Oral Answers to Questions
Ashley Dalton Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend will be aware of our plans to ensure that all schools co-operate, within their local facilities, with their local authorities when it comes to place-planning and admissions, to ensure that we have a school system that serves the whole community and to ensure that all children, whether or not they have special educational needs and disabilities, are properly served and given the opportunity to thrive within that system.
Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)
I apologise for my premature bobbing at the beginning of this questions session, Mr Speaker.
My constituent has been waiting for more than a year for Conservative-run Lancashire county council to issue her 15-year-old son’s EHCP. In that time he has attempted suicide and has stopped eating, and my constituent’s health is suffering as a result of the stress. How can the Minister reassure my constituent that the additional £1 billion for SEND provision will speed up the issuing of EHCPs so that students with special needs receive the support that they need?
Catherine McKinnell
I am sorry to hear about the experience of my hon. Friend’s constituent, and she was right to raise it today. We know that far too many families and children are waiting far too long to receive the support that they need, and we are determined to reform the system, because children’s needs should be recognised at the earliest possible stage. They should not be waiting for EHCPs in order to receive that support within our education system. That is the change that we want to see, but we recognise the demand on EHCPs and the process, and we recognise that we need to improve.
SEND Provision
Ashley Dalton Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Catherine McKinnell
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s concern, and this Government are absolutely committed to strengthening children’s entitlement to excellent provision that meets their needs and that is readily available, locally wherever possible. That is a key focus of any changes that we wish to see made in this area.
Ashley Dalton
I thank the Minister for giving way. This is an issue that has not been raised enough today: the previous Government’s SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, published just last year, contained no specific proposals for rural communities such as mine. Can the Minister confirm that the Labour Government will consider the specific needs, particularly around access, for SEND pupils in rural areas?
Catherine McKinnell
I appreciate the issue my hon. Friend is raising, and I will come on to that, because I appreciate that there have been a lot of comments from Members today on the national funding formula and how it works. I would like to make some progress, so if hon. Members will allow me, there are a number of issues that I would like to respond to, particularly in relation to the hon. Member for Leeds East, who tabled this debate.
Despite the fact that high needs funding for children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities is rising to higher and higher levels, confidence in the system is low, tribunal rates are increasing and there are increasingly long waits for support. Far too many children with special educational needs fall behind their peers. They do not reach the expected level in fundamental reading, writing and maths skills, with just one in four pupils achieving expected standards at the end of primary school. That is a system that is “lose, lose, lose”, as the former Education Secretary described. Families are struggling to get their child the support they need and, more importantly, deserve. So many hon. Members have spoken on behalf of families that they represent and demonstrated that struggle today.
After years in which parents have been frustrated by reform programmes being delayed and by promises not being delivered, this Labour Government want to be honest with families. We are absolutely committed to improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools, as well as to ensuring that special schools can cater to those with the most complex needs. We want to restore parents’ trust that their child will get the support that they need to flourish.
We know that early identification and intervention is key to ensuring that the impacts of any special educational need or disability is minimised, or reduced, for the long term. That is why we very quickly announced the continuation of funding for the Nuffield Early Language Intervention—NELI—programme, to make sure that it can continue for 2024-25. We know that early speech and language intervention will help these children and young people to find their voices.
We also know that there are no quick fixes for these deep-rooted issues. After 14 years, I can scarcely see a system that is so broken or in such desperate need of reform. That is why we are absolutely determined to fix it, and we have started work already. It is a priority for this Department to fix our SEND system, but we know that we cannot do it alone. We have to work with the sector and valued partners, and we have to make sure that our approach is fully planned and delivered together with parents, schools, councils and expert staff—we know they are already going above and beyond for our children, but we can do so much better.
As I have already mentioned, many Members have raised concerns about the national funding formula, so the Government acted as quickly as we could to respond to some of the immediate cost pressures in the SEND system. We know that they are causing incredible financial difficulties in some local authorities, so before the parliamentary recess we announced a new core schools budget grant to provide special and alternative provision schools with over £140 million of extra funding in this financial year, to help with the extra costs of the teacher pay award and the outcome of the negotiations about increased pay for support staff as well. That money is in addition to the high needs funding allocation for children and young people with complex special needs and disabilities.
However, despite those record levels of investment, I know that families are still fighting the system, because it is not delivering. The Department for Education’s budget for 2025-26 has not yet been decided, and how much high needs funding is distributed to local authorities, schools and colleges next year will depend on the next stage of the Government’s spending review, due to be announced in October.
That means that the high needs allocations have not been published within the normal timescale, but we are working at pace to announce next year’s funding allocations. We are acutely aware of the pressures that local authorities face, not only because they are supporting the increasing needs of young people and children, but because of the financial pressures that the Government as a whole face because of the economic climate we have inherited.
It will not be easy or quick to solve those problems, but we really want to work on long-term solutions and we want to work together with others on these important issues. That includes looking at the national funding formula. We will take time to consider whether to make changes to it. We will of course consider the impact on any local authorities and, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) mentioned, on particular areas that have made representations in relation to the formula.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ashley Dalton Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
Gillian Keegan
I would agree that there has been an absolute increase in special educational needs in the past five, six or seven years, largely because we know more, but also because covid has added some pressure on the system. We have expanded the system and want to ensure that all children with special educational needs, even more than before, get the help they need. We have an improvement plan in place, which was published in March 2023 and focuses on early identification and improved support all the way through the journey. We are training many more people and putting more support in place for the hon. Lady’s constituents.
Ashley Dalton
In smaller and rural communities such as mine in West Lancashire, populations and services are often very sparsely distributed and SEND students often have to either travel upwards of an hour to reach any provision, or go without. What is the Government’s plan to address that issue?
Gillian Keegan
We have been trying to increase the number of places within both mainstream and special educational needs and alternative provision settings. As I say, we have 108 more special educational needs schools already built and 76 more approved. We have worked with many local authorities, including in rural areas, to make sure they get the provision they need.
Children Not in School: National Register and Support
Ashley Dalton Excerpts(10 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)
I think we all agree on the value of education and how it can enrich children’s lives and give them the best possible start. I am proud that improvements and developments in education have been the legacy of every Labour Government to date. It therefore pains me that I am, yet again, rising to talk about an issue in which this Government have overseen almost a decade and a half of managed decline.
The numbers are terrifying. School absences trebled between 2016 and 2022. If trends continue, 200,000 children will miss half of their school time by 2026. School absences are a threat to the education that is so vital in setting up our children for life and giving them the best possible start, but it is not an isolated issue. Yes, school absences are a cause of increased barriers to opportunity, but they are also a symptom of wider issues.
In rural areas like my constituency, school absences are exacerbated by inadequate public transport and sparse special needs education. As other hon. Members have mentioned, there are a multitude of reasons why children are not in school. It is not just because they are home educated, but because they are affected by parental imprisonment, because they are young carers or because they have disabilities. We need a register that captures the barriers children face, otherwise we have no hope of breaking down those barriers.
I mentioned inadequate public transport. Skelmersdale in my constituency, as anyone who has heard me speak in this Chamber will know, has 40,000 people and no train station. It also has a woefully inadequate bus service, with my constituents reporting issues with reliability and frequency.
We can remove the barriers that make getting to school more difficult for those in rural communities if we focus on what really matters to them. Similarly, children with special educational needs must be able to get the support they need. One of my constituents, whose child has not been in school for almost six months, told me that the school identified by the local authority told them that their child was “unsuitable” for the school. There are no unsuitable children, only underfunded, overstretched schools.
The Government recognised the omissions in their SEND strategy when, in March 2023, they published their SEND and alternative provision improvement plan. However, the plan did not address how rural SEND pupils may risk falling through the net or how failures in provision may be contributing to school absenteeism. Mainstream schools are generally expected to use their delegated funding to meet the needs of students with special educational needs who do not have an education, health and care plan. If a school is unable to meet those needs within its budget, or if a pupil cannot be swiftly assessed and provided with an EHCP, we risk them being absent from the education they need and deserve, through no fault of their own or their parents.
I have been contacted by numerous parents in my constituency who essentially keep their children from school because they are fearful that the school cannot meet their child’s needs and truly believe that it is more harmful for their child to be in school than not. Improving school attendance and reducing absenteeism requires an holistic assessment of the barriers that children face. It requires timely medical care, shorter waiting lists when our children get sick, improvements to public transport and better SEND services to ensure that children’s needs are being met. How many children are not regularly attending school and are, therefore, listed in school absence figures because SEND provision is stretched and mainstream schooling is not meeting their needs? People in rural communities like mine understand that some children are missing school not through their own fault or their own choice but because they simply cannot get there or, if they can, because the school does not meet their needs.
Labour’s plan to address the issue of absences is simple: roll out breakfast clubs, put mental health support into schools, and make sure that SEND provision is joined-up and adequate. Under Labour, children will have a change to the schools system; we will nurture an environment and provide schools they can access and thrive in.
Childcare Reform Package
Ashley Dalton Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Claire Coutinho
We have a rule at the moment that local authorities have to pass on 95% of the funds that they receive, and our returns show that they pass on 967%. However, as the years go on, with the amount of extra money that we have put into the system, we can definitely look at those figures and at what can be done. Some of that will be set out in our consultation before the summer.
Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)
The Minister told us about several childcare providers that she has spoken to, but she has clearly not spoken to Munchkins Village Nursery in Burscough in my constituency. The nursery got in touch with me to say that, while the help for parents is very welcome, the Government have by their own admission underfunded the sector to the tune of about one third of the funding promised—about £2 billion—and the nursery staff believe that the sector is in financial risk. Does the Minister appreciate that, regardless of any funding for parents, they simply cannot find the childcare that they need?
Claire Coutinho
I recognise that it has been a challenging few years for the sector. In this piece of work we have surveyed about 10,000 providers, we have a providers’ finance report and we have surveyed about 6,000 parents, so we used a very data-driven estimate to come up with the figure. We will be consulting on the funding before the summer and, as I said, there will be funding coming in September before any expansion of the entitlements, which start in April next year. There will be additional money next year and by 2027-28 we will be spending an additional £4 billion that will be distributed via local authorities to those settings.