Schools: Dyslexia

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the high levels of illiteracy among London school children, what steps they are taking to promote dyslexia awareness amongst the teaching profession.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the Government are funding the training of specialist dyslexia teachers, the development of online study modules for all teachers and the Dyslexia-Specific Learning Difficulty Trust to raise awareness of dyslexia among teachers, parents and other professionals. We are promoting systematic synthetic phonics as the best method of teaching children to read. We intend to introduce a phonics screening check at the end of year 1 to identify pupils, including those with dyslexia, who need extra help with their phonic decoding skills.

[Lord Addington]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer. However, would he agree that, even with the efforts made by the last Government, we are in the situation whereby we have several schools per specialist teacher in the education system? When are we going to have a unit of training in initial teacher training, as there is in Scotland, to identify dyslexics and to allow people to be able to cope with them better in the classroom without having to call in specialists?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

As my noble friend will know, in order to achieve qualified teacher status, teachers must meet the standards that require them to be able to teach children with a range of needs, including special educational needs. I agree with my noble friend on the importance of taking measures to help children with dyslexia, and the key to that, although he knows a lot more about this than I do, is early identification. It is our hope that having the phonic screening check in year 1 will enable that to happen, and then support can be put in place. We are increasing the numbers of specialist dyslexic teachers and working with ITT providers to look at ways of ensuring that primary school training teachers get the support that they need to learn how to identify and help dyslexic children.

Schools: Physical Education

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the quality and quantity of physical education in schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, Ofsted’s report Physical education in schools 2005/2008 found that the overall quality of teaching in physical education was good or better in two-thirds of the schools visited, although it was more variable in primary schools. The PE and Sport Survey 2009/10 found that 84 per cent of pupils aged five to 16 participated in at least two hours of physical education per week in curriculum time.

[Lord Addington]

I thank my noble friend for that Question.

[Noble Lords]

Answer.

[Lord Addington]

Sorry, I thank my noble friend for that Answer.

Will the Minister give me an assurance that the Government will look at whether the type of education is of sufficiently high quality to allow people in schools to access school-age sport outside? Making a link with amateur clubs is probably the best way of keeping people involved in sporting activity after the age of compulsory schooling.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with my noble friend. I know that there is research by Sport England that shows that, as one would expect, the earlier that children get involved with sports outside school thorough clubs, the more likely they are to carry on participating after they leave, and that most children, when they leave school, stop participating in an organised way. Sport England is working with the governing bodies of, I think, 34 of the national sports bodies to try to find ways of building links between school and junior clubs and to increase the number of participants going into junior clubs. More generally, I agree with my noble friend that we need to try to make that transition better so that children can carry on into adulthood and get the benefit of sport.

Education: Pupils and Young People

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, in speaking in this debate, I feel as though I am carrying on from our debate last week on special educational needs. I shall address other factors which I did not have the time to address then. Listening to the contributions in the debate, it has become apparent that there is a degree of consensus in the House. I can safely say that things are better than they were, although they are not perfect and not everyone has all the right answers at any one time.

In talking about excellence, it is easy to hide behind its definition. According to most of the statistics which I picked up from the Library in the usual good briefing pack, it is all about achieving a GCSE in English. I may have taken part in a debate on education when I did not mention dyslexia, but I cannot remember when it was. Considering whether you have achieved excellence or access to the system seems to depend on whether someone has passed English GCSE, but 10 per cent of the population has a condition which means that they have difficulty in processing language. Immediately, you have a problem, which will be obvious to everyone in the House. The question is: how do we deal with it?

Greater awareness of the problem has, undoubtedly, permeated through the system and greater knowledge is behind that. Last time, I spoke about the fact that the British Dyslexia Association thinks that it can train people in about half a day to spot—not to deal with—someone with dyslexia and to pass on information to the pupil and to the parents. I made a joke, which I shall not repeat, about the fact that if you get the parents on side when there is a problem in the school system, you can generally get something done. It may not be the right thing or may not be done quickly enough but something will happen. You will have problems unless you can get the information into the system, as many other people have said, and unless you can include the parents. Often, you will also need to identify parents who are dyslexic.

That ties in to many other things which have been said in the debate. My noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, both mentioned speech and language. Most of the ways in which you cope with dyslexia are with the use of speech and language. There is then the problem of what happens if a pupil comes from a household which is chaotic and which does not have resources, where developing the art of conversation is not something they experience and is not regarded as important. How do you deal with that? Everything is connected.

I return to the initial point: unless the Minister can tell us how we are starting to identify the problem with written language and the idea of excellence, we will always exclude that bottom group, and it will always be worse among those suffering social deprivation. How do we deal with that? Better teacher training and recognition is important but there will always be this group at the bottom which will be left behind.

We have taken the low-hanging fruit in educational improvement. It is understandable that the previous Government took that fruit because, if I had been them, trying to raise standards and wanting a press release to justify what I was doing, that is exactly what I would have done, because the low-hanging fruit is the easiest to reach. How will we get past that?

I want to show noble Lords how deeply ingrained this is in the education system. I will give you one example from a letter which arrived on my desk yesterday. Someone was told that they could not gain a City and Guilds qualification as a carpenter because they could not finish the English paper. That is probably illegal. We spent a great deal of time on this when debating the apprenticeships Bill. City and Guilds should not give that as a reason not to qualify a person. I leave you with that practical example.

Unless you get away from the obsessive idea that you must pass in something—maths comes just behind English—and unless you address this properly across the board, such people will always be left behind. We really must address that. If excellence means something more than achieving an extra A-level grade, you will have to address those at the bottom who have problems, which means that you must be able to understand their problems.

Education: Special Educational Needs

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, when it comes to a debate on special educational needs, I am afraid that I start to reminisce. It is about 24 years ago that I made my maiden speech in this House on the problems of dyslexia. If memory serves, I was standing almost diagonally across the Chamber from where I am standing now. The consistencies of the arguments are very much apparent to me: we have a much better system, and everyone is much better informed. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, I can thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, for the fact that I was allowed to get through and complete an education process. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, that I think the worry was more about what one might say than about what one actually had said.

However, many of the issues raised initially remain. We have heard from various speakers about the problems of inclusion versus specialist education. I remember that the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, almost had a fatwa declared against her by various people who had decided that she had changed her mind and said that we did not need mass inclusion any more. “How dare you change your mind?”, was their attitude. Other people said that no special school should ever be shut. The fact is that your experience will depend on the disability group with which you are most associated, and on your experience or, more usually, on that of your child. That will depend very much on the time you are living in and where you are living. That is the consistency. When the noble Lord responds, I am afraid that he has got this historical problem.

We have a complicated system, which I have been talking about for so long. The summary of the report points out, on page 8, that it is a very complicated system that we have added to over the years. I and others in this Chamber have helped to make it complicated. There are no two ways about it: many of the biggest offenders are in this Chamber, even if they are not all here today. We have added to it because we are always frightened that we will be ignored or not taken seriously because the measures are difficult or expensive.

The previous Government tried to get rid of statementing. I was one of the people who said no, because, although it was imperfect, it was the only show in town. This means that if you have special educational needs and want to get the best out of our state education system, you should select your parents well. I reckon that the best combination is a lawyer and a journalist. Then you have a hold on the system, because no teacher or education authority likes being hauled up in front of a court or exposed in a paper. That is the most efficient club that you can have—and we need clubs. This Government, of whom I am a supporter, have given an undertaking that they will do initial assessments. Also, it is clear that we need assessment processes for all the different disability groups that are represented within about four metres of me now—and there are many more noble Lords who know about them. A different assessment process is required for each one. Dyslexia is a disability that you will not be able to spot at two. You may well spot it at five now: we used to say at about seven.

The report also says that many people who are said to have SEN might respond to better teaching. I raise one big caveat. I know dyslexia well, and moderate dyslexia does not come from a background where education or the use of literature is in any way regarded as abnormal in the household. You may well say, “They could do with a little bit of extra teaching” when actually they are dyslexic. I am afraid that if you want to check this out, the experiment has been done and you will find the results in the prison system, alongside many sufferers from Asperger's. We have a reverse battlefield medicine idea about this—an expression that I have used too often in this House. On the battlefield, you patch up the easy ones first. Here, the most obvious problems are dealt with first and attract funding, so we miss the large group.

If you come from a working-class background and perhaps your parents have literacy problems, your chances of getting the best out of the system at the moment are very slim. If you come from a middle-class background and have a good accent and plenty of money, you will take them on and get the best out of the system—if we have a series of assessments and better teacher training for identifying problems. I am not asking for everybody to be an expert. The British Dyslexia Association, of which I am a vice-president, reckons that it can run a scheme that takes three hours for identification—no more than identification, but if you at least identify the problem and do not compound it by doing the wrong thing and labelling the child as stupid, you have taken an incredibly important first step. If you can do that with dyslexia, similar programmes can be provided for other groups. If we can work this in, back up any assessment programme—because whichever way you do it, you will miss people—and accept that we do not have one easy answer, we stand a chance of getting this right. Any progress that I hear about today will make me very glad.

Schools: Special Needs and Disabilities

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

No, my Lords, it clearly is not the Government’s wish that that should happen. On the noble Lord’s first question, as the whole House will know, I am not in a position to give forward commitments on funding, because we have to go through the spending review first. However, as I think the noble Lord will know, because my honourable friend Sara Teather announced it at the launch of a campaign with which I think he was associated, there will be a Green Paper in the autumn particularly to do with children with special educational needs and disabilities, and the raising of educational attainment is one of the specific issues we want to look at in connection with that. I am sure that he will make representations on that. I completely accept the thrust of his question, that as we look at what will come after Becta, we need to make sure that absolute priority is given to ensuring that children with special educational needs get the help with technology that they need.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, will the Minister assure us that the help needed and the legal obligations entered into are seen as priorities in any new negotiations? Will he also bear in mind the expense of giving assistance in terms of man hours as opposed to the comparatively cheap technology packages which are available at the moment? Will he also please remember that any reorganisation can become a cock-up—look at what happened to the student loans scheme?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I will very much bear in mind the noble Lord’s warnings as we work our way through the replacement arrangements for Becta. I also accept his point about the advantages of technology in delivering assistance to our neediest children. We have under way a number of pilots to test approaches, particularly for blind, visibly impaired and dyslexic children, and those are demonstrating the powerful effect that technology can have.

Education: History

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with that point. Getting the best people to teach history at all levels in schools is an extremely important task.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, will the Minister accept that fashion in academic pursuits is very prevalent, and that we should not panic too much when a new fashion comes in and we do not like the hemline?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with my noble friend. I would not describe myself as remotely fashionable in any respect. So far as concerns history, there are core elements, for example to do with chronology and the sequence of events, that one can divorce from fashion, but I agree that we should resist the blandishments of changing hemlines.