SEND Provision

Claire Young Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) for securing this debate. Before I start, I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am still a South Gloucestershire councillor.

Right across the country, children with special educational needs and disabilities are being let down, and parents are at their wits’ end trying to navigate the system. The SEND funding model is utterly broken, leaving local councils and schools unable to provide the learning environments our children need.

I want to highlight three particular problems. The first relates to the safety valve agreements put in place to support local authorities that are struggling the most to deliver these important services. I know as the former leader of South Gloucestershire council that the targets that were set pre-pandemic fail to reflect the massively rising demand we have faced since, meaning they are no longer fit for purpose and need to be reviewed. I look forward to hearing the Minister outline what steps the Government will take immediately to do that.

Secondly, I want to highlight the punitive approach taken to school absence in this country. If a child’s needs are not being met at school, it can lead to their being unable to attend. Parents who have been fighting hard to get their child the support they need can then face the added burden of threats of fines or even imprisonment—talk about adding insult to injury. Imagine the impact that has on parents who are already under huge stress, who may be under financial pressure due to their employment being affected by their additional caring responsibilities, and who may feel compelled, against all their parental instincts, to physically force their child into a situation that is harming them. Above all, think of the impact on the child, pressured to go into an inappropriate environment and worried that bad things may happen to their parents.

Finally, I want to highlight the increasing use of alternatives to exclusion, such as isolation and temporary moves to other schools—measures that are not recorded and published in the same way exclusions are, and not subject to the same safeguards. A child who is struggling to learn in a classroom with a subject-specialist teacher is highly unlikely to be able to do so when sat in a room with a supervisor and some worksheets. A neurodivergent child who thrives on routine will be distressed by such a change, especially if it involves a move to an unfamiliar school. In some schools the list of behaviour that is sanctioned in this way could easily have been drawn from a diagnostic list for ADHD or autism, so it seems inevitable that children who do not have appropriate support in place will be subject to such sanctions. There needs to be an urgent review of the use of such measures, which can easily go under the radar.

In conclusion, we need action now from the Government to fix these problems before the house of cards comes tumbling down, starting with fixing the funding formula and reviewing all existing safety valve agreements.