National Autism and Education Strategy

Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the approach has very much been to include autistic children in mainstream education, and 72% of autistic children are. As I mentioned a moment ago, we are rolling out the training to staff to ensure that awareness of the condition is more widespread. That is certainly the intention. We have also invested substantially in the creation of special schools. Some 600 local authority maintained schools have a specialism for autistic children.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

I welcome the fact that all teachers are going to be given autism awareness training when the new teacher training starts in September. Can this also include classroom assistants, who are often the first to see children who may have problems? They too need to have training to know how to deal with this.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, as I mentioned in an earlier reply, the great work that the Autism Education Trust is doing extends not just to teachers but to all those involved in schools. I reassure my noble friend that that is very much part of our strategy.