Children with Special Educational Needs

Debate between Sarah Teather and Alun Cairns

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady; I think it is the first time I have been able to do so. I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing the debate. I am grateful to have this opportunity so soon after we published the Green Paper. It is useful to learn what hon. Members think and hear the feedback from their constituencies. The hon. Gentleman said he hoped there would be other opportunities; I do, too. As hon. Members are able to go into their constituencies and use the consultation to talk to their local groups, they will have the opportunity to bring that feedback to the House, so that we can discuss it.

I am aware that the hon. Gentleman has a long-standing interest in the subject. He also mentioned his wife; that is a real power partnership. We are grateful for the expertise he and other hon. Members brought to a good-quality debate—Members including the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who spoke of her experience of battling to get support for her child.

As hon. Members will be aware, the core of the reform that we are trying to bring to the system is quite radical, and it will take time to bed down and to get it right. Unfortunately, I am not able to promise that overnight we will be able to transform the experience radically for every family who has a disabled child or one with special educational needs. In some of the things that we are doing, it will take time to change attitudes and mindsets. That is why we are taking the approach of using pilots—so that we can begin to roll them out and learn from the experience.

Core to the reform is the change to a nought-to-25 system that is more continuous. I want the system to be more focused on outcomes, rather than focusing just on inputs. A lot of the tension arises partly because people get hung up on the question, “How many hours?”, rather than thinking about where we want the child and family to be in 12 months’ time. We should have that type of conversation from the outset. We should look at the child and family and ask: what are the realistic goals? Where do we want to be next year? What are the realistic goals, long term? We should then put in place the right kind of support to get children and families into that position for the long term.

[Alun Cairns]

I recognise the focus on outcomes, but does the Minister also recognise that parents can only guarantee the inputs to deliver the outcomes through a statement of special educational needs? Of course, it will be called something different and will have a slightly different form if the Green Paper becomes a White Paper. As I tried to highlight, if a therapist is sick or on maternity leave, provision is rarely replaced during that period. We will not achieve the outcomes unless there is a guarantee of the inputs.

[Sarah Teather]

I will come to the specifics of the statementing process. The hon. Gentleman’s contribution on that was helpful. It is about getting the detail right and ensuring that the system works.

I have mentioned that I want a nought-to-25 process, and that it should be more outcomes-focused. It also needs to be a joint assessment process. My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) said that the current system was too costly, often because people go through it several times—something that the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan also mentioned. It is very frustrating for families if they have to go through multiple assessments, telling the same story over and over again to professionals. That wastes their time and the professionals’ time. When I have listened to families speaking about their experience, I have been struck by how traumatic it is; they relive the grief they experienced when they first had the diagnosis of the disability or special educational need. Every time they tell the story, they are effectively reliving that initial trauma. When that is combined with the frustration of feeling that nobody is listening to them, it is incredibly stressful for families.

We have to streamline the assessment process, so that families go through fewer hoops, we come up with one plan into which everybody is tied, and people know who is responsible for paying for what, rather than there being an endless fight over where that responsibility sits in different sections of the statement. That picks up the point on which the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan ended his contribution. At the moment, unfortunately, one needs to be highly articulate and, too often, financially able, in order to get the best out of the system. That is simply not good enough. We have to make the system simpler and more straightforward, so that every family can get what their child deserves: the best possible support and care.

As a number of hon. Members have said, the current system is cumbersome, costly and inconsistent. The first thing we have tried to do is take some of the adversarial nature out of the process. Again, I cannot promise that we will never have tension between families and services providing for their child; that is not realistic. However, there is a lot we can do to reduce that, so that it does not come immediately, and so that we change the nature of the conversation from the outset.

We want to begin with the idea of a local offer, so that when someone first encounters the local authority or health service, they are not told: “Prove that you need help.” Local services should be coming to parents and saying, “This is what we normally provide; now let’s have the discussion about how we tailor that, and what we need to do for you in your situation.” That should change the relationship from the beginning. That again was a point made by the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan. The attempt to get people to talk at the end of the process can be unsuccessful if trust broke down right at the beginning. That was highlighted for us by the Council for Disabled Children, which spoke passionately about the need for a local offer. In areas where that has been developed, it has changed the relationship from the beginning. That has been much more fruitful; even if parents decide to go all the way through the special educational needs and disability tribunal, the nature of the conversation can be much better from the beginning.

Mainstream schools need to be clearer with families about what they would normally provide for children with a range of learning difficulties, disabilities or additional needs. At the moment, there is great inconsistency. It can be difficult for parents to work out whether their child’s needs are greater than those normally provided for in a school—the legal definition of special educational needs. As a consequence, local authorities complain that the tribunal will often make inconsistent decisions about whether a statement is required. It is not in anyone’s interest for all that to be so cloak-and-dagger. Much more can be clearer from the beginning.

The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan said that a lot of the detail did not work. He mentioned the tension between outcomes and incomes-focused criteria. I recognise his point, but if we begin with outcomes, it changes the nature of the discussion. We sometimes hear that families will cling to a statement that may not be suitable for their child’s needs, as those needs have changed. That is not in the interests of the family. If we can focus more on the outcomes and the support that we need to provide for a family as we move to an agreed set of goals, families are less likely to cling to unsuitable provision, and more likely to be willing to accept changes that might be right for their child. Focusing on outcomes rather than inputs requires a huge change of mindset. As I said earlier, of all the things that we are trying to do, that will probably take the longest to bed down.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall said that going around the loop repeatedly is often expensive. If we do not get children the support that they need early enough, that is also expensive; a greater, more serious intervention might be needed later. Many of the families that we spoke to, and the voluntary organisations that we worked with when drawing up the Green Paper, told us that parents use the expensive independent school not always for the education that it provides, but often because it has therapists on tap, particularly speech and language therapists. As a result of the frustration of not being able to get speech and language therapy through other means, some parents will push all the way through the tribunal for the expensive independent provision—but that, of course, comes out of the local authority’s budget, and not the health service budget. In the end, there is no incentive for local services to work together, or to provide a plan that should be paid for jointly. There would be significantly less cost to the public purse in the long term if we could get it right from the beginning.

My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan spoke about delays in the system. It is clearly ridiculous for small children to have to wait six months for the necessary support, because they are at a critical period in their development. Anything that we can do to speed up that process is important. I hope that the joint process, the single assessment process, will remove some of the delays. Many delays are the result of local authorities having to co-ordinate the expertise of various professionals; that is particularly so with professional input on health.

One of our first priorities, even before we get to the joint process, is the statementing process; we want people to contribute sooner, more quickly, more rapidly and more efficiently. It is not good for families to have to wait. The nub of what we are doing is reducing delay in the short term. As for the longer term, I hope that the pilots will show that having one process speeds things up. That is a key objective in getting people to work together.

[Alun Cairns]

The Minister rightly focuses on the cut proposed in the Green Paper from 26 weeks to 20 weeks. I referred in my speech to a delay in a tribunal taking place; it took from 10 August last year until mid-January for the case to come to the tribunal. That was far longer than it took to get the published statement. We should not forget that a case could be taken to tribunal twice—once regarding the statutory assessment, and once regarding the statement. What consideration has the Minister given to that? It would be a significant step forward if that wait was curtailed to a reasonable length.

[Sarah Teather]

The hon. Gentleman need not panic; I wrote everything down. I may not be able to cover every point that he raised as I cannot scribble that quickly, but he raises the very point that I wanted to deal with next.

I turn first, however, to what the hon. Gentleman said about mediation; he asked whether it would introduce extra delay. That is absolutely not the intention. When we roll it out, we want to make it clear to local authorities that the addition of mediation should not delay the process of going to the tribunal. The quality of conversation ought to be better from the outset, so I hope that the process will be more successful.

The other key point to make about mediation is that it needs to be high-quality. If people are simply going through the motions, it will add extra frustration for everyone concerned. In the Green Paper, we point to some examples of good practice, particularly in the west midlands. Independent mediation there has made a real difference to the solutions that parents are being given, and people have not had to go through the tribunal process. Parents were happier because they had much better conversations with local providers.

I turn to tribunal delays. I was concerned to hear of the example given by the hon. Gentleman. The tribunal in England aims to hear cases within 22 weeks of the appeal being registered. We regularly meet the tribunal at an official level and raise the matter with it, but we will raise the specific point that the hon. Gentleman makes. It would help to know whether the case was in England or Wales.

[Alun Cairns]

It was in England.

[Sarah Teather]

That is helpful. We will raise that case with the tribunal. Personal budgets were alluded to by a number of Members, particularly the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). I hope that they will cut some of the frustration for families. They are a choice, not an obligation; families will not be obliged to take up personal budgets. We realise that not every family will want to do so, but some will believe that they would be better able to make choices about how family life was run if they had the freedom to decide how to care for their child. That needs to be trialled. Some small-scale pilots have been run for disabled children in recent years with some elements of the health budget, and we will build on that.

In the Green Paper, we are consulting on what should be included in the scheme. One suggestion is that we include school transport, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Harlow. I hope that will give families more freedom to decide which school their children could attend. The obvious thing to include in personal budgets is key equipment such as speech and language aids, which were mentioned earlier, and wheelchairs. I have experience of this as a constituency MP, and I know from being involved with the Green Paper that delays in the provision of wheelchairs are unfortunately extremely common. Indeed, the wait can sometimes be so long that children have grown out of the wheelchair by the time it arrives. That is utterly ridiculous. It is a waste of public money, and the impact on the child can be considerable. Indeed, one child in my constituency was not able to attend school while waiting for a new wheelchair because the old one was the wrong size and was giving him sores. That is not good enough.

Another obvious candidate for a personal budget is therapy, particularly speech and language therapy. That raises the subject of adequate provision, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Harlow. I have no doubt that the joint strategic needs assessment process needs to be better at picking up needs, from the ground upwards. The Green Paper commits the Department of Health to ensuring that the needs assessment is done in a way that responds to the needs of families with disabled children in the area. I hope that that deals with the point raised by the hon. Gentleman.

Outdoor Learning

Debate between Sarah Teather and Alun Cairns

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. I was going to say that it is a great pleasure to participate in this debate, until I heard the end-point of the speech by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan). His speech began so well and ended with such nonsense, but I guess that the Opposition have to be the Opposition and demonstrate that they oppose everything.

I want to congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing this debate on a really important topic. It is good to see Westminster Hall so full of people. I am aware of the hon. Gentleman’s previous role as chief executive of the Countryside Alliance and of his involvement in charitable work with that organisation to promote outdoor learning. It is really good to see that he is continuing that work now as a Member of this House.

We have had a good and well informed debate. The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) gave particular detail about the situation in Wales. There were contributions from former teachers, my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). We have heard about a number of examples of outdoor learning from Members’ constituencies. The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) spoke about forest schools. I was very interested to hear about the particular examples given by the hon. Members for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) and for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson).

The Government absolutely believe that outdoor learning is vital and provides so many opportunities for young people to expand their horizons and to put learning into context, so that they can actually see what is happening and are not just learning the theory. Moreover, outdoor learning provides opportunities to break down barriers. It is very easy for someone to fulfil a role if they go into the same place and perform the same function every day. However, when a group of people are taken out of that place and put somewhere else, it breaks down the old traditional roles, which of course is exactly why outdoor learning has the impact that it does on behaviour. It is able suddenly to boost the confidence of many children who may not succeed in other activities in the classroom.

Many hon. Members began their contribution by declaring an interest in this sector and I should probably declare an interest too, in that my brother works for the Outward Bound Trust as a fundraiser. When I listened to him talk about the history of the trust, I was fascinated. It is perhaps worth saying something about that history as it is really relevant to the debate.

The Outward Bound Trust began as part of the war effort in 1941, so it will celebrate its 70th anniversary next year. It began because of the experience of people who had watched merchant seamen after their ships had been torpedoed. Some merchant seamen survived longer than others and it was really obvious that the ones who did not survive were the young people. So a lot of young seamen were taken out of their ships and taught survival skills and team-building exercises, and it was found that those activities had a real impact on their ability to cope in strenuous situations. After the war, the effect of that training on those particular seamen was so great that the trust decided to roll out the training to many other young people. Last year, it was able to provide 26,000 young people with opportunities for such training, much of which was funded through charitable donations.

So the Outward Bound Trust is a prime example of the organisations that many hon. Members have spoken about during the debate, from forest schools to Farming and Countryside Education, which the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) spoke about. Often, those organisations have a very strong charitable arm and so they are able to take young people who could not otherwise afford those outdoor experiences and really change their perspective on life. I want to pay tribute to all the organisations, whether they are private or charitable, that do this kind of work for young people.

However, it is important to say that the Government view outdoor learning as being much wider than just that type of adventure activity. Outdoor learning is not just about getting out into the countryside, although that is absolutely vital. Many of the contributions to the debate have been about the necessity of giving children experience of the countryside. A couple of hon. Members spoke about the fact that many of our young people do not know, for example, how food is produced. All of those activities are part of outdoor learning, but they are not the only aspect. Getting out and experiencing music, theatre or the visual arts is also part of outdoor learning. Furthermore, outdoor learning is a vital part of understanding history and field trips in science and geography are all important.

Not all of those trips have to be trips to places that are a long way away. In fact, the hon. Member for Cardiff West gave the example of a school trip in his constituency that stayed very close to the school. Sometimes such activities can take place just outside the school and even occasionally within the school gates. Getting out of the classroom is what is so vital.

The hon. Gentleman also spoke about the previous Government’s record on outdoor learning. I absolutely acknowledge that the previous Government invested an awful lot of effort, time and money in trying to improve outdoor learning. However, as the Children, Schools and Families Committee stated very clearly in its report on outdoor learning, we are not there yet and we are a long way away from being where we need to be. Far too few young people have the opportunity for outdoor learning and there are all sorts of reasons for that, which were drawn out in the Select Committee report. I just want to refer to a few of those reasons.

I think that part of the problem is related to an overcrowded curriculum, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion spoke about. There are so many compulsory elements in the curriculum that it is difficult to find the space in the day for teachers to explore outdoor activity. A number of hon. Members were trying to request that extra things should be put into the curriculum, particularly in relation to outdoor learning. In the same way that the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole suggested one thing out, one thing in, I am resisting the tendency to put extra things into the curriculum. However, I can perhaps offer a word of comfort to hon. Members who raised this issue. The national curriculum review is particularly looking at what should go into the curriculum. For subjects such as science and geography, it may well be that the review looks at the particular components of outdoor learning. I do not want to pre-empt the review, but I will say that it is ongoing.

[Alun Cairns]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Teather]

I have only three minutes left and I have quite a lot still to say, so I had better not give way just now.

I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire for raising issues of health and safety. I absolutely agree with him on those issues and it was helpful of him to put on record the statistics that he cited about how rare difficult events are. The Government take very seriously the report by Lord Young and it is absolutely vital that we get out the message that such difficult events are very rare and that we should take a much more common-sense approach to outdoor learning.

The Government believe that, by offering more flexible funding to schools with less ring-fencing, we have a much better chance of encouraging schools to take up opportunities for outdoor learning. For example, schools are free to spend the pupil premium on supporting particular activities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. If the priority is to hire a minibus, that might be what a school chooses to do. However, I will undertake to examine the suggestion of the hon. Member for North Swindon about an insurance scheme for schools that is bought en bloc, to see if there is anything that can be done with respect to that suggestion.

The White Paper on schools also speaks specifically about “access to live theatre” and encouraging

“the appreciation of the visual and plastic arts and work with our great museums and libraries to support their educational mission.”

That is something that the Government take very seriously.

I have mentioned history, and the understanding of citizenship is also very important, which is precisely why we support the Holocaust Educational Trust in its programme “Lessons from Auschwitz”. I have experienced that programme myself and it is a fantastic programme that offers the opportunity to change people’s perspectives. For those who have not had that experience at school, the Government are providing extra opportunities through the national citizen service, which will give young people an opportunity to experience outdoor activity first-hand at the start of that scheme and really change their lives.

The hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire asked a number of questions. With respect to teacher training, a paper on that subject will be released next year and I will ensure that his comments about teacher training are drawn to the attention of the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), who is the Minister with responsibility for schools.

With respect to the foundation stage, I will ensure that the comments that have been made about it during the debate are fed into Dame Clare Tickell’s review of the early years foundation stage.

With regard to the “rarely cover” guidance, if schools plan trips in advance that guidance should not really be an issue. However, the Department for Education is looking at the guidance.

With respect to the idea of an entitlement for one particular outdoor learning activity, I think that this process is much more about understanding outdoor learning as a part of a child’s whole learning experience. Just having one trip does not really meet the need for outdoor learning. What we need to do is to mainstream outdoor learning into the whole way that we are looking at the curriculum, which is why I made the point earlier about geography and science trips.

Speech Therapy Services (Children)

Debate between Sarah Teather and Alun Cairns

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Teather]

I shall turn to commissioning in a moment. First, I want to say something about the school work force, a theme that was developed during the debate. It is vital that teachers and other members of the children’s work force have access to information, and that they have the opportunity for professional development in supporting children with special educational needs. Those on the front line are often the first to pick up problems, and they are vital in implementing whatever is suggested by the specialists.

One Member—I noted the point but not who raised it—spoke about the need for speech and language therapy to be well integrated into what happens in school. There are some good examples of that. Indeed, it is the kind of good practice that we want to build on through the Green Paper, with speech and language therapists training teachers to ensure that the therapists’ work continues in the classroom once the specialist help is over. That is vital. Progress has been made in recent years with the development of dedicated resources for teacher trainers and trainees, with specialist professional development for special educational needs co-ordinators and with online training material for school staff on a range of special educational needs, including specific materials on speech, language and communication needs for teachers and other staff.

[Alun Cairns]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. The shortage of speech and language therapists for many schools means that when the need for specialist help arises it is not necessarily there. Often, only speech and language therapists themselves can deliver the necessary support, rather than the problem being passed on to the teacher every time.

[Sarah Teather]

We need a mix; that is why I said that speech and language therapists can often offer good professional advice to teachers, who are then able to do some of that work during the week. The number of speech and language therapists is rising consistently. The question of whether we have enough depends on commissioning, and the way in which those therapists are employed. The White Paper on schools and the special educational needs Green Paper will set out plans for developing the knowledge, understanding and skills of the children’s work force and will specifically address continuing professional development.

A number of Members asked about commissioning. I realise that we need to be much better at integrating the commissioning of services for children with special educational needs, as in many other areas. As I said earlier, I hope that the rapid change experienced in many areas will provide us with the opportunity to do much better. We are creating more diverse school systems with more freedom for schools to innovate; and the NHS White Paper focuses on creating locally based opportunities to improve patient care.

Improving outcomes is exactly what Mr Speaker wanted to achieve for children with such difficulties through his review. The challenge is to design future arrangements that work much better together and that focus specifically on the needs of children and families. I am working closely with colleagues at the Department of Health on all these matters. I am determined to ensure that we are better able to streamline the assessment process.