Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilkins Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Wilkins]

2: Clause 2, page 2, line 43, at end insert—
“( ) In Schedule 1 to the School Finance (England) Regulations 2008, after paragraph 8 insert—
“8A Where a child is a registered pupil at an Academy, expenditure in respect of services for making provision for pupils with low incidence special educational needs or disabilities.”
( ) Where a local authority fails to secure satisfactory provision for pupils with low incidence special educational needs or disabilities, the Secretary of State may make alternative arrangements.”

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, this amendment is also tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote. Both in Committee and on Report I have spoken about my concerns that a large increase in the number of academies will have the unintended consequence of dispersing funding for children with low incidence or complex special educational needs. As a result, vital support services for these children and their parents will become untenable, and there could be large numbers of deaf and blind children and others with multi-sensory impairments who do not get the support they need.

These concerns have received the support of all sides of the House and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. They are also shared by the National Sensory Impairment Partnership, the Special Educational Consortium and, particularly, the National Deaf Children’s Society, RNIB and Sense. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and his officials for taking the time to meet with me yesterday afternoon, as he offered to do on Report, and it is therefore with regret that I must speak again to say that these concerns have still not been addressed. Sadly, while the Government are willing to recognise that the problem is real, they have shown no real urgency in coming up with a way forward. As the Special Educational Consortium points out in its briefing, the Government should recognise that there is a need to address the impact of the Academies Bill on individual children currently receiving specialist provision when a number of schools convert to academy status in September 2010.

I am alarmed that the Government should seek to pass this Bill knowing that potentially it could damage the educational prospects of some of the most vulnerable children in the country. The number of children may be small and the impact may not be immediate, but that is no excuse for failing to come up with a solution that will reassure parents and children that they will get the support they need. The National Sensory Impairment Partnership believes that the Government should set up a working group to consider solutions. The working group should be time-limited and have clear terms of reference to consider this issue and make urgent recommendations. The group must be led by Government and its recommendations must be communicated by the Government to all local authorities and schools across the country. I stress that the working group should also include representatives of the parents of children with sensory impairments, and I strongly urge the Government to accept the recommendation.

I hope that the Minister can give a positive reply before the Bill moves to the other place. But in the absence of that positive response, I have spoken to Members of the other place who have said that they will continue to raise this matter until we are certain that the educational prospects of disabled children will not be damaged by these proposals. I beg to move.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment, as I have done on previous occasions. It is sad indeed that the Minister has not yet been able fully to satisfy our concerns. Disabled children and those with SEN often need specialist support to ensure that they achieve positive learning outcomes. These services are crucial for pupils with a wide range of disabilities and have a unique role to play in the education of children with low incident disabilities such as blindness, partial sight and hearing impairments.

Specialist support services are not focused solely on the delivery of the curriculum. They also provide much-needed training and skills to support independent living, and examples of some of those specialist services give a clear view. I cite the teaching of Braille and of British sign language, independent living training to enable independent personal care skills and home skills, mobility instruction and pre-employment support. Local authorities have traditionally provided specialist support services to all schools, using funds retained from school budgets to ensure adequate provision throughout their areas. There are strong concerns that, as academies move out of local authority control, so will their revenue, reducing the amount available overall to specialist support services and relying on academies to commission the services they require. I hope that while the Bill is still with us, we will have further assurances from the Minister. Otherwise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, said, the issue will come up again in the other place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I am grateful for the points that have been raised in this debate. We have, rightly, spent a lot of time on this Bill talking about various sensitive issues to do with our most vulnerable children. As I said in Committee and on Report, I accept the practical concerns raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, and others. When we met yesterday, we went through some of those. I hope that some of the answers I can give this afternoon may take us a little further. However, I certainly recognise the concerns that she has raised.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, and others have been kind enough to accept that, with the parameters within which I am operating, I have sought in general to approach SEN issues throughout this Bill with an open mind and, so much as I have been able, taken concerns on board. I hope that, in some cases, I have gone further than perhaps noble Lords thought was likely to be the case when this process started.

On the specific point of low-incidence SEN, I can say to the noble Baroness that, as part of looking at funding for academies from 2011 onwards, we will work closely with local authorities. I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the importance of local authorities and other parties in this area. I can confirm that we will look specifically at the funding of low-incidence SEN. This work will start during the autumn. I have today instructed officials to ensure that the Special Educational Consortium is kept abreast of developments and is able to make its views known. It is extremely important that it has that opportunity and we shall reflect on the points that it makes to us. We are committed to ensuring that children with sensory impairments in both the maintained and academies sectors receive the services that they require.

We have also established an advisory group to help us work through the issues particular to SEN and special schools in relation to the establishment of academies. We want to use the practical expertise in that sector and the group will include heads and governors from special schools and mainstream schools with specialist units, as well as local authority representation at officer and political level. As I said on Report, and as I underlined to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, yesterday when we met, I am very happy to put on the record our undertaking to monitor the impact of increasing numbers of academies on local authority sensory impairment services. We will continue to work with local authorities to ensure that adjustments to their funding in respect of academies properly reflect their continuing responsibilities. Our officials will also work with organisations such as the National Sensory Impairment Partnership on this.

Listening to the debate, I am very conscious that I am not expert on SEN, and I am not the Minister responsible. However, as part of the advisory groups and the work we will be taking forward, I would be very happy to enable a proper exchange with the relevant Minister in the department so that we can work through these issues, using the experience and expertise of noble Lords, to make sure we come up with practical solutions that meet the concerns that noble Lords have raised. So I am alive to the concerns. I hope that the noble Baroness will feel that that provides some slight further reassurance from yesterday. In the light of that I ask her kindly to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, I am most grateful to all Members of the House who have spoken in support of this amendment and to the Minister for the reassurances that he has tried to give. Unfortunately, it does not meet the needs of those children who are going to be at school in September. Given the strength of feeling in the House, I would like to test the opinion of the House.