Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review

Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their remarks and acknowledge the opening positivity of the noble Lord, Lord Watson. I genuinely believe that the reason his initial response to the review was positive—“buts” permitting—was because my ministerial colleagues and officials in the department have worked really closely with parents, carers and young people with disabilities. This review has been co-created with them, and we thank them enormously for their time.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly highlighted the adversarial system which we face today, with parents feeling forced to go to a tribunal to get suitable provision for their children. We really believe that our plans will lead to much greater transparency about what is available for their child in their local area, and much great clarity about how it can be provided. We very much hope that, combined with our offer around mediation, parents will feel that their voices are heard—and heard early—and that their child’s needs can be met, ideally, as close to home as possible.

Both noble Lords rightly stressed the importance of early intervention, and I am sure that they also share our aspiration in terms of quality and consistency of provision. It is really striking—for example, when comparing local authorities and the percentage of children with an education, health and care plan who end up in a specialist setting—that the same child is six times as likely to end up in a specialist setting in one part of the country, compared with another. That spreads through the system, including those without an EHCP. We hope that one of the building blocks for earlier intervention will be clarity. This clarity will be achieved through new national standards which will set out which needs can and should be met effectively in mainstream provision, and the support which should be available there without the need for an education, health and care plan. It will also provide guidance on when a child or young person does need an EHCP and whether they need a specialist placement. I am sure that the House shares our concern not just for those children who are diagnosed late, but those children who are never diagnosed at all and do not get the support they need.

We also hope that reinforcing the provision that exists in mainstream schools for children with special educational needs and disabilities will help with early intervention. Our ambition is that we should have a truly inclusive education system so that mainstream provision, supplemented by targeted support when it is required—by which I mean those specialist interventions for children but also pastoral interventions—will allow them to thrive in a mainstream setting. We also want timely access for those with more complex needs to specialist support or placements in alternative provision.

We are trying to balance the work we are doing in consulting on and planning a system that works more effectively for young people with not waiting to make sure that the funding that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to, gets to young people through their local authorities as quickly as possible. We are investing more in this system than we ever have. In 2022-23 the high-needs budget will be £9.1 billion, and it is set to increase further over the coming years. Therefore, we have made our commitments in revenue funding but also, critically, in capital funding, providing up to 33,000 additional places for children requiring specialist provision.

Looking to the future, the review proposes a system of funding bands and tariffs so that people better understand the level of future funding they can expect to receive. We will move to arrangements for funding schools directly, rather than through the local authority funding formula, but that will obviously take some time to implement. We also think that improvements in the quality of provision will be driven by the local inclusion plans, which every area will prepare in a multiagency way with their health and social care and education partners, and, critically, with parents and carers. That in turn will be reinforced by local dashboards, so that we have real transparency across the country about what is working, what needs more attention and how we can learn from one another.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to the 2014 reforms and the need to have really effective implementation. We are absolutely aware of the need to learn lessons from 2014. We are setting up a special delivery board, which will oversee the rollout of these policies. We are also establishing a £70 million change programme for this work so that we can test and refine proposals before we scale up.

In response to the noble Lord’s question about further education settings, we absolutely agree that they are an incredibly valuable resource for young people with special educational needs. Our proposals will allow FE settings to be absolutely clear about the support that they are expected to deliver for young people. We continue to work with stakeholders in that sector so that our proposals are shaped by their expertise.

On the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, regarding dyslexia more broadly and the use of technology, it is fair to say that there is a range of views about the use of phonics for children with dyslexia and the right place for technology. I would be very glad, if the noble Lord would be interested, to arrange for him to meet colleagues in the department so that we can give the points he raised the time that they deserve.

In closing, the Government are ambitious for all our children. For children with special educational needs and disabilities, as for every other child, we are determined to build an education system where they can get the right support, in the right place, at the right time.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

Can I ask my noble friend the Minister what the plan is for teachers to be able to identify children with special needs, particularly at an early age—as early as reception, where I feel things often start going wrong? It is also about being able to give parents support when they come forward, when they feel that there might be a problem with their child.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend raises an important point. She is right that early years education, even before reception, has consistently been proven to be absolutely fundamental to strengthening a child’s readiness for school and educational potential over their life, as well as for wider educational outcomes. We propose to increase the number of staff with an accredited level 3 SENCO qualification in early years settings to improve the special educational needs and disability expertise in those settings by up to 5,000 additional practitioners.