Education: Special Educational Needs

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lady Warnock for this debate, which will certainly give the Minister the opportunity to spell out in more detail the degree of priority that will be given to SEN and disabled children within the education system. It was good news to hear that the education budget will rise and that there will be a £2.5 billion pupil premium to support the education of disadvantaged children, but we know that there will be many demands on that budget.

Ofsted has done a thorough job visiting and taking evidence from schools in different parts of the country and from a wide range of those involved, including the pupils themselves and their parents, who, as we have already heard, are a fairly unsatisfied group. If one remembers, too, that the 1978 report of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, estimated that as many as 20 per cent of all children had SEN, it is clear that the group which we are concerned with is certainly a significant one. If one adds to that the figures emphasised as important by the Special Educational Consortium—that 87 per cent of exclusions from primary and 60 per cent from secondary schools are SEN pupils, and that at secondary school those with SEN are more than twice as likely to be eligible for free school meals—it is clear that a high proportion of these children do indeed come from the most deprived backgrounds and therefore are doubly in need of support if they are to be enabled to reach their potential.

Ofsted's conclusions are important. Clearly, statemented children need the maximum help that the state can provide. However, as other noble Lords have said, it is disturbing to read that as many as half of the pupils identified for school action and school action plus would apparently not need to be so labelled if the school concerned had focused on improving teaching and learning for all pupils.

Three things stand out for me after reading the report, and on which I hope the Minister will comment. The first is the clear need to simplify the procedures by which pupils are assessed for SEN or disability help, ensuring that the system is clearer for parents, schools and other education and training providers, and, equally important, that the same assessment procedures are wherever possible used by all the services involved.

Secondly, the diagnosis procedures should begin as early in the child's life as possible. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has already quoted the evidence given by TreeHouse that the average age for diagnosing autism is six years and seven months, and so on. We know—again, as we have heard—that such diagnosis can begin to be made for a child at 18 months. That clearly illustrates that today's children with SEN will already be unnecessarily falling behind the rate of progress of some of their classmates. In an earlier education Bill some of your Lordships, headed by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, tried to include a provision ensuring that all children were tested for potential complications of this kind before they started school, but, alas, that amendment was lost in a previous wash-up. I hope from what I have heard today that there is an indication that—even if it is not early enough, but at least before five—the coalition Government will give a commitment to make the tests necessary.

The third point seems basic to achieving better results in future. It is to include in all teacher-training courses a basic element of SEN. There will of course be a need for more specific training for those teachers who will specialise, but the main need will be enough training for all teachers to enable them to realise when a child should be referred for more expert assessment.