betts. What a mess—young people broken by a broken system. The Children and Families Act promised so much, but without people, money and the rest of the system to back it up, it could never deliver. When the wait for the diagnosis is over, the battle for the EHCP is won and masses of resources have been spent, the demand is still not being met. Staff do their very best, but still people are falling out of the system.
I have spent the past year digging deep, looking at the local, the national and the international to bring best practice to this space. I have looked at the environment, the community and the child. On the environment, I say to the Minister, “Go back to the Department and rip up the behaviourist approach to education. It creates a world where neurodiverse children—those with anxiety or mental illness—and even the timid cannot survive.”
Instead, we should adopt a therapeutic, nurturing approach so that all children can thrive. In York, where schools have done so, all gain from recognising the need for every child to be safe, valued and included. It is a happy place where a child will strive for excellence and the whole child will be able to navigate their way through this world, rather than an obstacle course of micro-traumas, stress and anxiety. Let us not build bigger and bigger schools, but create more therapeutic and intimate spaces that belong to the children and where they can thrive. We should bring children out of home schooling, out of their bedrooms, off the streets and back into the classroom. School must be safe for all those children.
We also need to recognise, as the Government do, the failed nature of the curriculum. Let us build space for our brains and our bodies. Are we really shocked that young people are failing when only half of them is engaged? We have cut out arts, music, sports, nature, dance, play, exploration, wonder and fun. Yet all children, especially those with SEND, benefit from that balance.
When I visited Sweden, I went into schools to hear about what they were doing. They brought people into the heart of the school, not prescribing from an EHCP but taking a whole-child and a whole-school approach, using the skills of psychologists, teachers, occupational therapists, physios and speech therapists for all children. Let us recognise that school community and ensure that we value its members. Our teaching assistants do so much of the work, yet their pay is so poor—that must be addressed.
Rachael Maskell
I am going to continue.
As for parents, I have seen them pushed away and gaslit, when they should instead be integrated into the heart of the school, as they are in Sweden, leading on what their child needs. When it comes to the children themselves, let us review the purpose of education: preparing children for the world today, not breaking and testing them. Children with SEND struggle in that environment just to satisfy the need for data for Governments and to meet different goals. We need every child to flourish, and that is why we need to think again.
Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) for securing this important debate. We have heard from many Members how dire the situation is in their constituencies, but can we for a second celebrate the incredible staff who already put so much effort and passion into the provision they arrange for children? My first visit as an MP was to Mill Ford school in Ernesettle in Plymouth, which supports children and young adults with complex needs. I have to pay tribute to the incredible staff there and congratulate Mill Ford school on recently being rated as “outstanding” by Ofsted.
I am pleased that we are moving away from one-word Ofsted ratings, because it is impossible to capture what Mill Ford does for people in just one word. While visiting Mill Ford, we stopped by their daily singalong in the hall. Pupils from all age groups were having an incredible time, singing in various tunes and volumes and quite literally jumping for joy. It was a fantastic scene. Despite this, huge challenges remain. For example, at that school the corridors are so narrow that two wheelchairs cannot be wheeled past each other.
The situation in Plymouth is similar to that in many hon. Members’ constituencies, but some statistics we have already heard do not match quite how dire it is. In Plymouth, 18.5% of pupils have a SEND need—well above the national figure of 13%. The number of children and young people with an EHCP in Plymouth has increased since 2010 by 125%—more than doubled. We know that there is no quick fix for the crisis in SEND. Special educational needs are complex and wide-ranging, so they require complex and wide-ranging solutions. We need to listen carefully to education professionals, support staff and especially those with lived experience of SEND as we move forward. I am proud that I ran for Parliament on a manifesto that pledged to take a community-wide approach to special educational needs, improving inclusivity in mainstream schools as well as ensuring that special schools are fit for purpose.
Anna Dixon
As in my hon. Friend’s constituency, in Shipley the number of pupils with SEND has increased again this year. It is putting huge pressure on our teachers and teaching assistants in mainstream schools. Does he agree that the cuts to school funding under the previous Government have contributed to the problem, and that further steps need to be taken to ensure appropriate training for all our school staff, particularly those in mainstream schools?
Fred Thomas
I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s point about the funding cuts. I was going to respond to a point made by the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), but I removed it from my contribution due to the time constraints. She asked earlier whether the Government had conducted feasibility studies on the removal of VAT exemptions from private schools. I would respond by asking whether the previous Government, which we had since 2010, conducted feasibility studies on SEND when they made deep cuts to education.
I started by speaking about the fantastic Mill Ford special school in Plymouth Moor View. Expanding capacity at Mill Ford is central to Plymouth city council’s plan to address the SEND crisis, but it is much harder to access funding to replace or rebuild a school than it is to build new schools. Will the Minister commit to working with me to help expand capacity at Plymouth Moor View’s special schools?