Special Educational Needs: Wiltshire

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Society can be judged by the quality of the provision it makes for its most vulnerable members. I therefore welcome this opportunity to raise the situation of vulnerable people in my constituency, particularly those who have special educational needs.

Last week, the consultation ended on Wiltshire Council’s plans for a dramatic change to the provision for children with SEN in the county, and I would like to begin by highly commending Wiltshire Council for prioritising special needs and for being prepared to pledge serious money—£20 million—on a root-and-branch upgrade to provision for children who have complex and severe learning and physical disabilities. That does Wiltshire Council a great deal of credit, and I pay tribute to the councillors and officials involved in trying to make things better for some of my most vulnerable constituents.

However, the edge was taken off that for me when I was summoned at the end of last year to hear precisely what the council was planning to do with the money it wants to spend. I wish to take some time this evening discussing that and impressing upon the Minister how important it is that the council thinks again. Survey data shows just how unpopular the council’s approach is, closing, as it does, two well-loved schools that are at the very heart of their communities in order to create a very big one in a relatively remote location. I hope the local authority will listen to concerns expressed and adopt a different model for my most vulnerable young constituents that retains at least one of the threatened schools.

I want the Minister to help, because the Government have already been quite helpful: they have helped with £350 million in new funding for SEN announced in December; they have helped through the dedicated schools grant, with an 11% uplift in real terms for high needs between 2014-15 and 2019-20; and they have helped through the Children and Families Act 2014.

A key feature of that legislation was the SEN “local offer” that local authorities are now required to make. The offer has to be developed in partnership with the children and young people involved, their families and the relevant professionals. The attached code of practice is clear: it expects the local offer, from birth to age 25, to be developed and revised over time through regular review and consultation. Indeed, that collaborative, consultative approach runs through the legislation like a vein through granite. It is mandated; it is not an optional extra; it does not mean the local authority making up its mind and presenting users with faits accomplis. It suggests a collaborative, consultative approach that does not waste public money on working up a case that is so clearly contrary to the wishes of its intended beneficiaries.

Wiltshire Council has for some time wanted to close smaller special schools. We got wind of a warming-up exercise last year, when a member of the council made some adverse remarks about the inadequacy of hoists at Larkrise School in Trowbridge—claims that were incorrect and had to be retracted. It all runs contrary to the approach encouraged by the 2014 Act and its associated code of practice. Wiltshire Council’s vision for special education in Wiltshire is in many ways an exemplary document—it says all the right things—but at its heart it would close two schools, one in my constituency and one in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan): Larkrise in Trowbridge and St Nicholas in Chippenham.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this issue forward. As Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, he will know only too well the experiences we have had in Northern Ireland in relation to special needs education. The increasing demands on special needs education are exceptional. In England, some 1.3 million children are in special needs education and needing it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need sweeping reform of the support available to pupils and schools to ensure, as he, I and everyone in the House would agree, that a pupil is not prevented from reaching their potential because of a lack of support services available in their postcode? What he needs in Wiltshire, we also need in Northern Ireland.

[Dr Murrison]

I of course agree with the hon. Gentleman. I was once a governor at a special school, before I was elected. If I reflect on the provision then and the provision now, I am quite clear that matters have improved, but that does not mean to say that we should be complacent. What the hon. Gentleman said is correct: we need to ensure that every child has the ability to reach his or her potential. That is as true of a mainstream child who is going to become a doctor or a lawyer—or even a politician—as it is for a child at a special needs school whose horizons, in a classic sense, are necessarily going to be rather more limited. They are equally important and their potential needs to be maximised.

The proposition before the council is that it closes two schools and builds a big school on the site of a third one. That would be a very big school by SEN standards, and many of us have concerns about that, because this particular subset of the school population undoubtedly benefits from a provision that is more intimate than perhaps would be necessary for their mainstream compatriots. That would necessarily not be the case were this big school to be created in place of the ones it would replace. The council refers to the big school as a centre of excellence, but my contention is that we already have a centre of excellence in my constituency—it is called Larkrise School.

The claim is made that Larkrise is bursting at the seams and that its facilities and equipment are insufficient, but there is more to a school than bricks and mortar, and there is more to a special school than hoists. The school community understands that, which is why it is so opposed to the local authority’s prescription. It is clear that, being strapped for cash, the council has to balance the books. Rightly, it worries about the financial deficits that have been projected for each of the special educational needs schools, but deficits are projected at several mainstream schools, too, and nobody is suggesting that the solution is to close them.

The county’s financial position is not helped by its having to place 300 special educational needs pupils outside Wiltshire because of the long-standing insufficiency of in-county provision. Those of us who represent seats in Wiltshire will be well used to people attending our advice surgeries to discuss that. The council wants to remedy this out-of-county placement situation by creating a new school with 350 places serving the north of the county. Although the way that the numbers are presented in the consultation documents makes comparison very difficult, 350 places seems inadequate to cope with the planned closures, the out-of-county placements and the growth that is projected given local population increases, housing demand, and the recently announced moves of the residue of the British Army in Germany largely to Wiltshire and the need to accommodate them. Even by its own arithmetic, the council appears to be set on under-provision. That means that out-of-county provision is bound to continue, that projected spend on the new school will be greatly exceeded, or that the new school will very quickly become overcrowded, or, more likely, a combination of all three.

The plans anticipate no sixth form. Instead reliance will be placed on the county’s further education college, Wiltshire College, for 16 to 19 provision, together with a vaguely defined private provision. No further details are given. For example, we do not know how many days a week pupils aged 16 to 19 will have.

All this is of great concern as SEN pupils across the UK have been let down historically in our system in the transition from school to adulthood—from school to life as supported young people in the community. Provision for 16 to 19 is absolutely crucial in this transition. Wiltshire Council’s consultation document asserts that the new centre of excellence will be able to provide what is called

“outreach capacity to support mainstream schools.”

It is not clear what is meant by that. On the face of it, there is a risk that resource will be diverted from the severe and profound to the milder end of the SEN spectrum. That is surely not what is intended. If it is, it needs to be stated in plain terms. The perception is not helped by the confusing terminology used in the text and the apparent misunderstanding of which schools currently offer what, in what is admittedly a complex and overlapping needs mix. Response to the consultation has rightly honed in on that.

Last month, I took part in a march in Trowbridge in support of the threatened schools. Predictably, there were children, parents and teachers, but what struck me was the number of ordinary citizens with no direct link to the school. The orthodoxy is that society wants people with disabilities of the kind that special schools deal with to be hidden away. The orthodoxy is that society is embarrassed by them and that they make it feel uncomfortable. Well, that may be the orthodoxy but it is not true in Trowbridge. Larkrise has a very special ethos. It does not believe in the hiding away of kids with the most profound difficulties. Its students are part of the local scene, out and about in the community. Nobody gawps at them, looks away or crosses the road, because they are an accepted and expected part of the community. They are recognised, welcomed, and helped in the shops, and that does not happen by accident.

We must not hide special needs children away in remote large, impersonal facilities, miles from their homes and communities. That is the very opposite of inclusion. It is segregation. Now I know that that is not the intent of the council, but it would be the consequence of its plans as drafted. Mobility today means that, like as not, children in mainstream schools will make their adult lives away from the towns in which they grew up, but children with special educational needs are much more likely to remain. Where they are is where they will be. Larkrise understands that, which is why its staff, ably led by headteacher Phil Cook, have put so much effort into local involvement and ensuring that their children are integrated in the community. I know that a similar situation applies at St Nicholas.

It is not surprising that, in its latest report, Ofsted rated Larkrise as “good”. It is surprising that the council believes that shutting this good school in Wiltshire’s county town should be part of its plans for raising standards. That is particularly so, as the council’s own task group stated that

“it would not be appropriate to combine all three schools into one site”,

and its “School Places Strategy” document says that children are best educated at the heart of the community—absolutely.

Over the year, parents with statemented children, and now children with educational health and care plans, have been to see me in my advice surgery. Invariably, the issue is not directly about care or education, but about transport.