Education Bill

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and my noble friend Lady Whitaker. Several noble Lords touched on this question at Second Reading. I was particularly concerned to hear that there are 88,000 autistic school-age children in England. We should ask ourselves: who among us, if we had a child with special educational needs, would not want the co-operation of every agency and organisation to deliver the best we can for that child?

On Monday I was at the launch of a document, We’ve Got Great Expectations, produced by the National Autistic Society. Maria Miller, the DWP Minister, spoke at that event. She said that joined-up support from health, education and social services was needed. If it is needed, why are the Government removing this essential element—the requirement to co-operate? The cartoons on the front of the document have captions such as, “Support my child to succeed”, “Let’s work together”, “Help me, don’t doubt me”, and, as some of the parents I met said, “I can’t fight any more”. We all know of cases where parents have struggled to get the system to respond. Before I was elected to the other place, I was a councillor for 20 years. Time and again I went into council offices with a problem, only to be told, “Sorry, councillor, he falls through the net”. Who created the net? We did. Let us not make a bad net by damaging a very sensible policy and the duty to co-operate.

At Second Reading, I asked the Minister what evidence the Government have that the duty to co-operate does not work effectively. I appreciate, as will anyone who has been a Minister, that it is not always possible to answer every point. However, I did not get an answer on that occasion, so I tabled a Question the following day, which the Minister has kindly answered today. I asked what assessment the Government,

“have made of the effectiveness of the duty to co-operate in so far as education is concerned”.

The Minister’s reply, drafted by his officials, was:

“The findings of the Audit Commission’s report Are We There Yet? showed that before the duty to co-operate was extended, schools and colleges in most areas were engaging voluntarily as partners in local co-operation arrangements”.—[Official Report, 29/6/11; cols. WA 430-31.]

That report was published in 2008. I might be the son of a miner but I had to mine that report just to find any reference to co-operation. The only relevant sentence that I found—perhaps the Minister’s officials have found others—says:

“In most areas collaborative working has improved, but the new arrangements have yet to settle down”.

Is that the basis on which the Government will make this decision? In his Written Answer, the Minister went on to say:

“We are not convinced that the addition of schools and colleges to the list of statutory relevant partners, under Section 10 of the Children Act 2004, was … effective or appropriate”.—[Official Report, 29/6/11; col. WA 431.]

If it was not effective or appropriate, what do the Government think ought to be in its place to make it effective and appropriate? I asked a further Question about,

“what impact the removal of the ‘duty to co-operate’ will have on children with complex needs, such as autism, and their families”.— [Official Report, 27/6/11; col. WA 358.]

I have received a two-paragraph reply. I am a great admirer of the Minister and do not wish to be ungenerous to him, but that reply could have been two words: “no idea”.

The duty to co-operate under the Children Act has existed for only a year. It ought to be properly evaluated to see whether there are failures or good points. What key government policy is this duty to co-operate thwarting? What great thing over the horizon can the Government not do because the duty to co-operate exists? How many complaints have the Government received from organisations involved in the duty to co-operate, saying that it is so burdensome that they cannot fulfil it? This is a case on which the Government ought to think again. The strength of this House is that we can try to persuade Governments to think again if we feel that there is a failure.

I conclusion, I share with noble Lords some advice that my late mother gave me many years ago: “My son, in life you will find that sense is not common”. Common sense tells us that this duty to co-operate should remain. I hope the Government will be persuaded of that.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I should like briefly to say how much I endorse the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. My noble friend Lady Walmsley mentioned that we have spent some time congratulating the Government on introducing this provision and on making sure that schools were included in it. We are very sorry to see that the coalition is now going back on this particular duty.

I speak with a particular interest, as I am currently chairing a commission on colleges in their community. Further education colleges are mentioned here. One thing is becoming apparent from this; the commission is to develop the role that colleges can and do play within their communities. It is clear that the best of our colleges have enormous breadth of partnerships with all kinds of community organisations, which are currently promoting the well-being and development of those communities. They have in some senses a regeneration function, but they also have a function of promoting the well-being of the local community.

The Explanatory Notes say that these duties are being dropped so that these bodies will be able to decide for themselves how to engage in arrangements to improve well-being. I very much echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, in that we are not worried about those that link up naturally. The ones we are really worried about are those that do not bother to do it. Forming these partnerships and links is so important. Having it in statute here provides that extra push or reinforcement for what we want to see. It will be very sad indeed if we drop this duty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I have enormous sympathy with the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Rix, would no doubt have moved and spoken to if he had been able to stay. His record on behalf of the vulnerable and the disabled is superb. He has spent all his life doing these things.

The assessments for which he calls in his second amendment raise a question of some difficulty. Most schools in most of the 6,000 cases of permanent exclusion call for some reassessment at that stage. Not all schools do and that record should be improved. However, it is a stage that triggers—at least in the mind, if not in legality—a reassessment under those circumstances. There is a huge problem over that. Most SENCOs, most teachers and many professionals working in this area will tell you that when the assessment is triggered—which does not always happen, as we know—it is not independent. Some local authorities have a fine record in this area but there are some whose record is, frankly, poor. Too many of the professionals I have mentioned believe that because the assessment is made by local-authority-employed educational psychologists, it reflects rather more the funding and provision available in the local authority area than the needs of the child.

The Green Paper, which has already been mentioned, gives us a glimpse of hope on this. We all rather hope that when it becomes a White Paper it will become more definite. It promises that in some trial areas we shall find some real independent assessment of the kind that is necessary here. I hope that that will happen, that we will see many of those trials and that at the end we shall see a new system that will able to assist excluded children in this way.

I suspect that when the noble Lord, Lord Rix, reads Hansard he will find that the Minister has not been able to grant him immediate gratification. Nevertheless, he should be able to give some guarantee that those assessments must become more independent and be conducted by more objective criteria than they are at present.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I support Amendment 35 and Amendments 48 to 52 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Low. Children who have been permanently excluded are less likely to achieve five good GCSE results or to be in employment in later life. There is a long-established link between being excluded from school and being involved in crime. Research from the prisons inspector in 2004 found that 83 per cent of young men in custody had previously been excluded from school. There is a clear consensus that exclusion from school results in dramatically poorer outcomes for the child concerned and has significant long-term costs to society.

Exclusion disproportionately affects disabled children and children with special educational needs, further compounding the disadvantages that they face. The Bill’s equality impact assessment itself recognises that pupils with SEN account for 72 per cent of all exclusions. Disabled children and children with SEN continue to be over eight times more likely to be permanently excluded from school than the rest of the school population, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, when she gave us his speech.

Children placed in School Action Plus who have significant needs but who are without the statutory support of a statement for special educational needs are over 20 times more likely to be excluded. The Special Educational Consortium, which provided a brief for today, recognises that the Government are seeking to ensure that children with SEN are not disadvantaged by the new system. However, I share its concern that the Government have not gone far enough to mitigate the potentially negative impact that the proposals would have on children with SEN. The consortium tells me that it is often unmet learning needs, including unmet special educational needs, that are at the root of the persistent behavioural difficulties that these young people become involved in. In Committee in the other place, the Minister for Schools said,

“Incidents which prompt multiple exclusions will often be an indication that a pupil has underlying difficulties that may not have been correctly identified”.

This recognition is most welcome; I think that we would all welcome it. The Minister went on to say that the Government,

“will recommend in exclusion guidance that children are assessed through an effective multi-agency assessment for any underlying causal factors. We will suggest that schools trigger this assessment in instances in which a pupil displays poor behaviour that does not improve despite effective behaviour management by the school”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/3/11; col. 378.]

On Report in the other place, the Minister said that it was the Government’s intention to ensure that those assessments actually take place.

The Special Educational Consortium rightly has serious concerns that those assessments will not happen if there is only a recommendation and they are not included in the statutory guidance. All my experience, both in the other place as a Back-Bencher and a Minister and, as I said in the earlier debate, as a councillor for 20 years, shows me that that would be the case. Exclusion guidance is already clear about the need to look at underlying causes of behavioural difficulties, yet this has not reduced the number of children with special educational needs who are routinely and regularly excluded from school.