Education: Special Educational Needs

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, on initiating this debate. She always speaks with huge authority and lucidity and, over the years, she has been tenacious in her focus on SEN provision. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on an excellent maiden speech.

It is impossible to tackle all the issues that are set out in the review and I dare say that noble Lords are taking slices of the report as we go along. I speak from the perspective of a former chair of TreeHouse, the autism education charity, and a former vice-chairman of the All-Party Group on Autism, so I shall concentrate on that area. It is clear that outcomes for children and young people with autism are currently very poor. Recent research suggests that only 15 per cent of adults with autism are in paid employment, while 90 per cent are living either with their parents or other family carers or in residential care.

Today, I want briefly to concentrate on the assessment and statementing process, particularly as we know that the Government will be producing—later this year, I hope—a Green Paper on SEN that will encompass statementing and assessment. Progress has been made in a number of significant ways since the All-Party Group on Autism published its manifesto in 2003, and I appreciate the previous Government’s efforts in that respect. However, in its manifesto, the all-party group set a modest target of all children with autism being diagnosed by the age of five, which certainly has not yet been achieved. We need to do more, and I hope that this Government—my Government—will.

Assessment and statementing are emotionally difficult; in my experience, this is a difficult time for parents, particularly in relation to the profoundly autistic. The paradox is that, although the condition may be more obvious, local authorities often drag their heels because of the sheer costs involved in sending children on the autistic spectrum to special schools. As has been noted, Ofsted was critical in its report of the ponderous mechanism for assessments and issuing statements. It said that in some areas it was well done and that that led to better outcomes, but that in general assessments were inconsistent, which led to confusion and a sense of unfairness among parents. Sometimes children were prevented from accessing specialist education provision unless they had a medical diagnosis. It said that the quality of assessment should be improved. I hope that in the Green Paper, the Government will take that on board.

We know that early intervention is vital to enable children with autism to fulfil their potential. In practical terms, this means getting an assessment of need as soon as difficulties arise and then providing support without delay to help children overcome or manage some of the core challenges associated with autism. Too many children with autism are not getting diagnosed early enough. TreeHouse research has found that the average age of diagnosis is six years and seven months, when diagnosis should be possible at 18 months. Ofsted recommended that any further changes to improve the system of assessment should focus on quality and improving outcomes. It also recommended that a common system of assessment should be used across different services, and I listened with great interest to what the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, had to say. In 2007, the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee recommended that different service models should be piloted to test the separation between assessment and funding so that a full and frank assessment of the child’s needs could be made independently of budgetary decisions. The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, referred to this. It should lead to earlier and more accurate assessments of need and a support package quickly following the assessment. This was then recommended by the Lamb inquiry.

What happens now? Do we wait for the Green Paper before proceeding with that implementation or will an implementation strategy for the Lamb inquiry recommendations proceed apace? Ofsted also suggested that incentivising local authorities to provide appropriate support as soon as a child’s needs have been identified, rather than allowing costs to escalate through exclusion to more expensive provision, would create better outcomes for children and families and would be a more cost-effective solution for local authorities.

At the end of the day on this topic, parents whom I have talked to have said that the worst experience is having to go through the special needs tribunals—the SENDIST process. I hope the Green Paper will address the procedures used in those tribunals and the way they operate.

Finally, we also have to reflect the concerns of organisations in the autism community at the higher end of the spectrum, particularly about school reforms and SEN. The Academies Act 2010 represents a major change in state education, and it is important that children with autism and other SEN conditions do not lose out. The Act makes it easier for schools to gain academy status and allows the setting up of free schools. Schools with academy status enjoy less regulation in areas such as exclusions and admissions. They will also receive a central-spend equivalent grant in lieu of services, including for children with SEN, that are no longer provided by the local authority. We need to be very clear about where responsibilities and budgets lie. Is it the Secretary of State who is now accountable to Parliament for ensuring that academies fully meet the needs of children with SEN? In academies set up under the previous Government, exclusion levels were twice as high as in other state secondary schools. We must ensure that exclusion levels for children with SEN do not increase through the new academies programme.

I look forward to the Minister’s reply and to the Green Paper to come.