Education: Personal, Social and Health Education

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I join colleagues in thanking my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen for securing this debate, and it comes on the eve of the Children and Families Bill coming to this House. I would like to concentrate my remarks on PSHE and its impact on youngsters with special educational needs.

Last year, I sat on a commission set up by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Autism. We looked at reform of the special educational needs system and we produced a report, The Right Start: Reforming the System for Children with Autism. In a survey which figured in our final report, we found that 84% of respondents said that teachers were not given enough training effectively to teach and support children with autism. Training for teachers is obviously an essential step in ensuring that all staff gain an understanding of the condition which they can then pass on to their students.

One in every 100 children in school is autistic, and most are in mainstream schools. For many of these children, school can be a difficult place. Their condition makes communicating with other students difficult, and many will experience sensory overload. The Children and Families Bill, which is currently in Committee in the other place, gives us an important opportunity to transform the special educational needs system so that more children with autism and SEN will have access to the special support that they need.

We must also think about children’s experience of school life more widely and how we can improve understanding of special educational needs pupils. That is why personal, social and health education lessons are an opportunity to improve, among other things, communication between all students, both those with special educational needs and their peers. Such lessons should help young people to develop a rounded and tolerant understanding of the community in which they live. This must include awareness and understanding of disability, including conditions like autism which can often be hidden. Children with autism, especially those with high-functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome, can find that their disability and the challenges resulting from it are not obvious to their peers or teachers. Therefore, the classroom presents an important opportunity to help tackle this lack of awareness and misunderstanding. The National Autistic Society—I declare an interest as vice-president—recently conducted a survey which revealed that 22% of young people with autism said that they have no friends at all. A shocking 63% of young people with autism said that they had been bullied. What parent would not be greatly concerned if they found that their children left home for school and spent their school day isolated, alone and friendless? If children have special educational needs, they are singled out for abuse and intimidation by their fellow students simply because they are different—bullying and abuse caused by ignorance, intolerance and, sometimes, spite. We know that some schools have excellent strategies to tackle bullying and we need to encourage that good practice. However, it is important that teachers have a full understanding as well as training to cope.

Transforming opportunities starts at schools; it is about improving special educational needs and changing attitudes among teachers and students alike. Promoting personal, social and health skills in schools should be involved in that and should be about educating young people for the real world. It should be an enriching experience and one that should shape our youngsters for the future in which they will live.