SEND Provision and Funding

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Howell

Thursday 11th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I am sure the clock will be very helpful, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) for securing this important debate.

I will start with something that is unusual in this place: a mea culpa. I served on the Bill Committee for what became the Children and Families Act 2014. We debated education, health and care plans at length and how we aspired to their making a real difference. We thought they would make a difference by bringing together education, health and social care funding, enabling the children we are speaking about to have the opportunity to thrive and achieve everything that we know they can and need to achieve.

Sadly, I remember the word “fight” recurred again and again in that debate. Parents were tired of fighting for the right school place, for a statement, which would later become an EHCP, or for the right transport to get their child to the education setting they needed. We thought that Act would see an end to the fighting, but it simply has not, because that has again been the recurring word that parents from my constituency have used in emails to me when I told them that I planned to speak in this debate. They are still tired, still fighting and still seeing children making no progress in a range of settings across our constituencies, whether they be specialist or mainstream provision, as the Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), said. The sad truth is that those parents are worn out.

[Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)]

To reinforce that point, a lady called Jill Mothersdale in Sedgefield came to me and said exactly that. They are so tired of trying to fight the system and get results. It is not anywhere, but everywhere, and I endorse the comments made by my right hon. Friend.

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend is right that it is everywhere. A mother contacted me about her two daughters, one of whom she says has made no progress in her school setting for years and is being allowed to sit at the back of the classroom, making no contribution. She will not pass her GCSEs and, more than likely, will never move into employment. It is about transition: children have to be given the opportunity to achieve the maximum they can, so that they will go on to perform useful roles in society and in work, and so that the children of today are not the problem of the Department for Work and Pensions tomorrow or, worse, the problem of the Ministry of Justice. That is the stark reality. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden said, we need change.

I do not want my contribution to be entirely negative, although I fear I may get a bit pokey and political at some point. I want to talk about a brilliant school in my constituency: St Edward’s School in Melchet Park, a specialist school for boys with emotional and mental health challenges, with particular social needs. It is a private school the sole customer of which is local education authorities. Any increase in the fees of that school will be an increase for local authorities and the hard-pressed taxpayer.

St Edward’s School does a brilliant job. The year before last, I visited the school on International Women’s Day, and a 12-year-old boy asked me what I was doing to celebrate the day. I, in my role, had forgotten it was International Women’s Day, which is absolutely shameful, but he had not. I planted a tree at the school with a young man called Jacob, who made me properly laugh, despite all the challenges he faced, because he was in a setting that was safe, secure and appropriate for his emotional and behavioural needs.

My hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee was right to refer to transport, because that school transports children in every single morning and out every afternoon, over massive distances. They come from across the whole of Hampshire. Some of the kids are sat in taxis for well over an hour at both ends of the day. The school wishes to extend the residential offering, so that the children can have the same stability and security in the extended day as they get in their school hours. It is particularly important for children with social and emotional needs to have consistency and certainty about how their day will pan out. It might be awkward for those of a different political persuasion to recognise that a charitable part of the private sector is producing the goods for young people and making sure that those boys are getting the security they need, but we have to face up to that.

I will finish on a point about special educational needs that is often overlooked, and a challenge that we all face. Girls on the autistic spectrum are often much better than their male counterparts at mirroring the behaviours of their classmates and masking their condition. As a result, they are less likely to get the EHCPs that they desperately need. We have to make sure that we do not overlook that, and recognise that there can be differences across the sexes in the way conditions present. We have to make sure that diagnoses are easier to get for girls, who in too many instances will be stuck in mainstream settings because their EHCP has not been granted because they have been much better at masking their additional needs.

To conclude, I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden and Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate. It is important that we recognise that the changes we made in the 2014 Act have not given us the change that we need, and we must do better.