Assistive Technology: Support for Special Educational Needs

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

There is an old joke that when you get applause at the start of a speech, you should sit down and take it.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

No, carry on.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I want first to thank everybody who has taken the time to get here this late on a Thursday when we have a recess coming up. I should also make a declaration of interests, the most important of which is that I am chairman of Microlink PC. It is one of the bigger companies in this country, if not the biggest, dealing with this issue. There are many fields and many pies here; we have fingers in many of them.

My other interest is that I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and dyslexic. My last interest, which I probably do not have to declare but which is relevant to everything else, is that my life was transformed about 25 years ago when I got working assistive technology. I am a severe dyslexic; the way I communicated a written message was to dictate it. Suddenly, when I got assistive technology, I could do it myself, so if I sound a little messianic on this it is because I am talking from my own experience.

That was happening to somebody who had managed to get through the system due largely to the influence—shall we say?—of a tiger parent. It got me through the system, into the university structure and out the other side, because once you get over the first hurdle, people are generally quite willing towards you. Once you have proved you have some capacity, they are there to invest in you.

Unfortunately, most people do not have that support and help, or it is not given effectively, or they are simply missed. The most common experience for somebody with SENs, particularly with a neurodiverse background, is that you are told to try harder and work harder. We need the capacity to spot those with problems and then go to that wonderful and expanding box of tricks, which can help you get through. It is dependent on you having a working platform for it—normally, it is a computer; a tablet or something might work, but you need something to use it on. Once you have that, many things become possible.

So far, I have been talking about things which are to do with the communication of information. There are those Members—I am looking across the Room at two of them—who will have experience of bits of supportive technology that help with movement and other forms of support. I look forward to hearing about them.

I could mention all the areas where assistive technology is used, but we have only an hour. I could also mention the products if we had a couple of weeks—I reckon that there are about 40,000 of them. It is about making sure that people know what is out there and getting the right thing in front of them. The real point of this Question is what the Government are doing to make sure that happens. What the benefit is to the state is a reasonable question to ask on every occasion.

If you have assistive technology, and you need it, you stand a chance of becoming an independent and, one hopes, positive economic influence in your society. It may not be impossible otherwise, but it is much more difficult. Occasionally, you hear people talk about “the exceptional people who get through”. Any system that is dependent on you being either brilliant or lucky has fundamentally failed, so I hope that we will get a better understanding of what the Government are going to do about utilising this box of tools to allow people to go forward. That is really what I am aiming at today.

Look at our current system. I appreciate that the Government are now starting to look at and take some steps on it. The system we devised has a graduated approach up to the education, health and care plan, which replaced the old statement. I know the Government are working on making this an easier process but, let us face it, if it works it will be a little like the cavalry coming over the hill. It has become a legal process and it has probably done more to benefit specialist legal firms dealing with the education sector than anyone else. The Minister was not on that Bill, but I was, so maybe I should take some of the blame: we did not see it coming.

One of the other things that has happened is that the graduated approach that was supposed to come in behind it has become virtually irrelevant for many. The experience of many people I have spoken to is that you need the support of the plan to access help. Assistive technology is potentially much cheaper, if you have identified it correctly and got through. The problem is identifying who will benefit from it, even including those in the neurodiverse spectrum. I am going to talk about the needs closest to me, simply because I understand them slightly better.

For somebody who is dyslexic, identifying their level of need and the problem early enough means you stand a chance of bringing them assistance. The same is true of dyspraxia, dyscalculia and ADHD. There are a lot of devices here that will help all of them. Indeed, the same devices are often used differently. Trying to get them at the right time is about the identification process.

A lot of people are talking about screening programmes. How are we getting these screening programmes to identify people? With the best will in the world, people will be needed to administer them and, at the moment, the consensus is that people in the education sector are not well trained enough. I am sceptical about whether the new level 3 SENCO is the answer. The Minister will undoubtedly tell me otherwise, but are they going to identify and get people in the right way? Do the teachers know how to administer the screening process to identify that group?

Let us face it: no system is perfect, certainly not in its first phase. What will we do afterwards? The noble Baroness was instrumental in making me have a discussion with those providing alternative provision—AP. The one question that I asked them, which I was worried about, was what they were doing about screening when people get into AP. They said, “We are relying on the rest of the education system”. The noble Baroness said, and everybody agreed—when everybody agrees in politics you know something will go wrong—that most people in AP have a special educational need, almost by definition. Relying on the rest of the education system to spot it cannot be right; you will need another degree of assessment, because presumably somebody has already been missed.

If you can get assistive technology to somebody, they will have something that they can take with them to deal with things in a certain way, or at least to stand a chance. The identification of need tells them another thing: you can succeed; you can take part and join in. That is why I am trying to find out what the Government’s policy is. It is about that degree of training, support and structure: “Here’s a tool; get in there”.

It is also an opportunity to break the cycle of depending on a tiger parent. This is why, for instance, dyslexia was thought of as the middle-class disease—“exam-passing disease” would probably be a better term. Parents who have aspiration and have got through themselves ask, “Why is my child not the same?”

All the conditions that I have spoken about today have similar stories attached to them. There is a very black-humour joke: if you want to be a successful disabled child, choose your parents correctly. That has been true until this point and it is another condemnation of the system we have at the moment; you have had to fight to get through it.

Are we going to train teachers well enough to use this and give it to a person so that they can act on it for themselves for the rest of their lives? We should remember that most of these children are going to grow up. I have concentrated on education here but, hopefully, the workplace is waiting. What are we going to do? Can we make sure that people are prepared to take on this role?

I hope the Minister has some good news for me about the process and access to it, and can tell me that schools understand it and will bring it in. It should give independence, be cheaper and allow that person to have a model of process that is relevant outside the classroom. Traditional types of help, such as 25% extra time, are not going to be a great deal of help for you if you have to fill out a form at work under pressure, or if you have to complete a task on time. We need skills that are transferable. Assistive technology has the capacity to take on at least some of that role.

I hope the Minister and indeed all others here will put pressure on the Government to ensure that we take advantage of this, because if we do not we are missing a trick that can make people’s lives better, save money in the long term and improve the strength of our workforce. This is one occasion when the ha’porth of tar should be put on the boat.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support my noble friend Lord Addington in this debate. It is a topic where he has great expertise and enthusiasm. I can share the enthusiasm but, sadly, not the expertise.

Close to home, one of my grandsons has terrible handwriting. He has had more lessons than I can say, since he was very little, poor little thing—well, not “little”, because he is enormous now—but his enthusiasm for writing is outweighed only by the perplexity of anyone trying to read it. He was given permission to do both GCSEs and A-levels with a computer, gained excellent grades and is about to graduate in singing from Southampton University. Obviously, his inability to write legibly should have been a special educational need, although it was never classified as such. The family knew that he was very bright, but we were all extremely grateful that technology stepped in and saved the day, because there is no way that the examiners would have trawled through his scrawly scripts.

We are grateful to RNIB and Guide Dogs for their briefings. Very many years ago, when I was at college, there was a blind student in my class. I well remember a lecture where we took out pencils and paper to take notes. This was long before the days of technology, and this student had a tape recorder to be able to revise later. The lecturer was furious and told him he was not to be recorded. He was not a great lecturer, so perhaps that is why he did not want to be recorded, but his subject was one we needed to know, so we were all sitting there poised. We were left wondering how we could help our blind colleague if he was to be denied the only mechanism that he had for revising the lecture, given that taking notes was not possible for him.

More recently, I was on a committee with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. I greatly admired the way he used an impressive bit of kit. He seemed to absorb all the pages of script which the rest of us could skim-read but he, presumably, could not. My other memory of that committee is of my feet every now and again feeling very warm, and realising that his beautiful dog had decided to go to sleep on them—a friendly Peer and a friendly dog. The noble Lord asked some highly relevant questions, which I trust the Minister will answer.

We have two other blind Peers, of course: the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Low, who are great contributors to debate. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has an impressive record, both in government and out. He, like others, has a great memory for voices and greets people when he recognises a voice. From our Benches, I can see the noble Lord, Lord Low, typing away at his machine. I much regret that we have not seen him since he had a really bad fall down the stairs here some weeks ago. I am sure we all send our very best wishes for his speedy recovery and hope that he will soon be back in his place on the Cross Benches, with the valuable contribution he has been making for very many years. All three noble Lords are evidence that sight loss does not mean loss of value to the community, and their dexterity with assistive technology is extremely inspirational.

When I worked for City & Guilds on vocational qualifications, we always had advice from the deaf community on letters, words or phrases which would be misunderstood or muddled with others. It can be difficult for those of us who do not suffer from disabilities to appreciate where danger may lie. Confusing “b” and “p” was one elephant trap, and there were certain abstract phrases which caused confusion that they always asked to be rewritten. We would rewrite questions and tests to ensure that no one hard of hearing was disadvantaged. The technology for deaf people has improved hugely in recent years too.

My noble friend, as he said, is much involved with dyslexia. As expected, the British Dyslexia Association sent a very useful brief. As others have indicated, it is truly important that children should be diagnosed early, as with any special educational need, so that remedies can be applied as soon as possible. It is not acceptable for children to miss out on schooling because no one has spotted or diagnosed why they are failing.

These days, we have the wherewithal to diagnose early. Years ago, when I was at school, there was a girl branded stupid who was actually very intelligent, and she went on to be a highly successful entrepreneur and fundraiser. She was diagnosed very late as dyslexic, a syndrome we had not heard of in my young day. She would have had a much happier school life if her “stupidity” had been recognised for what it was and measures put in place to help her, instead of constantly seating her at the back of the class and assuming that she would not be able to answer any questions. We call for all teacher training to include the common disabilities teachers are likely to find among children they teach and for teachers to learn tolerance if children are having difficulties—as well as patience, which of course all teachers need in spades.

It is, as ever, a pleasure to hear the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, who is a powerful advocate and evidence of courage and determination overcoming physical disability. His contributions to debates are always thoughtful and well worthy of being taken forward.

Can the Minister say what provision is made in teacher training to ensure that special educational needs are identified and treated appropriately? There is so much these days to ensure that anyone suffering a physical or learning disability can flourish. Alongside that, I hope that all children are taught kindness and compassion. How can government ensure that accessibility is part of the conversation in all areas of policy, regulation and service delivery?

This debate has thrown up some fascinating issues. Once again, I thank my noble friend for introducing it.