Special Needs Schools

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House once again of my declared interests. I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and chairman of Microlink PC, an assistive tech company that had an interest in education historically.

This has been a much wider-ranging debate than I was expecting. I felt that the original thrust from the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, was on a more specialist and important part of this thing—the areas of special educational needs and preparation for adult life—but we have ranged widely here and on to territory that we covered in my Question this morning. But there is a degree of consensus, which happily the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, put his finger on.

I believe in the cock-up school of history. The idea of having a nice, special, personal entitlement to deal with the problem has fed the lawyers and no one else. It has meant that the government system has, in effect, become dependent on the private sector to fulfil some of its needs. We have a big problem here.

One of the things that will help—I do not think I disagree with anybody here—is early recognition, particularly of mainstream conditions. The consensus is that in most cases they can be dealt with in the normal classroom, or at least within supported units in the school. Dyslexia undoubtedly fits that, if you allow it to.

The first thing to say is something on which I and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, have crossed swords—although I felt that she probably had a sword in her own back at the time. It is the fact that you must have flexibility to allow somebody to succeed. Those with dyslexia learn differently. We always tend to go to our own little area first, and this is very true of the dyslexic. I hope, for instance, that at some point in the future the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, announces that the Government have removed the requirement to teach English in only one way. Systematic synthetic phonics overloads the short-term memory, which means that many dyslexics and other groups do not find it a friendly process and many cannot learn by it.

We equip teachers to give specialist support in different ways because, if you have failed once with some teaching process by which the majority pass, it means that you are not absorbing in that way. Giving a child more help in that line will just undermine them further.

We have ways of dealing with that, such as with technology. I bet that in all noble Lords’ pockets is a device that you can press a button and dictate to. True, the AI does not quite match up to my vocabulary on all occasions yet, but it is getting there. That is available on computers, but we need to make sure it is better available. That means a slight reordering of the classroom, but we can do it at university—indeed, it is a legal requirement—so why do we not bring those bits of knowledge together?

It has been said that the system is not joined up. I have spoken about this on so many occasions that many of the veterans of this Chamber will probably be able to start quoting me back, but the fact of the matter is that we have to be flexible to allow this to happen. This requires different uses of resources and capacity within the school system to spot and implement change for most of the most commonly occurring conditions at certain levels. If we get that right, these people stand a chance of getting the skills to progress through to training and other activities.

I talk about dyslexia too much because I know about it. I also know that I do not know that much about the other groups. We need a lot of expertise—more than can be provided by one person. Relying on the SENCO has to be a thing of the past. SENCOs might co-ordinate a group of experts but they will need more people, more resource, more knowledge and the authority to tell that teacher in, for instance, a maths class that bad short-term memory means that someone with dyslexia will not remember equations and formulae. That means they can understand a concept but will not be able to implement it in classroom tests. Do most maths and physics teachers know that? No, not because they are essentially evil but because they have not been trained.

I will now get away from my particular hobby-horse and go back to where the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, brought us in. Other groups will have different requirements. If you have major problems with life skills or learning difficulties or autism, you have other requirements and might need better support. That is one thing that was built into the education and health care plan; I did not think I would ever say a good word about it, but support until 25 is a good idea as you will need it later. How will the Government make sure that we continue to give that support and prepare people to be able to function as independent adults in later life?

There is one thing that we often forget when we talk about this. It is that the people we are talking about are going to grow up. Let us hope that they will grow up and be able to function as individuals with technology, approach and flexibility, and are told how to ask for help. Even if an institution is prepared to help, being told how to ask for it is essential. We have to make sure that people are prepared. People learn at different levels and at different rates. How have they got this going forward?

A group that will talk to you about this is the parents. They live with a little nagging doubt, which can grow to a huge fear on their shoulder, about what will happen to their child as an adult when they are not there. Think about it: they will not be able to function, to go forward, or to have normal lives. Unless we interact with that fear to support them, we will let down everybody involved. This sector is still driven by tiger parents. I hope the Minister will be able to announce reforms and changes that will start to stop that, but at the moment it is. We have so many parents who are worried about the future of their child, and whose entire lives become driven around supporting their child. I hope the Minister will be able to start this process. I do not expect all the answers today, but she could start the process of engaging with it, because it has been known. None of this should come as a surprise to anybody who has been around this for any length of time.

We have to make sure we have a process whereby there is support in the education system and in training people to ask for help. Dyslexic people will not ask for a spelling check or a place to quietly go and process something, because they think that means weakness. I had two interns, and both had the disabled students’ allowance, for different reasons. Only once they saw the work that I was doing here were they prepared to admit that they had that help, and a slight change in working processes went through. I thought I had “dyslexic and disabled-friendly” stamped in the middle of my forehead, but they were still frightened of mentioning it. Just think about that.

How do we approach this issue? How do we go forward? How does the Department for Education encourage the other bits of society to become more user friendly? How do we stop saying, “Oh, that’s a problem that is dealt with in only one place”? This is a big topic, but remembering that education lasts a lifetime, and that the Department for Education is only the first step down that path, will be a real step forward. I hope we hear about those first steps today.