SEND Provision

James Sunderland Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

It is an enormous pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) and his typically powerful and forthright speech. I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for securing the debate and, of course, the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Gen Kitchen) for her maiden speech. A massive “Well done” to her— it is not an easy thing to do.

I have been a pretty robust champion for SEND for some time and have spoken on it at length in the House, so I do not want to detain hon. Members for too long, but there are some important points that I wish to raise, particularly with the Minister. The backdrop for SEND across the UK is getting ever better. In March last year, the Government published their SEND and alternative provision improvement plan. Why was that important? Because it commits to a huge increase in funding for education across the UK, and for SEND in particular, with investment increasing by more than 60% from 2019-20 to more than £10.5 billion a year by 2024-25. That is a huge increase in money, and we know beyond doubt that this is the highest funding ever for education in the UK.

I was also pleased that, as part of that plan, there is a new leadership-level SENCO NVQ, which is an important professional qualification. We have also got expanded training for staff ranging from up to 5,000 early years educational needs co-ordinators to 400 educational psychologists. Excitingly, in Bracknell Forest, a proposal is being mooted in conjunction with Bracknell and Wokingham College for a pilot to be run for recruiting and training additional teaching assistants, and particularly those who may be focused on special educational needs.

As the Minister knows, last year’s review identified three key challenges. First, navigating the SEND system and alternative provision is not a positive experience for families. Indeed, the EHCP process is too long, too convoluted and too difficult—it requires a degree to fill it out and submit it. Secondly, outcomes for children and young people with SEND are consistently worse than their peers’ across every measure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich just mentioned. Thirdly, despite the continuing and unprecedented investment, the system is not financially sustainable and insufficient places are available for those needing specialist provision.

What do we need to do? Given that I try to focus nationally as well as locally, I think that first we need to better operationalise the process. We know that the money is available and the policy is in place, but it is not being translated right now to improvements locally. I am working locally with Bracknell Forest Council to do that. Additional staff are being recruited and response times are improving for those who contact the Department, but these improvements need to happen much more broadly across the DFE’s area.

While the details remain confidential—that is a safety valve—I am supporting Bracknell Forest Council in its endeavours and am meeting here in Westminster with Ministers to ensure the best possible deal for councillors and officials at the council. I am grateful to the Government for their ongoing co-operation and investment, which is pivotal. However, to better operationalise the provision, we need the right settings for all our children, and sufficient places. Even with the increased funding, we need to build additional schools—and that is now, not in five years’ time.

Last year, I was pleased to play my part in securing funding for the new SEND school in Crowthorne in my constituency, which was one of the 60 new schools announced last year. Bracknell Forest Council assures me that it is ready right now to scope and build the school, so can we please have the money right now, not in five years?

Why stop there? We need to be ambitious nationally and locally. We could also invest locally in a third school. An obvious site in Bracknell is the Warfield site, which I have raised with the council before. I encourage the council in Bracknell to be more ambitious and go for it. Let us not just go for a second SEND school; let us go for a third as well. We need to do the same thing across the UK: identify settings where schools can be built and make the money available now, because these settings are non-discretionary.

Before I finish, I will raise two points. First, I have a particular issue with Labour’s policy on VAT for private schools. Aside from the huge impact on parents who choose—it is about choice—to educate their kids privately for good reason, that policy would have an adverse effect on service families and those with children with special needs. We must be careful what we wish for. Lastly, while I absolutely welcome the huge progress being made on SEND right across the UK, it does need operationalising both locally and nationally. It is about results and outcomes, not policy and money. I urge the Minister please to wave his magic wand on this one.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We come to the wind-ups.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Johnston]

I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friends on that point.

There is then the question of what the Labour party would do differently. I did not hear anything that the Labour party would do differently. The only thing we know that it would do differently is to charge families with a child at a special school having their special needs met an additional 20% on the cost of that place. It can often be a huge struggle for families to meet the cost of a place in the first place, yet Labour will add 20% to that on the spurious grounds that otherwise—and I quote—“any school could claim it’s a special school.” That seems to me a particularly poor way of making education policy, not that there is much of it from the Labour party. I wonder how many Labour MPs, when they sit with constituents in their surgeries, tell those parents that they will hike their fees by 20%. I suspect not many, but every parent in the country deserves to know that.

[James Sunderland]

Does the Minister agree that this is ultimately about choice? It should be about parents having a choice about where they send their children to school, without being fiscally penalised for doing so. Does he also agree that imposing VAT on school fees will massively overload the state school system, because of the number of parents who may not be able to afford to send their kids to private school and who will therefore send them to state school? Does he agree that that policy is complete nonsense?

[David Johnston]

My hon. Friend makes some important points. The honest truth is that I just do not think the Labour party thought it through. I think they thought it was ideology that would please a particular wing of the party, but they did not think through the fact that it would hammer families with a child in a special school, trying to get their needs met, with an additional 20%. We will see what those families think about that policy.