Children in Public Care: Unregistered Accommodation
Lord Addington Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, the noble Baroness is entirely right that looked-after children are some of the most vulnerable in our society. I mentioned in my Answer to the Question from the noble Lord, Lord Laming, some of the things we are doing, but there are also a number of other initiatives under way: we are providing £5 million from the £200 million children’s social care innovation programme to develop new approaches for care placements and making seed funding available for seven partnerships to test new approaches for sufficiency planning and commissioning in foster care.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, it is quite clear that, despite the Minister saying that he did not like young people being unsupported when going into care, it is happening. It is quite clear that the Government will need a cross-departmental approach to deal with this. Can the Minister give us some idea of how this approach has been structured across the Home Office and the Department for Education and when we can expect this practice to be removed?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, the noble Lord is quite correct that this will need a great deal of inter- departmental co-operation and discussion. It involves departments such as the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government as well as the Department for Education. We are all working closely on a number of initiatives to try to improve the situation, as I outlined in my previous answer to the noble Baroness.
Education: Special Educational Needs Budget
Lord Addington Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My noble friend is correct that local authorities should not impede parents who want particular solutions. That is why, when the EHC legislation came through in 2014, we put parents much more at the heart of the entire process. We accept that the process has not been without teething troubles and are carrying out a review of it, which we had committed to previously.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, would the Minister not agree that any system that spends tens of millions of pounds on local authorities fighting unsuccessful appeals against EHCPs has fundamentally failed? If you are in a situation where parents have to fight the system to get what is given to them by law, something is fundamentally wrong.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, because while local authorities lose a proportion of these appeals, they do not lose the entirety of each appeal. For example, a parent might win through appeal the right to send their child to a certain school but elements of the support that they asked for would not be granted.
Education Funding
Lord Addington Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Secretary of State’s Statement, but we feel that the announcement should come with a note of apology, because the Government have for so long denied our regular and consistent claims that there is a funding crisis in our schools. Now, all of a sudden, it seems that there is.
Nevertheless, the funding announced is welcome and a clear recognition of the campaigning not just of Labour in both Houses but of the education unions—the NEU, the NAHT and the ASCL—together with parents, councillors and many others. But unfortunately, today’s announcements do not live up to their billing, because even the sums announced are not enough to reverse all the cuts already made that have so damaged children’s education. As teachers and pupils start the new term this week, too many will do so in schools facing an immediate financial crisis. Can the Minister say why there is no immediate support? Even next year’s funding is £1 billion short of reversing just the cuts to school budgets since 2010. Will this additional funding be allocated on the basis of the new funding formula announced last year?
In case the Minister is thinking that only the usual suspects are questioning the funding announcement, he might have seen that last weekend’s Sunday Times—hardly noted for criticising the Government—reported that the so-called “cash boost” will overwhelmingly benefit those in Tory constituencies. That paper’s analysis of how regions will benefit from the new minimum funding thresholds revealed that more than 90% of schools receiving more than an additional £100 per pupil are in Conservative seats in areas such as Essex, Kent and the south-west. Of the 153 constituencies set to receive the increase, 143 are Tory held. Can the Minister say whether that is simply a coincidence?
The Statement said that the Secretary of State would announce the affected individual constituencies. It seems that he could get some useful information from the Sunday Times, because it has delivered quite a bit of that already. So is it a coincidence or, as many others suspect or perhaps know, just an election bribe? Many of the schools most in need and struggling with their budgets are in the north of England and London. They are largely not to receive any help. What does the Minister have to say about that? He might be aware that the Education Policy Institute found that a pupil eligible for free school meals would receive less than half the funding of their more affluent peers. How can that be fair?
Can the Minister reassure noble Lords that support staff will not pay the price for the boost to teachers’ salaries? A leaked document from the Prime Minister’s office recently revealed that they were concerned about the rising number of teaching assistants. Many people feel that there should be more teaching assistants, given the extremely important support they provide, and we join with parents, teachers, heads and those who care for children with special needs and disabilities in valuing them. Perhaps the Minister can say what the effect on them would be of this announcement.
On school standards, we know that Ofsted is to lift the exemption on outstanding schools being inspected. I welcome that. The school that my son attends has an outstanding report attached to it, but it was dated three years before he was born. That outstanding schools should not have that protection—I use the word advisedly—is to be welcomed, but none the less, what additional resources will be provided to Ofsted? Its staffing levels show that it is already under strain. If this is to be meaningful, there will have to be additional resources there.
It seems that the Government have finally admitted that there is a crisis in further education, but we know that the Education Secretary returned from the Treasury with about half of what he thought was needed for that sector. What plans are there to address the long-overdue increase in pay for further education staff? Without it they will continue to fall further behind teachers in schools.
Finally, I will say a word about early years. I understand that it is not officially part of this announcement, but the hourly rate for providers has not increased since 2017. How can issues in schools such as mental health concerns, closing the disadvantage gap and social mobility issues be addressed without paying attention to the support required in early years? Surely it is about prevention rather than cure. Might this issue be addressed tomorrow by the Chancellor, or have the youngest children been forgotten again? I certainly hope not.
The Statement contains far more questions than answers. Whenever the general election comes, Labour will offer a comprehensive funding package for our schools, allowing head teachers, teachers and teaching assistants to provide the high-quality education our young people deserve. I regret to say that this Statement will not achieve that.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is interesting and we have to say thank you for the increase in funding—but we needed it. As I understand it, we will get the full impact in about three years’ time. We will not get all of it quickly enough.
The main delivery system for education is the staff. Teaching staff will receive a pay rise, but there seems to be a question about whether academies will be able to filch off and take away the best staff with better offers to make sure that they are not available to schools that need them. Can the noble Lord give us some idea of what the thinking is there?
In the same tone, why are those in further education teaching not being treated in the same way and given the same degree of support? Delivery, and the person who delivers, is the key point here. If you get that wrong, everything struggles. Making sure that we have systems in place to ensure that people are properly paid across the sector is vital. We need more thinking about this. The cash is welcome, but unless these things are properly delivered, problems will be compounded.
There is also the issue of equalisation of funding. We have already mentioned that schools who have been receiving this seem to be those with fewer, shall we say, home problems, or potential home problems, in terms of free school meals. We all know that backing a parent sufficiently makes a huge difference to schools. An idea about the thinking there would be very beneficial. Why is it that those who have that background support are able to get support outside and within the system more easily? Why is that seen to be the way forward?
I now go to my specialist subject and remind the House of my interests in special educational needs and technical support. I thank the Minister for the money for special educational needs; it is roughly a third of what we need to go back to 2015 levels. When are we going to make sure that local government and the education authorities have enough money to meet their needs? I have raised with the Minister on numerous occasions the fact that tens of millions of pounds is wasted by local authorities in losing appeals not to fulfil education and healthcare plans. When will this no longer be the case? This is a ridiculous situation. We have, I hope, the start of a cohesive plan here. It can be restructured if you like, to put in more specialist teachers who can deal with these problems in the classroom and the school. That is an infinitely better situation than leaving it to bureaucracy—but when are we going to start dealing with it?
In the same tone, why are we so obsessed with making sure that people must continually take English and maths tests they failed when they were in further education? The amount of undiscovered special educational needs is recognised by everybody, possibly because the staff are not well enough trained to recognise it and give the correct amount of support. Some people just will not pass. Why are we wasting time there and not finding other ways of getting around this? The technology for English translation is there and it is also there to help with things such as maths. Surely this is a better and more coherent way forward. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
I thank the noble Lords for their questions; I will try to address all of them.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, is worried about the fact that the funding seems to be benefiting Conservative seats. The only reason it will benefit those is that historically they have been underfunded compared to other seats: small rural schools have not received the same level of funding as urban schools. With the national funding formula, we have introduced a hard bottom, so that even the best funded schools will increase their funding, but we will increase those who are below the NFF at a rate that is considerably quicker. I assure the noble Lord that there is no gerrymandering; it is just a quirk of history that has ensured that these schools have not done nearly so well.
The noble Lord also asked about teaching assistants. I am concerned about teaching assistants because I believe that we are missing an opportunity to provide fantastic career progression for many of them. Amazingly, some 30% of teaching assistants have degrees, and therefore could go on to teaching relatively easily if they wanted to but are often held back by their wish to look after their children. Many TAs are the parents—mostly mothers—of young children, and therefore teaching hours are not always conducive. That is why the Statement says that we are going to try to make more progress with having more flexible working in the teaching profession. We strongly believe that if we could have more flexible working in teaching, job sharing and so on, many more TAs would go on into teaching, which would be a great boon to them. It would increase their pay—
Lord Agnew of Oulton
On the noble Lord’s concern about teaching assistants, even through a period of what he would consider to be austerity, the number of teaching assistants has risen by some 49,000 since 2010. In 1997, there were 70,000 teaching assistants, and today there are around 250,000, so I do not believe that the system is in any way denuded of them. The next phase is to encourage those who want to enhance their careers and move to a higher paid profession.
In relation to the noble Lord’s question on Ofsted inspections of outstanding schools and resources, we are already in detailed discussions with it about funding the cost of these additional inspections. I reassure the noble Lord that we are not going to ask it to do it without some support.
On FE funding, this is a tremendous settlement, certainly the biggest since 2010, and, officials have indicated to me, it might be the biggest since 2004. It increases the base rate by 4.7%.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, made a point which I did not fully understand, when he said that academies would filch the best teachers through this process. Academies are schools; they now account for over half of all pupils in the state system. Therefore, they will benefit from these announcements, but so will local authority schools.
Again, in terms of FE staff—
Lord Addington
I thank the Minister for giving way. My point is that academies are not under the same restrictions on maximum levels of pay.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
The noble Lord is correct that they are not under the same restrictions, but there are very few examples of academies paying more. I have come across one or two innovative ideas. For example, one trust in Kent pays its newly qualified teachers £2,000 more a year, but that ends up saving it money because it has less attrition and keeps its teachers for longer. As the Statement said, we will be increasing starting salaries for all teachers to £30,000, which is a dramatic increase, some £6,000 above where it is at the moment.
The noble Lord also asked about free school meals. He felt that those schools with higher numbers of children receiving free school meals were benefiting less. It is worth reminding the noble Lord that we introduced the pupil premium back in 2011, and each year that has been a sum of some £2 billion going to support the schools with children from disadvantaged backgrounds. More importantly, it is encouraging schools to recruit these sorts of children, because they get a strong financial benefit. It works out at nearly £1,000 a pupil for a secondary school.
Lastly, the noble Lord raised his particular passion around SEN. I accept that the noble Lord has raised the level of funding many times. We dramatically increased it in 2013. It was £5 billion a year, and with this new funding it will go up to £7 billion a year. We have also announced that we will carry out an inquiry into how the whole SEN healthcare plan system is working. I take on board the noble Lord’s concerns about the cost of appeals which local authorities are losing, but any system must have a hard edge. As we have discussed, the percentage of cases going to appeal is minuscule in relation to the overall number of cases being given these education healthcare plans.
I did not expect the noble Lords opposite me would be ululating with pleasure at this settlement, but it is a dramatic improvement. I have spent two years defending the system, but this is a Statement that I absolutely wanted to deliver tonight, and I am delighted that I was able to do so.
School Exclusion: Timpson Review
Lord Addington Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
I accept that there is a ladder of escalation, which starts with sanctions that gradually move up in their impact. I disagree slightly with the noble Baroness on the strength of the recommendations in the Timpson report. For me, the stand-out recommendation is number 14:
“DfE should make schools responsible for the children they exclude and accountable for their educational outcomes”.
This has the potential to be a very powerful change, but Timpson has cautioned us to be careful in how we implement it, because of the adverse behaviours that it might create.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, the report and the Government’s responses to the key recommendations keep talking about special educational needs and integration of the approach. Of course, I applaud this; I remind the House of my declared interests. However, unless you have some form of recognition and identification earlier on in the system, you will always be playing catch-up. We know that many of the groups we are talking about will have unidentified, or undealt with, special educational needs.
The report and the Government’s response talk about enhancing the role of SENCOs. SENCOs are one person in the system and they will not be experts in every condition they have to deal with. Will the Government make sure there is better access at a school or at academy-chain level to expertise in those commonly occurring conditions? We know that three children in every class will be dyslexic, one will be dyspraxic and several will have ADHD. Unless you have that expertise on hand, it will always be a problem and we will always be playing catch-up. If you go to the local authority, there will be terrible problems with co-ordination. How will the Government start to address this?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
Again, I would like to provide a certain amount of moderation. This is not to be complacent but, for example, about 10 years ago, children with a statement were three times more likely to be excluded compared to being 1.6 times more likely to be excluded in 2016-17. The picture is not quite as bleak as the noble Lord—
Lord Addington
My Lords, I said that the main problem is for those with unidentified special educational needs, or those whose needs are identified later on. Often it is those people who have marginal problems, which are magnified by their social condition.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
The noble Lord will be aware of the training programme we have rolled out over the last three years. We are very focused on this and the number of people trained to identify dyslexia, dyspraxia and so on in the school system has increased dramatically over the last three years.
Special Educational Needs
Lord Addington Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Addington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the average time without appropriate special educational needs support spent by students who have successfully appealed a decision to have an education, health and care plan.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I remind the House of my declared interests.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, local authorities are required to carry out any tribunal orders within specified time periods. Data is not collected to demonstrate compliance. However, all local authorities are subject to local area inspections. Children and young people continue to receive support during tribunal appeals. A local authority cannot cease an EHC plan for any young person under 18 unless it determines that it is no longer necessary for special educational provision to be made in accordance with an EHC plan.
Lord Addington
I thank the Minister for that reply. However, often it takes people years to get to the process of making an appeal. According to the British Dyslexia Association, if you do not have a lawyer it can then take up to three years to get through, but much less time if you have a lawyer supporting you. How have we got to the situation where the basic government support is available for those who have lawyers and are capable of handling the system? What chance does a dyslexic child with a dyslexic parent stand?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, it is important to stress that about only 1.5% of all EHC plans are appealed to tribunal. Of those who decide to appeal, 60% fall away and do not go to tribunal, because their issues are resolved. The other important point is that if a local authority loses a tribunal case, it is not because it has lost the whole case; it is just that the tribunal has taken against one element of the case. That is not commonly understood.
Schools: Swimming and Life-saving Skills
Lord Addington Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this is one of those debates in which you find yourself rapidly agreeing with everybody in front of you. The basic tenet of it—that swimming is a skill that will save your life and is best learned early—will have nobody disagreeing. The fact that it is a social skill that allows you to do other things is pretty obvious as well. I asked the Minister if he had a list of all those sports you cannot do. The noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, said there were 20. I did not get that far. I just knew that there was a big list of activities which are not available to you if you cannot swim.
There is a little bit of social isolation in there as well, and it is something that is dangerous. It is something which we are supposed to be doing. The noble Lord read out a list of figures I had seen as well. More than a quarter of schools are not doing anything. The Government set targets. How are we not actually implementing this? If we have got ourselves into a mess where a few people are saying, “We can’t get there, we can’t afford the bus fare to get to a pool because the local authority has shut it down because it didn’t have enough budget”, this may go beyond the Minister’s area of control, but this is a factor that plays into it. There is no way that you can ignore the capacity in local government with this figure because most schools, particularly junior schools, do not have their own pool.
We can also say, “What about independent schools? How are we accessing them? How are they helping?”, but ultimately it is still the transport to them. There is a big interaction here going on from the various bits of government and the approaches to it. The prioritisation of this is very important as well. Is this regarded as something that you will have to do, or something that you will fit in round the edges?
When most of these situations come up—usually less life-threatening ones—it is the same thing that is happening in education in other areas, such as the arts, sport, et cetera. An interaction here is of course more direct—“Here is your core, and here are the things we would like you to do”. Learning to swim cuts across this. It becomes a real priority, so the figure of 26% of primary schools is utterly unacceptable. It would be nice to hear from the Minister exactly what we are doing to address that.
I return to the idea of sports, and the idea the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, mentioned, that swimming is one of those activities that are easier to do in later life. If you are in water that carries your weight, you are less likely to damage yourself in various ways. That applies if you are taking exercise, and it is useful for rehabilitation from sports injuries—even for horses—and it is a good way of taking gentle exercise. It is also an essential part of making sure that there is social interaction in many mainstream sports that are readily available; canoeing is one example. How can you get in there and become a part of it? We often talk about mental health problems, and once you are part of that sport, company, activity and focus help. If you take that away, you are cutting off whole bits of activity.
The anecdotage of the Bishops’ Bar comes out. Somebody said to me, “I knew somebody who was a good sportsman and went to live in Australia. He discovered that he couldn’t swim, so he spent large parts of his life watching the rest of his family on the beach as he hid from the sun under towels”. Possibly that is a more jokey part of it, but it is still something that says, “You can’t do it”.
How are we doing on water safety? The fact of the matter is that if you fall into certain types of water, it does not matter how good you are at swimming—you are in real trouble. Deep, cold and fast-running water are things we do not like being in. If you hit cold water, you go into a sort of system shock, where you try to take a breath, and if you are underwater, you are probably not getting out. So training about what to avoid and what not to go near is another important part of this.
How do we train people to make sure that you do not go in there—you do not swim in that small river with a current of, say, a couple of knots, because most people cannot swim against that, and they cannot do it for any length of time? That sort of education is also a key part of what is going on, making sure that you stay safe. It is also a good thing if you are taking it as a social activity, because you will know the limitations of your capacity as a swimmer. This is the sort of information that we need, and we need it early.
We live predominantly in cities, and virtually all of them have rivers running through them; that is probably why they were built there in the first place. We have access to open, cold, running water all the time. Mix that with alcohol—we have a habit of building bars beside these nice bits of water—and we end up with situations where people go in. Something else that comes in here is whether people know—it may cut through the fog of the cheap cocktail—that you should not go for a little paddle in there now, and whether your friends, who are hopefully not quite as far gone, know what to do to get you out and call for help. There is no downside to making sure that we get better figures for making sure that people can swim, and early on. I hope that when the Minister gives his answer, he will be able to do that.
I have one last specific question, which I sent through to the Minister’s office. There seems to be a suggestion in the briefing provided by the Library that those with special educational needs in schools are not getting access to this. Anybody who has suffered me in a series of debates on this subject will know that that is one of my key areas. However, I do not think that we are talking about dyslexics en masse but about specific groups. Are we, for instance, talking about groups of people who are autistic, because they are difficult and people do not want them in that situation, or are other groups included in that because it is not considered that they would benefit? Many people with quite alarming physical disabilities can swim—they can action in water. It might even be easier for them. What are we doing to make sure that they get access as well? It may be of even greater benefit to them than it is for people in the mainstream, because it may be an area of exercise that they can take safely once they have had that initial training. I hope the Minister will have an answer on that. If not, I hope he will write to me, because we should look at it.
I look forward to the Minister’s reply because this is something we should all be working together to achieve. I can see no party-political advantage in not achieving it.
Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education, and Health Education
Lord Addington Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this important Statement. We welcome the fact that the Government are introducing the provisions of the Children and Social Work Act 2017 on the introduction of compulsory relationships education for all pupils in primary schools, and compulsory relationships and sex education for all pupils in secondary schools. In addition, health education is being made compulsory for all pupils in state-funded schools, which is also something that we regard as a positive move in preparing young people for an increasingly complicated world. I have a number of questions for the Minister and will be perfectly content if he wishes to respond in writing if he feels unable to answer them immediately.
The Secretary of State announced that he is making £6 million available for training and resources to support the new subjects, but that averages out at around £250 per school. What does the Minister expect schools to be able to achieve with such meagre additional resources? Can he further provide an indication as to whether these are indeed additional resources or whether they are recycled from within the DfE budget? How many teachers will be trained in the new subjects, and how many schools does he expect to be teaching them, by the date that he mentioned, September 2020?
I agree with the Secretary of State that these subjects are of vital importance, but I suspect I am not alone in wondering what he expects schools to teach less of in order to make room for these new subjects in the timetable.
I understand the Government’s position on the parental opt-out for relationships and sex education, but I have to ask why they would not give a child the right to be included in those lessons at any age instead of selecting what appears to be an arbitrary age at which point the child’s voice will be heard. The Statement says that the parental opt-out could be overruled in “exceptional circumstances”. Could the Minister give examples of what he believes would amount to such exceptional circumstances?
Noble Lords will have read of the dreadful bullying and mental health problems that affect LGBT people. The fact that these issues are included in the draft guidance could be a milestone in ensuring that these people and others can grow up understanding more and living in a safer environment. We are certainly glad that the draft guidance says that these topics must be fully integrated into the curriculum and not taught separately. Does the Secretary of State believe that there are any circumstances in which a school should be allowed to simply not teach LGBT issues as part of this curriculum? Obviously, it would undermine the whole thrust of the provisions if that were the case.
It can be only to everyone’s benefit if we better understand the differing issues that face each of us. I hope these regulations will mean that we can work on a cross-party basis to make that a reality for the next generation.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, following on from the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, I would like to say that I agree with virtually every single one of them—indeed, all of them on this occasion. I also congratulate the Government on having done this. Apart from anything else, this is a good thing; there have been very few things from across the House recently which we have been able to say were a good thing, so whatever else, it makes a nice change. Also, it was announced on the radio this morning—I heard it while having my cornflakes—that certain groups were protesting against this activity. Let me congratulate the Government again; if you had not offended somebody when you did this, it would not be worth the paper it is written on.
I have one or two smaller questions, which follow on from those of the noble Lord, Lord Watson. First, on the tools and the £6 million, the noble Lord hit it absolutely squarely; that is a very small figure for the entire education system. How much ongoing training will be given to teachers in delivering this? Will it be worked into initial teacher training or education, whichever one you want to use? How much CPD will be used? This is a new set of skills that has to be worked into lessons. It will not be that easy; there will be mistakes. How will we look at this and review it? I think this is a very valid question. Do not damage a good thing for a ha’p’orth of tar. Make sure you do this correctly.
Also, when going through this process, can we make sure that the entire system comes around and behind it, so that we can deliver this properly? If we push it off into certain departments, or it becomes something which is normally seen in certain lessons, we will always have problems. It would be very helpful, either today or in some later guidance, to have some idea about how the Government will bring the system around this and how they will work this through.
Last, but I hope not least, I have a question about what it says in the Statement about people with special educational needs. What does the Minister mean by this? Of course, this is my own special area. Which groups is he talking about? Is there some style in this? A few people with autism may have some trouble understanding these topics, but only a few. Somebody with dyslexia may well have no problem with this. What do the Government mean by this? If you do not have the answer now, where will it be presented? The phrase about special educational needs takes into account 20% of the school population, so please give some guidance on this.
Universal Credit: Free School Meals
Lord Addington Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, it might be worth pointing out this week’s ONS statistics, which show a rather more positive figure on employment: 32.6 million people in this country are now employed. That is 167,000 more than between July and September 2018, and 440,000 more than a year ago. We take child poverty very seriously. We also encourage schools, through the use of the pupil premium, to encourage additional recruitment to the programme.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree with the general agreement that a good diet improves performance at school? Taking that on board, would not an Education Minister encourage his colleagues to make sure that more children got free school meals, not fewer?
Education, Health and Care Plans
Lord Addington Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Addington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the cost to (1) parents, and (2) local authorities, of appealing education, health and care plan decisions.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and draw the House’s attention to my declared interests in the register.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, costs for parents and local authorities will vary, depending on the circumstances of individual cases. Local authorities and families can access free advice and information about SEN tribunal hearings. The vast majority of cases for education, health and care needs assessments are concluded without the need to resort to tribunal hearings.
Lord Addington
I thank the Minister for that reply. The British Dyslexia Association has provided me with figures which show that local authorities are having to fork out nearly £10,000 for each of these appeals and that parents are having to fork out over £6,000. “Tiger parents” are winning nine out of 10 of these appeals. Would the Minister care to speculate on the situation of somebody who is on the minimum wage, who cannot afford to spend £6,000 and who does not know how to deal with local bureaucracy, perhaps through having the same educational problems as their child? How well will they cope with this system?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, the tribunal process is designed to be as accessible as possible. Parents should be able to appeal and present their case without the need for expensive legal representation; local authorities should also not need to engage lawyers. Free advice and support regarding appealing is available from the tribunal and SEND Information, Advice and Support Services, which exist in every local area. To put this in perspective, only 1.5% of cases are appealed through tribunals, so the percentage is not as serious as is often said. However, we accept that this is an issue, and we are looking at how we can improve it.
Children: Special Educational Needs
Lord Addington Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, first I compliment the noble Lord on all he has achieved in his career, starting with a disability. It should be an inspiration to all the children in the system at the moment. I can confirm that the Government are completely committed to helping these vulnerable children. Spending plans beyond 2019-20 will be set at the next spending review, but we are committed to securing the right deal for education, including for those children and young people with special educational needs. More specifically, we are providing education, health and social care teams with legal training. SEND inspections are identifying good practice and where improvement is needed. Parent/carer forums are promoting the engagement of families and putting them at the heart of this issue.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister not agree that the vast majority of those with special educational needs should not be considered for education, health and care plans because they have moderate or lesser degrees of difficulty? These can be dealt with only by making sure that school staff, teachers and teaching assistants, are properly trained. That will save money all round and make the young people’s lives better. What are the Government doing about continual professional development for those people already in the system so that we can meet their needs without their having to go to court?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I completely agree that the first priority is to try to keep children with special educational needs in mainstream education unless they have very severe challenges. To give an example of what we are doing to improve that, we are funding the Autism Education Trust to deliver awareness training for education staff, and we have trained 195,000 people in this programme.