Helen Maguire
Main Page: Helen Maguire (Liberal Democrat - Epsom and Ewell)Department Debates - View all Helen Maguire's debates with the Department for Education
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Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing this important debate.
Early in my career, I had the privilege of working for the disability charity Scope, where I successfully campaigned for increased funding for the schools access initiative to improve access to mainstream education. Ever since then, I have been a strong believer that, wherever possible, children with specialist needs should have them met in mainstream schools that support them and everything should be done to facilitate that. While I still believe in mainstream inclusion, I recognise that the demand is great and the complexity of need has increased and changed.
Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)
On the point about access, does the hon. Member agree that it is really important that children are able to get to school in the first place? Private providers of SEND transport have reported that the increase in national insurance contributions will greatly impact their ability to get children to school, because they will have to run at a loss and might have to relinquish some of the contracts. That will put local authorities at risk of not meeting their statutory duties to ensure that children with SEN can access that transport.
Ms Minns
I am sure that the Minister will address that point in her closing remarks, but I want to focus on the need, and the ability to get into a specialist school in the first instance.
James Rennie school in my constituency is rated outstanding and does incredible work for children aged three to 19, but not everyone who needs a school like James Rennie is able to access one. The school has seen a huge increase in demand in recent years from families whose children have specialist needs. At the moment, it is already operating well above its published admission number, something it has achieved only by converting spare space into classrooms, and there is still more demand. For this September, it already has 43 known applications—25% of the children already in the school.
James Rennie is not alone. Department for Education figures from March last year show that there are approximately 4,000 more pupils on the rolls of specialist schools than their reported capacity. Will the Minister address the need that we now have for more specialist schools? Let us be clear: there are 1.5 million SEND children in this country, including the 202 at James Rennie in Carlisle. All of us, in every part of the House, have a duty to ensure that we do not fail them.