Oral Answers to Questions

Jen Craft Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

11. What steps she is taking to reform skills training.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

15. What steps she is taking to reform skills training.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Bridget Phillipson)]

The previous Government left behind a skills system that was fragmented and failing: falling numbers of apprenticeships for young people; adults unable to find the training courses they need; businesses confused; and no plans to equip people with the skills for the economy and opportunities of tomorrow. We are turning the page by establishing Skills England to unify that fragmented landscape, and bringing forward a plan for post-16 education and skills, which will deliver the education and training pathways that our economy, employers and learners need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bridget Phillipson]

Absolutely. That is why we set out in the Budget an additional £300 million of capital investment for our colleges. I am sure that the opportunities that my hon. Friend sets out are just the kind that we need to see across our country. The creative industries have a crucial role to play in driving growth in communities right across our country, and through our curriculum and assessment review we will ensure that all young people have the chance to study a wide range of subjects.

[Jen Craft]

This morning I had the pleasure of visiting South Essex college in my constituency, which offers a significant variety of post-16 skills-based courses, from theatre and music production through to digital skills, robotics and hospitality. The college is keen to raise the aspirations of local young people, matching their ambitions with the needs of employers in the region. What role does the Secretary of State see the further education sector playing in delivering the Government’s skills agenda?

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that our further education colleges have a crucial role to play in providing opportunities for our young people and for adult returners to education. Colleges have a strong impact on regional economic growth. We think that they have a bigger role to play still, which is why they will be a central part of what we take forward through Skills England.

Home-to-School Transport: Children with SEND

Jen Craft Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the statutory framework for home-to-school transport for children with SEND.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I am delighted to have secured this debate on 3 December, which is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. I am pleased to see a number of hon. Members present to speak, which truly reflects the importance of the issue.

Disabled children enter the education system with the odds stacked against them. The damage and chaos wrought by 14 years of underfunding and understaffing have left a broken special educational needs and disabilities system. Parents have to fight for the entitlements of their child at every step of the way, simply to ensure that they are given the same life chances as other children. As the parent of a disabled child, I have experienced that at first hand.

We know how vital each stage of the journey through education is for a disabled child. The importance of early intervention cannot be disputed, as it provides crucial support to their development and improves long-term outcomes. Similarly, the transition to adulthood is a key stage of development when disabled young people advance their independence and encounter new challenges. Yet, as it stands, we have a statutory framework for home-to-school transport that, in effect, excludes disabled children from accessing education. Even where the statute necessitates that local authorities provide home-to-school transport, this is often disputed and subject to many shortcomings, leaving parent carers with another fight on their hands. However, I will focus on the framework today.

Under the existing framework, the legal obligation of local authorities to provide free transport to a place of education applies only for eligible children aged five to 16 and young people aged 19 to 25. This is a vital lifeline for disabled children and their families, ensuring that even those with the most complex needs can attend a school that offers specialist provision to help them get on in life, but until they reach the age of five, and after the statutory duty falls at the age of 16, disabled children and their families are failed by the current system.

Before a disabled child turns five, it is at the discretion of local authorities to make suitable arrangements for them to attend early years settings. In reality, that can materialise as a flat refusal to any request for transport. Families who have been fortunate enough to secure a competitive place at a specialist early years setting are then denied support, and are unable to shoulder the burden of time and cost needed to transport their child themselves. One parent told me that the only school suitable for their child’s complex health condition was an 11-mile drive from home. Their transport application was rejected. As they cannot afford petrol for four trips a day, that parent now drives the child to school and stays there, leaving them unable to work.

Families are forced to make the impossible choice between transporting their child themselves or giving up work, and those children who are most in need of early intervention are unable to access it. Some local authorities even refuse to transport a child to primary school until the very day that they turn five, by which time a disabled child may have missed a term of reception and lost out on vital therapies and specialised support. That leaves disabled children playing catch-up from day one.

By the age of 16, many children with SEND will have been receiving free transport for more than a decade, but as the legal obligation for that provision falls, their education can be thrown into turmoil. In the past, many councils continued to provide free transport for children with SEND from the ages of 16 to 19. Funds put into those travel costs are saved further down the line—they allow students with disabilities to achieve qualifications and skills, and to gain confidence, independence and experience. This makes it much less likely that they will fall into unemployment or disengagement, and face challenges with mental and physical health. However, the rising demand—with 576,000 children and young people in England now having an education, health and care plan—coupled with local authorities being under immense financial strain, has led to local authorities across the country, including in my constituency of Thurrock, cutting the service.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making some excellent comments. She refers to the transportation being free; for some families it is free, but for local authorities, as we all know, it absolutely is not. My local authority, North East Lincolnshire, spent £1.4 million last year alone on transporting 114 children out of area. It is unsustainable for local authorities. Does she agree that the answer is more specialist provision in area, and combined support in mainstream school for those children?

[Jen Craft]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The long-term goal must be better inclusion for disabled children in mainstream education—I would have loved to send my child to the outstanding school up the road, but it did not really want us. This is not a choice that parents want to make, and inclusion is the ultimate, long-term solution. However, disabled children should not be penalised for the financial burdens under which councils find themselves.

The transport arrangements that are provided are often unsuitable, such as a bus pass for a vulnerable young person. Parents are asked to make financial contributions or are provided with travel allowances that barely cover the costs. It is hard to overstate the impact that the yearly lottery for school transport can have on disabled children. It disrupts their education, places stress and anxiety on them and their families, reduces their independence, and asks their parents to carry financial costs.

I heard from one mother whose 18-year-old daughter attends a school offering specialist provision. This year, just 24 hours before her daughter was due to start her college course, she was told she would be charged a contribution for her daughter’s transport to school. She spoke of the anxiety inflicted on her daughter through days of uncertainty. Despite that stressful experience, that mother considers herself among the lucky ones. Her vulnerable daughter can continue to get to school safely every day, when others who are asked to contribute to transport costs may not.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does she agree that in too many cases the SEND families most in need of support find they are not given it? For many families, it is therefore a question of whether they can afford to support their children. In this country, in 2024, we must end that barrier to opportunity.

[Jen Craft]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It is unacceptable that disabled families are faced with choices about their children’s education that parents of children who are not disabled are not.

During the election campaign, I spoke to another woman, Julia, and had the pleasure of meeting her 18-year-old son Oscar, who has cerebral palsy, which affects his right side, and epilepsy. For 10 years, he had received free home-to-school transport, but now his parents have to make the case every year for why he should continue to receive that support to reach his sixth form. Thanks to the new costs, his mum has had to withdraw Oscar from one of his sessions at his weekend care provision, because she cannot afford both. Despite the new charges, there is still no guarantee that their application will be approved. She said that life is hard enough without this discrimination and pressure.

Another mother, in Thurrock, told me about her ongoing fight to secure transport for her daughter. Twice her daughter was refused passenger transport to the education setting she attended and twice the family successfully appealed. That mother said:

“As parents to children with SEND we have to fight for every single step, for their existence. Fighting for what is right, what our children are entitled to.”

This is the reality for thousands of families across the country. This disruption at such a vital point in education can be devastating, with serious impacts on a young person’s mental health and development. Let us be clear: this places a financial barrier to education in the way of disabled children and their families that other families simply do not have to face.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Does the hon. Member acknowledge that lots of local authorities, and indeed lots of schools, seek to do the right thing? Councils in Cumbria have more than doubled their spending on SEND transport in the last five years, but is it not the worst thing about it, from a local authority perspective, that councils and schools that do the right thing get penalised? Is it not right that we instead support all local authorities and schools to support special educational needs children without disadvantaging them or their families?

[Jen Craft]

As I have said previously, the important thing is to see a long-term goal where disabled children are truly able to receive a mainstream, inclusive education, so that we get out of this cycle of families having to pay to transport their children miles and miles from where they live.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

May I just say that the Member who is speaking is not obliged to take interventions? It does take time away from those who have put in to speak.

[Jen Craft]

I will make some headway.

The requirement for free transport returns for 19 to 25-year-olds with complex needs and an education, health and care plan, to support those who need longer in education or training to achieve their outcomes.

The guidance itself says:

“It is critical that, from year 9 at the latest, local authorities help young people start planning for a successful transition to adulthood.”

Given the importance of this transition, why does the statutory obligation for free transport fall between the ages of 16 to 19?

We cannot ignore the rising costs that councils face in carrying out their duty to provide free home-to-school transport. However, those costs are not the fault of disabled children. It is not a choice by families to send their disabled child or young person to a school far from home; it is a necessity, and the only way to receive the specialist provision that meets their needs.

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

Will the hon. Lady give way on that point?

[Jen Craft]

I would just like to make a little more progress.

When I think about my child’s journey through education, I do not see it in stages. The journey for my daughter and for every disabled child is a lifelong one. We need a statutory framework that reflects that and that provides stability, security and reassurance for disabled children throughout their development and for their families.

In the context of the Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity for every child, the situation with home-to-school transport is damaging the life chances of disabled pupils. I encourage the Minister to consider a framework that ends the current anomalies in the system, so that local authorities have a legal obligation to ensure that no child is denied an education that will allow them to get on in life.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments about the existing framework, and the contributions of other Members, as we seek to develop a system that ensures that the needs of every child are met.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jen Craft]

I thank Members from across the House for their contributions this afternoon, particularly those from rural areas who highlighted the additional complexities of home-to-school travel there. I thank the Minister for her considered response.

I recognise that the challenges to the SEND system are immense and will take a long time to put right. My concern is that, while the ultimate goal of moving inclusive, mainstream education closer to children where they need it is an honourable one and is clearly the direction that we should be travelling in, there are children who cannot access that right now. They cannot wait for a long-term shift in policy and approach; that would have a detrimental impact on the rest of their lives.

The outcomes for children aged 16 to 19, if they do not access education or training, are well documented, which is why education or training is compulsory up to the age of 18. The only people who currently have to face a financial burden to meet their child’s need and make sure that they are accessing that compulsory education or training mandate, on a general, widespread basis, are parents of disabled children. That is something that needs to be looked at.

I welcome the fact that the Minister is keen to look at this issue in more depth in her role in Government and at how it is working in practice. I would very much welcome the opportunity to work with her on that, and indeed to work with the sector and parents of SEND children more widely.

I finish by saying that no one puts their vulnerable, non-verbal child in a car with strangers by choice; it is because that is how they can get them to their education setting. I reflect, with gratitude, on the people who have taken my daughter to school. I believe that their professionalism, their absolute empathy, and the way that they interact with her on a daily basis is something to be commended, as is the role that people play in this system in general.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

I thank everybody for their indulgence in keeping their speeches short. We have had 33 speakers in this debate, which I think is the most that anybody has ever crammed into an hour; I hope that Guinness World Records is paying attention.

Question put and agreed to. 

Resolved,

That this House has considered the statutory framework for home-to-school transport for children with SEND.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jen Craft Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the priority of ensuring that children with special educational needs and disabilities are accommodated in mainstream schools with their friends whenever possible. We are ensuring that training is available from the earliest possible stage so that those in the workforce can teach children with SEND, and that educational psychology services are there to help schools to make any changes that are necessary. We want to work in partnership with the sector to secure the best outcomes for every child.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

7. What steps she is taking to make childcare more accessible.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)]

Ensuring that parents have access to affordable and high-quality childcare is a priority for this Government. We will focus on greater opportunities for every family to access early education, and on greater opportunities for children to thrive and develop. As an initial step, we have announced the bidding round for the first 300 school-based nurseries from next September.

[Jen Craft]

Many early years providers struggle to meet the needs of children with SEND. Lack of funds, lack of training and lack of specialist staff often mean that those that do provide a good or excellent service quickly become over-subscribed. What steps is the Department taking to reassure parents and carers of children with SEND that those children will have access to the childcare or early years provision in their areas that meets their needs?

[Stephen Morgan]

We are helping members of the workforce to develop the skills and confidence that will enable them to work effectively with children with SEND, and reviewing early years funding arrangements to ensure that they meet the needs of those children. I should be happy to meet my hon. Friend or visit her constituency to understand the issues that her local providers are facing.

SEND Provision: East of England

Jen Craft Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for securing this important debate.

The SEND system is in chaos. It is broken. I am the parent of a disabled child and I have seen first hand the damage and chaos wrought by 14 years of chronic underfunding, understaffing, and a lack of political will to understand the level of need, coupled with the stigmatisation of parents of SEND children when we fight for the educations our children deserve. How do we fix the system? How do we go back to getting what our children need? I believe that an education system that works for SEND children is one that works for all our children. Educational need and disability should not be seen as parallel to the education system; they should be absolutely central to it. If we get it right for our children, we get it right for every child. Secondly, a SEND system built around the lived experience of parents and carers, which comes at it from the perspective of a parent or a carer, has absolute success built in. I do not see my child’s journey through education in stages; I do not see early years, primary school, secondary school, further education and beyond as separate. My child’s journey is a lifelong one. Similarly, I do not look at the services that she requires in silos, nor do any parents of an SEND child.

To fix the system, we need to come at it from the basis of considering what the child needs from the moment that they enter the education system, whether that is in a pre-school setting or nursery setting, through to the moment that they leave the system. How have we created a successful individual who can go into the world and achieve their full potential?

At the moment, so many parents find themselves at a complete loss and in desperation because of the chaos of the system. They have to be all things to their child and they never get a chance to just be mum or dad. They have to be a speech and language therapist, an advocate, a physiotherapist and an educational psychologist arguing for an education, health and care support plan that is often absolutely impossible to obtain.

Our system needs an awful lot of work. We need to begin this journey and consider how we can properly deliver for children not just in our region—the east of England—or in our individual constituencies, but across the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Abbott (Ipswich) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for securing this important debate on a subject close to my heart.

Although the SEND crisis is a national issue, the devastating testimony from colleagues from across our region shows that hundreds if not thousands of families in Suffolk have been failed by this deep-rooted, unrelenting issue. The failure is not only structural but cultural, and it is not new. I have campaigned alongside families and campaign groups for many years and have battled to get them the support they need. There is nothing as heartbreaking as a parent breaking down in tears as they beg for help for their young child, exhausted and broken by a system that works against them, rather than for them.

In Suffolk, we have seen the same cycle over and again. There have been multiple versions of the damning Ofsted/CQC report. I say gently to the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) that it was not the first report, but the third in less than a decade. Warm words and hollow promises of change and improvement follow, yet little change ever comes. The lived experiences of families across our county have not improved, and in many cases have worsened.

As I highlighted in my maiden speech, five years ago, after yet another damning report on SEND provision in Suffolk—the one before last—our local newspaper, the East Anglian Daily Times, carried a hauntingly memorable front page with the faces of children and families across Suffolk who have been badly let down by a failed system, accompanied by the headline, “We must be heard”. That simple plea has gone unanswered time and again.

I could give many examples to highlight the crisis in SEND provision in Suffolk, but in the short time I have I want to focus on school exclusions. It was absolutely right that the new Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, has made driving up school attendance a priority—if a child is not in school, they cannot learn—but too often our education system fails to meet the needs of many children with SEND, and in the worst cases they are removed entirely.

Over the summer, the Department for Education released the latest school exclusion figures from English schools for school year 2022-23. Once again, they showed an increasingly familiar, and therefore increasingly alarming, trend across the east of England, in particular Suffolk. In our county this year, children with special educational needs received all but one of the primary school permanent exclusions.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I want to reflect what my hon. Friend has said on the amount of school exclusions for SEND pupils, and to state that parents often feel pressured into off-rolling their children—that is, into removing them from the education system—so as not to have what is known as a permanent exclusion on their record. In fact, a permanent record does not exist, and never has in this country; it is a work of fiction. However, a number of parents feel that they have no option other than to remove their children from the education system so that they do not face further penalties for having absent children when they should be at school.

[Jack Abbott]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The statistics I am reading just scratch the surface. We know there are many more families who have had to make the difficult decision to homeschool their children not out of choice, but out of necessity, because they feel they have no other option.

To finish my point, in state-funded primary schools in Suffolk, fixed-term exclusions were 30 times more likely to go to a child with SEND and an EHCP than to a child without. I should add that our county’s fixed-term exclusions are, once again, some of the highest in the country—an unwanted and shameful record of inaction and indifference. Across all age groups in Suffolk, permanent exclusions are more than six times as likely, and fixed-term exclusions more than five times as likely, to go to a child with SEND.

While I am encouraged by the intentions of the new Government with respect to SEND provision, I join Members present, along with so many others, in reiterating that the challenge is enormous and must not be underestimated. Like families across Ipswich, I know there is no overnight fix for years of failure. What those families expect is a clear, credible plan with measurable defined goals for SEND provision, and not the half-baked, half-hearted SEND review that was finally dished up after much delay by the previous Government.

SEND Provision

Jen Craft Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend makes his point well and passionately. He is correct; that is what parents and people who work in our schools have been saying to me.

I will highlight some of the most appalling statistics. More than half of SEND pupils have been forced to take time out of school due to a lack of proper provision, and some children are missing years of schooling. Two in three special schools are at or over capacity; there are 4,000 more pupils on roll than the reported capacity. There are eye-watering delays for children to get their education, health and care assessments and plans, and fewer than half of the plans are issued within the 20-week legal limit.

Nearly a third of parents whose children have special needs have had to resort to the legal system to get them the support they need, and many have spent thousands of pounds to do so. Seven out of eight teachers and 99% of school leaders say that SEND resources are insufficient to meet the needs of our children, according to National Education Union and National Association of Head Teachers staff surveys. Councils face huge SEND deficits, which now stand at £3.2 billion but are expected to reach £5 billion by 2026. The core £10,000 sum that special needs schools receive on a per-pupil basis has been frozen since 2013, despite spiralling inflation. That cost them hundreds of millions of pounds last year alone. I could go on and on, but that alone is a damning indictment of the system.

Child neglect is defined as:

“the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development.”

That is what this failure is, and we should be deeply angry that children are being neglected in such a way.

The SEND crisis is part of the wider crisis in education. There are too few teaching assistants, too few educational psychologists, too few special school places, and Sure Starts have been closed. All that and more means that schools are unable to provide the support that children need. It means that effective early interventions are not possible; that can deepen children’s needs with the result that they require more costly support. When schools face such difficulties, talk of bringing more children into mainstream schools, rather than specialist provision, is just empty rhetoric. All that is exacerbated by national curriculum changes, a much more rigid, prescriptive focus to learning and a greater emphasis on performance measures that simply do not provide the flexibility needed for genuinely inclusive education. We cannot solve this crisis by looking at the SEND system in isolation; we have to consider the wider education system as a whole.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentions the staffing crisis in the SEND system, but I want to note that there is also a crisis in recruitment and training for teachers of the deaf. From my experience, I know that is a key role for a number of deaf children, particularly in my constituency. There is a real crisis in back-filling those positions and recruiting across councils, particularly at a unitary level. The need for teachers of the deaf is not reflected in those coming through the system, which often results in children not having the resource and help they need to succeed in school.

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend is exactly correct, and I am delighted that she has put on record the contribution of teachers of the deaf and the situation in terms of their recruitment.

The current situation is working for no one; not for children, not for parents, not for teachers, not for children without SEN and not for local authorities. The last Government’s approach pitted parents against local authorities, and they failed to take responsibility. That has created a completely adversarial system, with ever more cases going to tribunal—there were 14,000 cases last year alone, up fourfold since 2014. Parents win in 98% of cases, but it is exhausting and often traumatic for them, as well as a complete waste of money.

Even then, the right support often does not follow. At times, that is due to local authorities being cut to the bone and their lack of effective mechanisms to hold schools to account, especially since academisation. Of course, that is only the tip of the iceberg, as so many parents simply do not have the time, energy or money to undertake legal action. The Government have a duty to end that blame game by addressing the root causes of the crisis: the failed policies that got us here.

As I draw to a close, I want to make a point about increasing attempts to shift the blame to parents, with stories blaming so-called pushy parents, a former Minister accusing parents of abusing the SEND tribunal scheme, and other powerful people calling for parents to make fewer demands.