Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to support children with special educational needs and disabilities.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I am aware that there have been a number of debates and Questions about education provision recently. I am sure the Minister is also keenly aware of this, especially today. A common theme has emerged that the current provision for supporting children with educational needs and disabilities does not work, with rising numbers, a greater range of need and local authorities unable to fund support. What I find most concerning is that there is a lack of ambition for SEND children. Despite increased levels of funding and higher levels of identification, these are not leading to better educational attainment. We all agree that something must be done, and therefore I make no apologies for bringing this Question for Short Debate to the House to enable us to push the Government on what that something should be.

I refer to my interests as chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland. Cerebral palsy is a good condition to consider in SEND provision. Everyone with CP is affected differently. It is an umbrella term, so the needs and abilities of people with CP will vary tremendously. Some children with complex CP will need intensive input that can be provided only by special schools, often outside the state sector. Even for these children, gaining an EHCP can be challenging and an adversarial process. Once their level of support has been agreed, it is very difficult to change, despite the potential for needs to change as they grow.

Many children with CP do well in mainstream settings. Cerebral palsy always affects mobility, so physical access and ease of moving around a school can become issues. One in two has a learning disability or sensory processing issues, and may also have other conditions such as epilepsy or autism, so there are challenges in identifying what the right support needs to be. I have had many conversations with adults with CP, some of whom attended special schools and some of whom attended mainstream schools. Some had experience of both. There is no right answer, as there are pros and cons for both, but, looking back, many of these adults did not have a positive experience of education in either setting. What illustrates the need for change most poignantly for me is that, too often, education for SEND children is about just getting through the system, from one placement to the next. No one, it seems, ever asks a disabled child what they want to be when they grow up.

In preparation for this debate, I spoke to many people, including staff at Treloar School and College in Hampshire, who provide an amazing education for some of the most profoundly complex physically disabled children. Their college students started a business venture called “Let Me In”, which offers accessibility audits to local businesses to help them improve access and employment opportunities for disabled people. It is the sort of initiative that positively illustrates the Gatsby benchmarks in action. I love it because, while Treloar takes children from the age of four, ambition and preparing students to lead meaningful adult lives, based on what children can do rather than what they cannot, are at the heart of everything from early years provision all the way up to its college students.

Unfortunately, the SEND system is predicated on what children cannot do, not what they can. To qualify for an EHCP, you need a diagnosis of something, hence the rush to find labels for things and, for those who can, to turn to private consultants to get a label for their child. None of this is helpful in supporting the self-esteem of the child, building relationships with parents or identifying what the best support for the child should be. By looking at deficits at the outset, the system is putting up barriers. It is setting out to be adversarial. Would it not be better to think, “Let Me In”? Let us turn the system on its head and be ambitious for these children.

What happens to children as they wait, sometimes for a whole school year or more, for all these assessments and reviews? They are not at school at all; they are missing out on education and falling even further behind their peers. We are not even monitoring this. In an Answer to my Written Question, the Minister confirmed:

“The department does not hold data on how many children with SEND are currently not able to be placed in a suitable school”.


Surely this is something that she could change.

A diagnosis tells you nothing about the impairment level that a person experiences or how a child could learn in a classroom. As a condition such as cerebral palsy—or any other umbrella condition, such as autism—illustrates, a diagnosis in itself is not the be-all and end-all. It can be challenging to distinguish between some conditions and behavioural issues, or between second language issues and dyslexia. Children may have a number of different conditions and needs. Diagnoses have a tendency to skew the figures. We point to the huge rises in social, emotional and mental health needs, and physical disability is often seen as niche.

Not everything requires additional learning support, but currently we are failing too many of those who need it. Some issues, such as home environment or a lack of family support, are beyond the scope of the school to change, let alone the Department for Education. Other issues will be apparent in pre-school years, for which I believe we need a far more cross-sector approach.

Early identification is key, particularly in the realm of speech and language issues. Speech and language therapists play an essential role not only in supporting communication but in identifying cognitive ability and other issues. Given the very high prevalence of speech and language and communication needs among SEND children, the Government must consider how speech and language services are resourced, how specialist therapists are retained, and ensure a sufficient training pipeline.

Fundamentally, barriers to opportunity will be broken down only if all constituent parts work together—schools, parents, health professionals and local councils. I encourage the Minister to look outside the state sector, as independent schools have taken up the baton where often state schools have been unable to. This does not mean one route is better than the other but that we should look at all the education sector to see what is working, support it, and roll it out as widely as we can, not tax it. Involving the independent sector is part of the solution.

If we do not adopt a surplus system rather than a deficit system, we are failing not only SEND children but all our children, as too much resource and time is taken up trying to focus on how we keep this creaking system going. I welcome the announcement in the Budget of an extra £1 billion for high-needs provision and the additional capital funding, but I fear it will be quickly swallowed up, especially when I hear about one mainstream secondary that needs £250,000 to mend a broken lift to enable the school to be accessible. Have the Government set out priorities for this extra funding?

Although ensuring that children can physically get into the classroom is important, so is what they do when they get there. I look forward to the Minister telling us more about the Government’s plans to improve outcomes for SEND children. I assure her that we are here to help and support her. I welcome contributions from other noble Lords and thank them for contributing to this short debate.