Rehman Chishti
Main Page: Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)Department Debates - View all Rehman Chishti's debates with the Department for Education
Special Needs Education
Rehman Chishti Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on securing this important debate. May I also say that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main?
I should like to cover three specific points that the independent sector has raised with me. First, will personal budgets proposed in the SEN Green Paper be available to enable parents to purchase provision in the independent sector? Secondly, is there any desire to implement the auxiliary aids and services provisions for education in the Equality Act 2010? That could have a huge impact on independent schools, with schools having to fund additional provision which, historically, individual parents have paid for under their contractual arrangement with independent schools.
Finally, if an independent school does not offer a place to a pupil with special educational needs, the school could be open to a disability discrimination challenge, while mainstream pupils who are refused places have no such rights. Is it right that an independent school should find itself in such a position? The place will have been refused for sustainable reasons yet the schools are “forced” to spend thousands in order to defend their position with no prospect of being awarded costs even if they are successful in defending the claim at a tribunal. I said that I would be brief. Those are the three specific points on which I seek clarification from the Minister.