Children with Autism (Education)

Debate between Bob Stewart and Steve McCabe

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe]

I note that my hon. Friend has made that point.

Research by Ambitious about Autism has found that about 40% of children with autism have been excluded from school on at least one occasion without any valid reason being offered. Many are excluded much more often, of course, and some schools appear to operate a policy of informal exclusion, which makes it difficult for any of us to form an accurate picture of what exactly is happening. We do know that the practice is illegal. I acknowledge the Government’s work in funding exclusion advisers, with their grant to the National Autistic Society. I hope that will help us address the problem of those exclusions.

As the Minister will know, Ambitious about Autism is currently campaigning for every school to have access to an autism specialist teacher. We should try to meet that objective because I am certain that exclusions often result from staff who genuinely do not know what is required of them and feel that they are ill equipped to cope with an autistic child’s particular needs. Obviously, the special educational needs co-ordinator is the key figure in the school, charged with ensuring that appropriate support and assistance is made available to every child with a special need, whether or not they are subject to a statement or an education health and care plan.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I would be surprised if any child with special needs was excluded from school without someone with specialist knowledge having had a look at them. I am assuming that that is what happened. Perhaps the Minister will have an answer.

[Steve McCabe]

The point is that informal exclusions are not notified or recorded, so the issue is virtually impenetrable. That should be addressed. As I said, to be fair to the Government, they have funded a grant for exclusion advisers who we all hope will help to make progress.

I was talking about SENCOs. At present, the Department for Education does not know how many SENCOs there are across the country, or how many teachers have particular additional skills designed to support autistic children. It might be helpful if we carried out some kind of audit so that we could at least begin to estimate the level of need and the gaps in existing provision.

In theory, a SENCO is involved in the school’s use of the pupil premium for SEN children, although there appear to be no clear guidelines on the extent of that involvement or on how a school secures additional funding from a local authority on the basis of a child’s extensive needs or of having a particularly large number of children with special needs. In fact, it is often suggested that some mainstream schools seek to deter the parents of special needs children, and autistic children in particular, because they struggle to secure additional funding and are likely to be penalised by Ofsted for a decline in results as a consequence of their special needs children, rather than acknowledged for their efforts in supporting them. I am not defending any school’s attempt to exclude or reject children, but we have to acknowledge that how the system is currently loaded does not make things easy for a great number of schools.

When we were dealing with the code of practice, the Minister spoke about how he saw the local offer as a powerful means of highlighting how well a local authority was doing in catering for children with special needs. I do not want to talk about what Lancashire or any other local authority has or has not done, as, frankly, I do not have the detail to hand. However, I acknowledge that the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick) has provided us with a broader picture of the situation in Lancashire.

Police (Detention and Bail) Bill

Debate between Bob Stewart and Steve McCabe

Thursday 7th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe]

I will in just a second.

I understand that the Government need to deal with the immediate situation, but I find it slightly strange that we are going to do so by simply sweeping the matter under the carpet, because it is worth holding a debate in the future about how the situation could have occurred.

[Bob Stewart]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe]

That is largely the same point as the hon. Member for Northampton North made. Does the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) still wish to intervene?

[Bob Stewart]

I was going to make just one point—about whether the public have been put at more risk because it has taken some time to bring in this legislation, and about whether the police have been able to manage the situation. It seems that no one has really suffered apart from the police, who have had to manage the situation, and that now we require to put the matter right. If the public have not been put at risk, that is great, and if the police have been able to manage, that is good, too, so let us get the legislation through as fast as we can.

[Steve McCabe]

We agree on getting the emergency legislation through; that is why we are here. But it is a little premature to say that no one has been harmed by what has happened, because that remains to be seen.

It can be argued that what happened on 5 April led to people thinking that they were dealing with a little local difficulty, because that is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to draw, but it is reasonable also to say that, when the judgment was made on 19 May, people should have started to think that it had wider implications and alarm bells should have started to ring. It appears, however, that at that point no alarm bells whatever rang in the Home Office.

On 24 June, by which time the written judgment was available, no one thought it sufficiently important to be dealt with on the Friday afternoon. The Home Office received it on 24 June and waited until the Monday—the whole weekend—before starting to consider its implications.

The Home Secretary was dismissive of my comments on Michael Zander’s article, but here was a respected legal expert giving a clear warning on his concerns about the judgment. I do not know whether the Home Secretary knows, and I am quite happy to table a parliamentary question, but I should be really interested to find out whether the Home Office takes that journal, Criminal Law and Justice Weekly. I imagine that it does, and I therefore presume that somebody whom the Home Secretary employs reads it, so we should not be quite as dismissive of Michael Zander’s piece as she suggests.