Education Bill

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I share the aspirations and passion of the Secretary of State to improve standards for all our children and young people, and I welcome the proposals to improve discipline in our schools, to tackle bullying of all types and to protect teachers from false allegations. Of course I also feel that head teachers need the freedom to exercise their professional judgment.

The Bill contains some welcome proposals, and some others that merit close scrutiny at later stages. For me, the most important part of improving standards is investing in early years in order to get the foundations right. I hope that the commitment to, and funding for, free pre-school provision for disadvantaged two-year-olds will be welcomed across the House. Research shows that good quality early-childhood services have wide-ranging benefits for children, particularly disadvantaged children. That obviously helps disadvantaged children with their development, and speech and language skills, which are vital as they progress through later schooling.

In 2010, the latest findings from the effective provision of pre-school education research project were that children aged 11 still showed benefits from attendance at high quality pre-schools, which emphasises the importance of high quality provision. With the cutbacks, however, we have to keep the focus on driving up the quality of pre-school education. I also agree with Save the Children that local authorities should be asked to publish the proportion of free early places for disadvantaged two-year-olds taken up in good or outstanding settings.

I commend the Labour Government for achieving the universal free entitlement of up to 15 hours for three and four-year-olds, and for achieving that very high take-up. However, we still face the conflicting problems of cost, quality, quantity and sustainability—we will face those challenges throughout. It is important in early years to establish the joy of learning, so I hope that any reforms we make will encourage it throughout schooling—and through life, really.

I want to comment, however, on a few clauses that concern me and on which I would like reassurance. I am particularly concerned about the removal of the duty to co-operate with local authorities. I have been involved in many Bill Committees concerned with legislation for children and young people, and I have always felt that schools have to be included—I think that my coalition partners felt that too. I can understand that people might be concerned about unnecessary bureaucracy for schools and colleges, and I can see a case for reviewing how that provision is working in practice, but a repeal with no obvious measure to fill the gap concerns me greatly.

Like the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn), I am deeply concerned about child protection. When I read through a serious case review that went back some years, I noticed that spattered throughout were cases in which teachers had not reported incidents. I worry, therefore, about taking away that duty, about the possibility of child protection being overlooked and about teachers not taking on their full responsibilities. I am also concerned about removing the duty to co-operate in respect of looked-after children, young carers, children with parents in prison and children with special needs. How can we ensure co-operation between schools, local authorities and other vital services for our vulnerable young people without something being put in place? I hope that the Minister will tell us what that something is.

[Pat Glass]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the number of middle-years serious case reviews in this country—those from the point of starting school until the mid-teens, when other factors come into play—has reduced significantly because of the duty on schools to co-operate?

[Annette Brooke]

I am afraid that I do not have the hon. Lady’s professional knowledge, only that of the limited serious case reviews I have had the opportunity to see. It is vital that everybody concerned with children is looking out for their protection.

I am equally concerned about removing the requirement on maintained schools in England to have regard to the children and young people’s plans. Obviously, the provision for vulnerable children within the plans is really important. I have even greater concerns about special educational needs. The National Autistic Society points out that where services are not co-ordinated, children may undergo tens of assessments, and essential support can be delayed. Parents have reported the constant battles they face to get all the services that their children need. I believe that by working together we can reduce bureaucracy and costs, but I remain concerned about the removal of duties on schools to co-operate and to have regard to the children and young people’s plans.

During the passage of the Autism Act 2009, which was sponsored by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), and which I was pleased to support throughout, the previous Government committed themselves to ensuring that the needs of children with autism would be supported locally through children and young people’s plans. How will the Government ensure that these needs are recognised and met locally?

The shadow Secretary of State for Education challenged the belief of Liberal Democrats in local authorities. I believe strongly that local authorities should play an important strategic role in the provision of high quality education in their local areas, and that they should play a pivotal role in ensuring that other related services necessary for a child’s well-being work together effectively.

I am concerned not only about removing the duty to co-operate but about the abolition of admissions forums and the reduction in the role of the schools adjudicator. I welcome the extension of the adjudicator’s role to academies, but I think that the ability to look at a whole school admissions policy when responding to a particular complaint has brought many benefits. I would hope that we all want to promote fair admissions to schools, but I seek reassurance from the Minister: if we are to reduce the role of the adjudicator and get rid of admissions forums, how are we to monitor the situation and ensure that admissions policies are administered fairly at a local level? I sincerely seek answers from him, because these are important aspects of the Bill—they are important across the board for disadvantaged young people, children with special educational needs and looked-after children.

With those comments, I would like to emphasise that local authorities have a strategic role to play. I would not want to return to the old-style model for local authorities, but I do think that they have a role to play, and if we are to take away some of their powers, we need to know what will be put in their place.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

May I say how pleased I am that the Secretary of State is working with schools and colleges on how the enhanced learner support fund should operate? The few comments that I shall make today are intended to feed into the work that I understand is going on in the vital area of supporting participation in 16-to-19 education and training, and into the work that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) is carrying out. I believe that there should be a comprehensive view across all education and training for that age group.

Over several years, I have received a number of representations about the unfairness of the EMA system, and I am quite convinced that there is a need for reform, but equally I am concerned that its replacement should provide sufficient support. On the point about unfairness, I would like to quote just one constituency case—a rather unusual one. A single parent, earning just over £30,000 a year, had triplets in a local sixth form. I wrote pleading letters to the relevant Labour Minister, saying that surely there should be more flexibility to take into account individual circumstances, but to no avail. Of course child benefit is not very helpful when one has triplets, either, because for the second and third triplet, the rate is considerably lower.

There must be many cases where a family has two or more siblings in post-16 education, yet the system that the Labour party is defending so vigorously did not have the capacity to respond to individual circumstances. I believe that we need something that is individual and targeted. It is clear to me that we need to address potential barriers to entry faced by individual students in accessing the most appropriate courses of their choice, and how those barriers can best be overcome.

Like the Secretary of State, I believe in choice and social mobility. That means access to the right institution that offers the right range of subjects for the particular student. I represent a constituency that is relatively affluent, but it certainly includes young people who need and deserve our support. It has a mix of urban and rural areas. I concur with the points made about the very long journeys that have to be undertaken by some students.

I shall deal briefly with the main barriers, as I see them. I see transport as a major barrier. It is not enough to say that local authorities have a statutory duty. The local authorities that cover my constituency have long since abandoned providing transport for sixth-form students, and have taken the attitude that EMA replaced the need to cover public transport. They have been quite gruelling, saying, “Ah, there’s another school or college that is closer, where you could do more or less what you want to do.” That is not good enough.

Poole local authority, for example, has grammar schools. If a young person has gone to a secondary modern school from the poorer part of town, it is right that they should have access to the grammar school if they have worked hard to get the qualifications. I ask the Secretary of State to look at that. We believe in social mobility, and with the grammar school system there is a particular problem.

With reference to FE colleges, we need to take on board why young people go on to further education. It is often because it offers a totally different type of course from those they were able to do at school. Again, there is a problem with a local authority funding transport because somebody wants to go to a college of further education rather than to their local comprehensive school. School might have been a bad experience. I have lectured in further education for many years. It is inspiring to turn around students who have had bad school experiences and turn out to be brilliant students in a different setting. I am concerned that we may be depriving some children of those opportunities.

My constituency has no FE colleges, which inevitably means a great deal of travel for youngsters there. Students from my constituency go further afield, beyond Bournemouth and Poole college, in the opposite direction to the specialist college, Kingston Maurward, which has incredibly interesting courses. Originally one of the agricultural colleges, it offers many courses that are suitable for particular interests, such as work with animals. It is extremely important that transport is paid.

I am concerned that the issue of transport costs is not as simple as it sounded when the Secretary of State was talking about it. I would support the introduction of a young people’s travel card. I would make a sacrifice. I am eligible for a bus pass although I do not have one. Even if I had it, I do not think I need to be able to travel all over the country for free. I believe many people would accept a cut there.

A further barrier is the cost of equipment. Bournemouth and Poole college has an amazing reputation for catering and hospitality, as hon. Members might imagine. Of course, the equipment is expensive, and students must have help with that. We have discussed the fact that some courses need more expensive books than others—for example, students going on to study art will need expensive materials.

[Stephen Williams]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Annette Brooke]

I had better not, given the time.

There is a big difference between school, where free school meals are available, and the local college. Young people’s life chances can be transformed by going to college, but they need to have enough food.

I draw attention to the young people who are vulnerable and particularly disadvantaged—those not living in a family home for whatever reason, children in care, care leavers, young people who are homeless, children and young people with learning difficulties, teenage parents and young carers. We need some red lines: some groups of young people must be protected, come what may. In future, we must enhance access, ensure success and allow our young people to achieve their potential, regardless of background and financial circumstances.

I have two specific questions. One is about young people who are part-way through courses and who may not have EMA for the next year of the course. How will that be tackled? Will there be ring-fencing? I am worried about colleges and schools having pots of money and its going off into other activities. Finally, we seem to be facing a big threat today, but together we could work on the opportunities arising from it.

School Sports Funding

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Foster]

I will come to that very fair point at the end of my speech.

The Secretary of State is right to point out the amount of red tape and bureaucracy in the existing scheme, and to say that we should devolve responsibility for decisions to the lowest possible level, and, within our education system, to governors and head teachers. However, there are two problems. First, if schools buy in services, they need to have a broad framework from which to purchase. Unless we take action quickly, we will discover that all aspects of the school sport partnership network have disappeared. That is why it is important to accept the principle that we need to find a way to maintain a base level of support within some sort of structure. Schools need something to buy in to.

I agree with the Secretary of State that there ought to be ways of slimming the bureaucracy and of the number of bodies. Within my own constituency, the county sport partnership—another excellent set of bodies that do excellent work—already work with our schools and some of the excellent staff who are involved with the school sport partnership to see whether they can find a way to build a framework into which schools can opt. With a little bit of additional support from the Government, that could be a way forward. I do not think that it is necessary to have county sport partnerships and school sport partnerships. Indeed, the divisions between school sport and community sport have been too great under the current structures and, as I have said, bringing them together has been beneficial.

To my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, I say that I agree with the shadow Secretary of State that while some slimming of the structure is necessary, it has provided some excellent things and, with a smaller budget, there is a way of providing a basic framework whereby schools can bid.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is also a matter of timing? Schools, rightly or wrongly, have great uncertainty about their future budgets and therefore are not prepared to commit to a pool. I am concerned that we could lose everything by acting too precipitately.

[Mr Foster]

My hon. Friend is right, which is why I have said that time is not on our side. People are being issued with redundancy notices—and that is a problem—and schools are not clear about how much money may be available in their budgets.

Broadly speaking, we are moving in the right direction, but we need a framework. I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to talk urgently to the Youth Sport Trust and Sport England, because if they worked with him, he could put together a package that satisfied Members on both sides of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s listening mode, and I assure him that I appreciate the need to evaluate school sport partnerships. It is important to be clear in that evaluation about the difference between inter-school sport and intra-school sport. It has been said that 80% of children do not take part in inter-school competition, but that is hardly surprising, as it is representative sport at that level. Very few schools will enter competitions with anything other than their best team. Clearly, it cannot be the case that everyone can take part in inter-school competition or that it will replace intra-school activity.

The Secretary of State said that he was concerned that schools were now advocating activities such as rock climbing and dance rather than rugby or football. It is important to find the right sport for the right person, whether it is a more traditional team game, an individual sport or two hours of aerobics every week. Nothing gives me more pleasure than visiting a school and witnessing pupils who would probably never want to participate in competitive sport, but who do participate in street dance, for example. As long as young people are active and are enjoying sport and learning all the lessons that come with it, it should not matter whether they are cross-country runners, table tennis players or stars of the first XV rugby team. That is where school sport partnerships have come in, helping to deliver a wider PE curriculum than a PE teacher could manage on their own.

In principle, I agree with non-ring-fenced budgets and with more decision taking by individual schools, so I ask myself: why do I have reservations about schools making their own decisions, especially if the £162 million really is distributed among schools? If all schools pooled their money—and if it is definitely in their budgets for that purpose—life would be perfectly straightforward, as long as the local authority can provide the leadership. However, as I pointed out earlier, that works only if everyone signs up in advance. The feedback that I am getting locally is that head teachers are so uncertain about their budgets that they will not commit in advance until they see their budgets. There is uncertainty about what the pupil premium actually means, about the ending of extra grants for specialist schools and about much more. I am aware that the Secretary of State has gone out of his way to reassure people, but sadly there is still uncertainty. That is why I feel that we should not just stop the initiative dead. We should evaluate and make improvements, but we also have to move at a timed pace and put steps in place, rather than just saying, “This scheme will come to an end by April 2011.”

I would like to refer briefly to some comments made by one of my constituents. In part, we have focused on some of the bad experiences with school sport partnerships, but I want to celebrate some of the good experiences. In east Dorset, school sport partnerships have given all school children access to high quality coaching in a number of sports and, by organising festivals and tournaments, have allowed children the opportunity to compete and co-operate with children from other schools, as well as giving them access to facilities at the larger venues. It is through such initiatives that children become enthused by sport and develop life-long habits and skills. In addition to the more traditional sports of football, netball and rugby, children have had the opportunity to discover sports such as karate, basketball, archery, badminton and athletics that might not otherwise have been on offer. Thus, all children have the opportunity to find a sport that will interest them.

Sport plays a vital role, and it should be an integral part of a child’s education. It has obvious health benefits, but it is also important for personal development, communication skills and giving children self-confidence. It is impressive to see young sports leaders from middle and upper schools who have been given the chance to organise events, referee matches and do coaching, giving them skills that will be useful in any chosen career. With that responsibility comes more mature attitudes, and older children become role models for the younger children they lead. I am concerned that, without the work of the partnerships, the current level of participation in sport will not be maintained. The smaller schools will have difficulty offering the variety and quality of sporting activities possible at present, and the provision of sport could become patchy and piecemeal. I make my remarks in a constructive manner, and I urge the Secretary of State to give the issue a thorough review.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Annette Brooke]

I want to leave time for other speakers.

Schools White Paper

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady has been an impressive lead Member for children’s services and education in the past, and she speaks with authority. We are publishing an evidence paper to go alongside the White Paper—the first time that has happened—which will contain the evidence base for everything that we are doing. The expansion of teaching schools is based on research by the National Federation for Educational Research, which showed that they are outstanding in the work that they do.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I welcome many of the freedoms that are now being given to schools, but will the Secretary of State clarify one point for me? If a group of parents requested that a Sport for All programme should be continued, would the head teacher have the funds in his budget to continue such a programme?

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely believe so, as a result of the real-terms increase in spending on education. Critically, by removing ring fences and giving heads more control over how they spend their money, the priorities that are dear to all of us, including sports, can be pursued.

Oral Answers to Questions

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Because those two projects have wholly different origins and outcomes. We have not made any commitment on the AgustaWestland project, which will be evaluated and negotiated in the proper way. As for Sheffield Forgemasters, the hon. Lady has been told on several occasions that if it and its supporters put in a bid to the regional growth fund, it will be considered alongside other projects.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

T8. One in five lip-reading classes in England and Wales are threatened with closure next year. Will the Minister reclassify lip-reading as an essential skill rather than a leisure activity, making sure that the classes are accessible to the hearing-impaired and continue to protect their ability to communicate?

[Mr Hayes]

I entirely agree with the hon. Lady, who will know that I have been a champion of the disability lobby for many years, as the chairman of the all-party group on disability. I shall certainly look into this matter. She will know that we have protected adult and community learning in the Budget. Some £210 million has been protected because we know the difference it makes in changing lives and life chances.

Funding and Schools Reform

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Just a second. That £2.5 billion of additional money is on top of another £1.1 billion of additional spending to deal with demographic changes, so there is £3.6 billion in additional spending on schools, targeted towards the very poorest—spending that the right hon. Member for Leigh and others consistently opposed, and which they rejected during coalition negotiations. It is spending that has been delivered by a coalition Government—two parties united in pursuit of social justice—after one party had let those children down.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I greatly welcome the fact that children in my constituency who come from disadvantaged backgrounds will be supported in their education. However, I would like an assurance from the Secretary of State that this is extra money, and that it does not involve taking money away from schools in deprived areas.

[Michael Gove]

I am delighted to be able to give the hon. Lady that assurance, and I can do so because the case for the pupil premium was made so passionately by her parliamentary colleague the right hon. Member for Yeovil, and because it was then delivered thanks to the hard work of the Minister of State, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Deputy Prime Minister. [Interruption.] All of them worked together to ensure that we have £2.5 billion extra.

Oral Answers to Questions

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

The hon. Gentleman has only half the story. We will introduce a competitive sport ethos in schools which has been missing. We need to get much better bang for our buck than we get by spending £2.4 billion so that one in five secondary school age students can indulge in competitive sport against other schools. We want them to be doing much more, but we are not getting that at the moment.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

What advice would Ministers give someone wishing to apply to become a trainee educational psychologist, bearing in mind not only the current freeze on recruitment, but the great need for an adequate supply of educational psychologists to improve education for those with special educational needs?

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

I am well aware of my hon. Friend’s interest in this issue. As I said to her a couple of weeks ago when she raised it in a debate on the Floor of the House, the current system for funding educational psychologists is just not working. Unfortunately, only 16 out of 150 local authorities have paid their contribution, although the money went into their baseline funding. That is not good enough, and the Department could not take such a risk. However, I am absolutely determined to ensure that the system changes, because I agree with my hon. Friend that educational psychologists are critical to our reform of special educational needs.

Speech Therapy Services (Children)

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I apologise that I will have to leave before the end of the debate; one of my constituents has organised a big rally in Old Palace yard for park home owners, and I should be standing alongside the banners that will, inevitably, be there.

I officially start by congratulating the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who spoke elegantly and passionately. He brought the debate alive for us this morning. It is a timely debate because we are at a crossroads; we can look back over the excellent work that came out of the Bercow review, but we are at a point where we need to look forward, learn what we can from the past and take some steps forward. I appreciate the fact that the previous Government commissioned the Bercow report, committed resources—never enough, of course, but the resources were considerable—developed an action plan, appointed a communication champion and designated next year as the national year of speech, language and communication. Those were important steps forward.

As the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) pointed out, there is a spectrum of needs, which is why the matter is complex to debate. At one end, there is high need, low incidence, which needs highly specialised skills and technology, some of which comes in very expensive packages, but what an enormous difference it can make to the quality of life of the child and whole family. I want to touch on the whole family throughout the debate because it is important. At the other end of the spectrum, there are issues that we know can be addressed through simple interventions, which I shall touch on.

It is highly significant that speech, language and communication needs feature in statements of special educational needs for 26.5% of mainstream educated children. How significant the problems are is absolutely staggering. Other Members have dwelt on the fact that if there is a communication problem, a behavioural problem often emerges. That is natural; for a three or four-year-old who cannot express themselves, with adults not responding in the way the child wishes, what else do they do? Inevitably, we will have behavioural problems; and that, of course, identifies the necessity of early intervention. Not intervening early means that problems escalate to widespread exclusions at secondary schools and the concerning percentage of young offenders who have speech and language difficulties. Obviously, we must emphasise that it is not a straight one to one causal relationship, but there is a significant link.

I was interested in the comments by Jean Gross because we are concerned about people thinking, “Oh, the child’s just lazy. There are lots of very clever people who didn’t start to speak until three or four. Do we need early intervention?” I passionately believe that we do. A mother came to me with a boy of four. He could not speak and his behaviour was getting out of control. I suggested that the mother went to the GP to ask for a specialist referral, and the GP came back at me and said, “How dare you tell me how to do my job?” I was rather pleased that I stirred that up. When we talk about training the whole work force in these needs, we need to include health workers, health visitors and GPs, as well as those in education.

I want to be brief, so I shall go over the key issues quickly. I recall that the Bercow report said that provision and joint working is patchy across the country. There were 16 pilots announced in 2009 to look at best practice in working together in health and education. I do not know if there has been a chance to evaluate them, but it is important to look at everything that has been initiated and evaluate it as soon as is timely. We have to learn from all of this, but it is difficult to come up with a national framework because the solutions have to be local.

I am concerned about health provision. We have speech therapists and we have teachers trained by specialist speech therapists, which is good but it must not be a substitute—it is an add-on. Too many authorities are using it as a substitute, but it is not. We must have sufficient qualified speech therapists. I cannot get a grip on what the shortage is. As the Minister is aware, I am always asking parliamentary questions about numbers of specialist workers, but I cannot home in on what the shortage is, and we must have a grasp of what the needs are. I can think of fantastic situations in which specialists trained up pre-school workers, for example, in children’s centres to work with children identified as having language delay. That is good for low-level speech and language problems, but we are not getting a grip on the exact size of the work force needed to address the issues, on how it is all pulled together and on where working together comes forth and provides an add-on. Simply saying, “All we’re doing is perfectly satisfactory,” when it is a substitute, is not good enough.

I emphasise the point the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys made about the importance of an individual solution, particularly for a family. A mother who came to see me had six children including five-month-old twins, and one child in the middle had speech and language difficulties. A package was drawn up for her to give an amount of assistance a day. Of course involving parents and carers in the package is important, but, somewhere along the line, the family circumstances have to be taken on board.

Due to time, I shall end there. I endorse all the points made already, and I look to the Minister to focus on getting a grip on how all the services come together to give the best possible start to communication in a child’s life.

Education Psychology

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I have taken an interest over a long time in the provision of education psychology services, as I am very much aware that long waiting times for assessment can have an impact on the rest of a child’s life. I am delighted that the Government are undertaking a review into special educational needs, but deeply concerned that the training of educational psychologists appears to have been put on hold while the review takes place. I shall return to this point in more detail later, but emphasise now that educational psychologists will be needed to help to deliver the Government’s agenda to improve educational outcomes for children with special educational needs and to assist with early intervention—another area being reviewed, which again I wholeheartedly applaud.

Clearly, educational psychologists have a crucial role to play. They use evidence-based psychology to help children make the most of learning opportunities in schools. They solve educational social problems and problems arising from children’s differing needs through the application of psychology. They work not only with a proportion of the school and pre-school population, but also more widely with groups of parents and pupils. Examples of differing needs include visual and hearing impairments, cerebral palsy, autism, dyspraxia, dyslexia, social and emotional difficulties, and many more.

Educational psychologists play a key part in helping to shape how educational settings approach a vast range of education issues through statutory and non-statutory work, including on curriculum development, generalised and complex special educational needs, support for the gifted and talented, behaviour management, and delivery of early-years provision. They hold a recognised qualification in educational psychology—previously a masters degree and now a doctorate—and must be registered with the Health Professions Council. The benefits that they bring include knowledge of child development, which is all important because so many teachers go through training without much emphasis on that, although I know that that is being remedied. They provide early diagnosis and intervention, which is particularly important in the context of conditions such as autism, both for children who need ongoing assistance at school and at home, as well as for high-need children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. They also provide diagnostic advice and support. Understanding a child’s needs and providing a tailored support package to assist them is crucial to their development. A key role of educational psychologists is to advise and support teachers who would otherwise need to perform that diagnostic role.

Educational psychologists are responsive to local need. They work across the full range of educational settings and are well positioned in local authorities to identify and analyse trends across localities, and to implement strategies to address local need accordingly. They conduct a wide range of interventions, including help with emergency planning, critical incident support, support for fostering and adoption, advice on adapting curriculum and buildings for disability, and reviewing and monitoring children who are placed out of authority and within independent schools. Educational psychologists also play a crucial role in engaging parents and liaising between them and teachers to help to improve joined-up learning and developmental and well-being outcomes for children, not only in educational settings, but at home.

According to data from the Children’s Workforce Development Council, there are approximately 2,200 practising educational psychologists in England and Wales. CWDC’s 2009 work force planning exercise showed that approximately 120 new entrants to the profession are required annually to maintain a similar-sized work force and to meet current local authority demand.

The age profile of the profession is such that a sizable number of educational psychologists are approaching retirement. There is a national shortage and significant numbers of educational psychology services are carrying vacant posts. All the graduates from the training courses have found employment. In a recent parliamentary answer to me the Minister said that about 120 educational psychologists were expected to complete their training in both 2011 and 2012. That sounds encouraging, but my concerns are not allayed.

In 2006, the training changed from a one-year masters course to a three-year doctorate to acknowledge the increasing complexities within which educational psychologists work—a one-year course was inadequate to provide an appropriate level of training. That change also brought training in line with that of other professional psychologists across the UK and Europe.

In the past, funding for educational psychology training was administered by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which oversaw the top slice of funds to the Local Government Association, which distributed fees to higher education institutions and salaries to trainees through local authorities. Now the CWDC oversees the funding of training. A decision was made at Government level to cease the top slice, and the sum of money previously reserved for training was distributed among the 152 local authorities, which would then subscribe to training for educational psychologists. The money collected by the CWDC would pay for the higher education institution fees and also a bursary for the trainees during the first year of their training. It is greatly feared that the anticipated Government cuts will put local authorities under massive financial pressure, and that local authorities will therefore find it much harder to fund educational psychologists, or be less willing to do so. In the current climate, what guarantee is there that those educational psychologists who, in accordance with the Minister’s parliamentary answer, are expected to complete their courses in 2011 and 2012 will be able to do so?

Compounding this problem, according to the CWDC website the recruitment of educational psychologist trainees for the next academic intake has been frozen on the instruction of the Minister’s own Department.

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on such an important subject. Does she share my concern that the freeze on the training of educational psychologists from 2011 onwards risks undermining a key component of education in our country and the facilities that are in place to support it, all of which go towards ensuring that every child matters and every pupil is given the best opportunity for their own advancement? Does she also agree that the Government need to do more to ensure that training is in place for the educational psychologists of the future?

[Annette Brooke]

That is a very valid point. If the freeze is for just one year, for example, there will be a shortfall in the number of educational psychologists of at least 120. No guarantees are to be made regarding future provision and funding until the Green Paper is published. The website says:

“As such the recruitment process for the 2011/2012 cohort is on hold until we have further information.”

I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some further information on that.

With existing trainees possibly finding that they will not be funded for the remaining part of their courses and the freeze on the recruitment process for 2011 and 2012, there is an immediate and real danger that the university courses will be without a new cohort of trainees for 2011 or the funding that they have depended on from local authorities, and they will simply be unable to continue to function. Students who are part way through their doctorate training may not be able to complete it, and significantly fewer, if any, new educational psychologists will be qualifying and entering the work force. That will be the case in a context where the Government have made a commitment to ensuring prompt access to high-quality specialist assessment and specialist provision. Those two conflicting aspects of this situation must be reconciled.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does she agree that, at a time when there is significant and increasing interest in psychology as a subject for graduate university study, and therefore the prospective pool of possible employees in the field is growing rather than diminishing, the urgent conversations she calls for between Government, local education authorities and the universities need to be held? Otherwise, it might not just be a case of people not progressing in their course; we might also send out a signal that working in educational psychology with youngsters is not a good career option for those who currently want to go to university or who have just started their undergraduate studies.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I think the uncertainty that he speaks of is what is causing the greatest concern, because not being sure exactly what their professional future might be like acts as a great deterrent to people entering a profession.

Something that the Green Paper on special educational needs is likely to consider is whether educational psychologists give independent advice, as they are employed by local authorities. Psychological assessment could be provided by educational psychologists in a number of ways, be it within or outside a local authority, but the bottom line is that we will still need educational psychologists. I do not understand the freeze; I hope that we will hear some further points about that.

For the past year, there has been a considerable shortfall in the moneys collected by the CWDC from subscriptions from local authorities. The CWDC has set up a working party to look at ways of ensuring stability and sustainability in funding. The CWDC consultant reported a number of options, with the most favoured being the reinstatement of the top-slice. The cost of training 372 new educational psychologists, with one third qualifying each year, is in the region of £9 million to £12 million per year. An option put forward by pressure groups is a move to central funding. I understand that this would be comparable to the funding arrangements for clinical psychologists who have their training funded centrally. Educational psychology is a smaller profession than clinical psychology.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Annette Brooke]

I will, but this will have to be the last intervention, given the time.

[Mr Hollobone]

Has my hon. Friend received an explanation from Her Majesty’s Government as to why educational psychology is being treated differently from clinical psychology? If some front-line service professionals are having guaranteed funding, why should the situation be different for educational psychologists?

[Annette Brooke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I hope that the Minister will be able to address that point. The funding problems are threatening numbers, and that has implications for work force levels and the ability of local authorities to deliver all statutory responsibilities for the safeguarding, well-being and education of their children and young people. If an educational psychologist’s work was restricted only to statutory assessment and reactive casework in order to maintain quality of service delivery, the capacity of staff to be involved in equally vital, but non-statutory, preventive work would be reduced. That would preclude proactive work with children, teachers, all the professionals who work within children’s services and parents to maximise the chances of successful outcomes from early intervention—the type of work that, in turn, might mitigate the need for such high levels of statutory assessment in the first place.

Further concerns emerged during the passage of the Academies Act 2010, particularly as insufficient time was available in the House of Commons to discuss in full certain issues pertaining to special educational needs. I tabled an amendment to try to have discussion on the subject but, unfortunately, there was no time to debate it, and that was one reason why I wanted to secure this debate. One presumes that as more schools become academies or free schools, less money will be retained by local authorities. In the past, they retained a considerable proportion of the budget allocated to schools in their area in order to pay for a variety of important services, including monitoring special educational needs provision, SEN assessment and co-ordination, and educational psychology services. There are concerns about the amount of money able to be retained by local authorities to continue to meet their statutory responsibility for all vulnerable children, both within and outside the local academies.

What guidance will the Department for Education be giving to academies and other schools with commissioning powers on the need to provide pupils and staff with access to educational psychology services? Will the Minister clarify what responsibilities local authorities will have for meeting the needs of children within academy settings? My amendment asked for monitoring and a report back on funding for SEN within three months of the enactment of the 2010 Act, one of the purposes being to pick up early signs of any problems with the local authority funding of educational services. Indeed, the Special Educational Consortium believes that the expanded academy programme must be monitored to ensure that children with SEN and disabilities do not experience further delays in accessing the services of educational psychologists. I want confirmation that funding for educational psychologists will not be delegated to academies, and I would further appreciate a commitment from the Minister that monitoring the impact of the expanding academy programme on all local authority SEN services will be a priority for the Government.

The central state funding of training is critical, given the specialisation and the relatively small size of the professional group. It is national legislation that sets the requirement for independent professional specialist assessment to adjudicate between school and parental perspectives and interests, and it is therefore a matter for the national Government to make this process possible by supplying the high-level specialist knowledge and skills to fulfil that role. Where there is a statutory requirement for assessment, the training to make it possible needs central national funding. I therefore urge the Government to look again at how educational psychology training is funded.

I also want to share with the Minister and the many hon. Members who are here tonight the importance of this topic. There is an urgent need for clarity on the arrangements that will be in place to support training in 2011. Surely the Department will not risk the supply of educational psychologists drying up. The freeze on recruitment for training is on the CDWC website for any potential educational psychologist to see. What kind of message does that send out? There is an urgent need to look again at the voluntary and unsustainable nature of current funding, to ensure that national funds are made available to train and maintain good levels of educational psychologists. The country wants and needs educational psychologists, yet the current funding arrangements and the decision to delay recruitment place the future provision of educational psychologists in serious jeopardy.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I would like to be able to say that it is a pleasure to follow the shadow Secretary of State, but that contribution was a bid for the leadership of not only the luddite tendency, but the mean-spirited tendency. I would have thought that, whatever their views about the policies that this Bill represents, anyone in this House would recognise that everyone in this House seeks the best for all our children. To suggest that the Secretary of State would not do so is low, even for the shadow Secretary of State.

Cuts in public spending and posts were made inevitable by the disastrous financial stewardship of the Labour party, which took a golden legacy and then blew it. Labour made promises on school buildings, on teacher training and on so many other areas that, it turned out, it simply could not fund. It now lies with the coalition Government to clean up the mess that the shadow Secretary of State played such a major part in creating.

So the new Government have to find ways to improve public services and enhance, rather than reduce, the life chances of our children without spending additional money. The two coalition partners are united in believing that one of the best ways of doing that is by giving greater autonomy to local communities and those on the front line of public services. This Bill will take academy freedoms and make them potentially available to all schools for the first time; primary and special schools, as well as secondary schools, will be able to become independent state schools, free at the point of use, but with control over their curriculum, their teaching hours—at least, in theory—and their special educational needs provision and the like.

That is a good thing and it is why I support this Bill, despite the fact that, generally speaking, I am a structural change sceptic. Reorganisations are too frequent, too expensive and too convenient for politicians who wish to make their mark. This policy, like all education policies, should be measured by whether it will result in better teachers, better led. The key determinant of a good education is the quality of the teaching work force. I hope that this Bill, the expansion of Teach First and the introduction of a pupil premium for children from lower-income families will, along with other measures, improve the quality, motivation and retention of high-calibre people in education. If it does that, it will have succeeded.

The Bill builds on the previous Government’s academies programme, which itself grew from Lord Baker’s innovations back in the 1980s. It takes those programmes forward and is not, therefore, radically new. The changes that this Bill will bring about are not minor, however. They may not be radically new in concept, but they are potentially radical in effect. If hundreds of schools leave local authority control each year—starting in September—the implications for our education system overall will be profound. The powers in the Bill are essentially permissive, as Ministers emphasise. That does mean, though, that different local authorities will be affected in different ways.

Countries behind the former iron curtain that moved from centrally controlled economies to free-market systems did not always find the transition easy or pleasant. When the centre collapses, some services and skills are scattered and even destroyed and they take time to grow again. Even when crying freedom, it is best to think deeply, consider carefully and do everything possible to minimise the potential downsides of change.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that despite the welcome amendments in the other place, there is great uncertainty about the provision of special educational needs education, particularly for children with complex needs, with funding split between the academies and the local authorities? I am concerned that we might end up with the worst of all worlds for some of our most vulnerable and needy children.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention and I share some of those concerns. I hope that, in this coming week, those on the Government Front Bench will be able to allay those concerns. Last week I visited an academy, called the Ashcroft technology academy. It has a centre it calls the ARC, which specialises in looking after children on the autistic spectrum, and an AWA—an academy within an academy—for children otherwise at risk of exclusion. By using those innovations, the academy has done a tremendous job of looking after those with special educational needs as well as intervening to ensure that there is not a higher than average number of exclusions from the school. Academies can be part of the answer and the innovation that they allow can improve the situation in the average school today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Annette Brooke]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, although the Bill now has an amendment on consultation, the desired aim to turn some schools into academies by September seems totally consistent with those words and with what might happen in real life?

[Dr Pugh]

Having worked in schools for a large part of my life, and knowing the degree of organisation required during the summer recess to prepare for the new term, I find it distinctly improbable that any such schools will be ready to run on a completely different footing in September. The Minister clearly disagrees, and I defer to his knowledge of how things might go. I have to rely on my own experience in these circumstances, however. I have to emphasise that there is a big difference between legislation for a pet project, which we have seen many times in this House, particularly in the Blair years, and mature and considered legislation, and it revolves around whether it is properly handled in this place.