SEND and Alternative Provision

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I really do not accept the premise of the noble Lord’s first statement. I am sure he would not want us to implement everything tomorrow and then find that it is not having the impact we want. We live in a world where we have to make sure that this works in practice; hence the nine regional expert partnerships where we will be testing everything. As I already mentioned, we have already made reforms in terms of teacher training; we have already increased our expenditure by 50% since 2019; we have already massively increased the capital budget and delivered more places; we have already started to increase the number of educational psychologists; and we are already delivering qualified SENCOs for early years pupils. So, there is a great deal happening that will help that year 7 child before they leave school, and I hope the noble Lord accepts that.

As for forcing children into mainstream, and forcing the funding to follow them, I just think it is not the approach that we are taking. It is not that we do not take this seriously or that we do not have grave concerns about children who are excluded from school and never return: those are key metrics that we will be tracking, but we need to work with people and make sure that we deliver for those children. As always, we will be looking at the areas that are doing this brilliantly today, learning from them and working with areas that have perhaps not yet reached that level of practice and supporting them to deliver for those children. I share the noble Lord’s concerns about those very children.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, a lot of the Statement is welcome, but it does seem to be jam tomorrow. I have two questions. The first is that children with special educational needs learn differently: what efforts are being made to ensure that their teachers understand that while they do not have to work harder, they do have to work more smartly to understand the different ways in which SEND pupils learn? Secondly, Scope has found that SEND pupils are twice as likely to be unemployed as non-disabled people, so what are the Government doing to give young people with SEND the skills and opportunities to enable them to be employed?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government absolutely recognise the point the noble Baroness raises. We are already providing professional development focused on special educational needs and disabilities; we have online training; we run live webinars; we offer peer mentoring for school and college staff through our universal services programme; and we aim to reach at least 70% of schools and FE colleges each year until 2025, while also expanding the assistive technology pilot, which is expanding training to increase staff confidence in using assistive technology. In my response to the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, I touched on some of the measures that we are taking to support people with disabilities and additional needs into the workforce.