Education: Development of Excellence

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, we all carry a degree of baggage to these debates on education. Whenever I get involved in one, I am aware that I have a great deal of knowledge, and strong opinions, about education, but not always about the same areas of education. I shall limit myself to aspects concerning what I call the hidden disabilities, and to the changes that are coming within the education system.

In a recent conversation, my noble friend Lady Walmsley told me that she was a little fed up with people being frightened by everything. Within the lobby of School Action and Action Plus, there is a process for identifying needs outside the statementing system. This seems to be disappearing. This is a process by which you get extra help to people who are not going to be put into that very specific legal category of a statement. They are very worried because they have not heard what will replace that form of assistance.

As they have not managed to extract an answer from civil servants before now, I hope that the Minister will give us at least the start of that discussion and tell us where we have got to. We are talking about people with dyslexia, autism, dyscalculia, dyspraxia and other conditions that are recognised disabilities. The Equality Act states that we must help them and that if we do not there are sanctions; there is a duty there. Will my noble friend identify the process that the Government are minded to bring in, or tell us whether they are still discussing the process? If he does, he will remove some of the fear factor and the panic that is going on, and probably provoke a more coherent answer. If the Government are not doing this, they will simply end up in the courts somewhere—and I do not think that anybody wants that.

Some government publications refer to enhancing the ability of teachers to secure good discipline. I encourage my noble friend to take a good, hard look at teacher training, both initial and in-service, to spot these hidden disabilities. I am appealing to the selfish gene of the teaching profession. As a dyslexic, you have two very basic survival strategies if you are not receiving the help that you need and are struggling in the classroom. Either you keep your head down, say nothing and hide in the middle of the classroom; or you disrupt the back. A teacher needs to identify that person and give them appropriate help. Often, the biggest thing you can do is to say: “You are dyslexic. Your learning pattern is different. You are not stupid or a write-off”. In doing that, you will solve part of the problem. The teacher will be able to teach and the people around the pupil will be able to learn. You are helping not just that one person at the back, but the people around them as well.

I also have examples concerning autism, which is more complicated. It was described to me as being a four-dimensional spectrum. There are different types of problems in the higher end. People may not be picked up by the health and education care plans. Whatever we think about special schools, most of these people, most of the time, will be in mainstream classrooms. There are just not enough special schools—and in many cases those with disabilities should not be there. We need to know something about how to integrate these people, and inform the rest of the class about them. I heard of a case—apparently this is quite common—of somebody who does not like being touched and who lashes out because it is painful to them when somebody touches them. Unless you have an idea about how to deal with these problems, you are always going to have trouble in the classroom. By giving this knowledge to teachers, you will enhance their ability to teach—and surely we are all agreed that that would be a great step forward.