Member News
By Tony Grew - 23rd July 2010
The opposition attempted to introduce an amendment to the academies bill yesterday on special educational needs.
Shadow education minister Vernon Coaker said the point of amendment 71 "is to try to understand in more detail the consequences for special educational needs provision of the changed arrangements for schools, with more schools opting out, becoming academies - or free schools - and being independent of local authorities".
Rory Stewart (Con, Penrith and the Border) said Labour's approach to the issue is wrong.
"He (Coaker) is not, as he suggests, simply asserting the importance of special educational needs, nor even the necessity for a process or a mechanism," he said.
"He is setting out a specific process and mechanism, namely local authorities.
"His amendment repeatedly requires the Secretary of State to assess all the current local authority provision and the support that it provides, and to focus in that assessment on any funding requirements attached to that.
"That is a classic example of what was wrong with the previous approach. Instead of focusing on a special educational needs outcome with which we all agree, the hon. Gentleman is attempting to micro-manage the process with a preference for the local authority.added."
Pat Glass (Lab, North West Durham) spoke of her experiences as a government education adviser on special needs.
"I have gone into many schools, some of which achieve incredibly highly, and found that 50 per cent of their children are on their SEN register," she said.
"That is clearly nonsense, and there are all kinds of reasons for it. It is the teacher in the classroom, or the head teacher, who defines whether a child has SEN and places them at school action or school action plus.
"In many cases, they do not even advise the parent. That is illegal, but it happens. Head teachers do that for myriad reasons, including that they feel it will improve the school's contextual value added and its standing with Ofsted."
She said that any loss of central provision would be hard to replace.
"Teachers of the deaf and the visually impaired and blind do not hang on the back of cupboard doors; they take years to train, and it is hugely expensive.
"Building those services back up once they have gone, particularly if the local authority does not have the funding to do so, will be impossible and will severely disadvantage these groups of young children."
Skills minister John Hayes set out to assure MPs.
"The bill and the government have no intention of diminishing the status of special educational needs or of the people who endure that, including the parents," he said.
"There will be no relaxation of the statutory responsibilities in respect of admissions and statementing. Pupils with SEN statements must be monitored by local authorities; that is a statutory responsibility and there is no diminution of that."
Hayes also said the government will be issuing a green paper to look at the whole issue of SEN.
Graham Stuart (Con, Beverley and Holderness), chair of the education select commitee, lamented the lack of time given to the academies bill.
"I wish we had more time to reflect on the bill, and that members of the education committee from both sides of the House and others were in a better position to improve the bill, but we are where we are," he said.
"The hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) talked about the hard-end drift-perhaps it will be called the "Glass drift"-and said that even when money goes in, it somehow drifts away.
"That must be because of the pressures within the system: the way human beings work - those who do the jobs that she did in the past, parents and people in schools-leads to money not going where people want it to go.
"It is therefore not enough for ministers to wish the right outcomes-all hon. Members wish the right outcomes. Rather, they must show that they understand the engineering of the system sufficiently to deliver them.
"We are dealing with the most vulnerable of our children, and we cannot have an already bad situation made worse inadvertently by ministers in a hurry who do not have sufficient explanations.
"I am sure that that is not the case, but I would hate to think it was. We should not be blinded by the desire to appear to be acting if we are doing the wrong thing."
Stuart also criticised the equalities impact assessment as "rather thin".
"I was waiting for an assessment of the system-wide impact and the long-term and profound implication of having lots of free schools. But when I got there I found paragraph 31, which states:
'We believe that the Academies programme is already working towards promoting inclusion and equality to the benefit of all pupils in the programme. An adverse impact is unlikely'.
"Well, thank you very much. That is not an adequate explanation of the possible system-wide impacts of this bill."
Summing up, Hayes said:
"We are committed to ensuring that children with special needs in both the maintained and the academy sectors receive the services that they require and, indeed, deserve. My commitment to children with special educational needs stretches a long way back.
"As a member of the government, I will do nothing that would act to their detriment, and we as a government will do nothing in respect of the academies programme that would disadvantage them or the people who care for them in any way. I am pleased to be able to put that on the record."
Coaker said confusion remains as to what the funding will mean for individual schools.
"Confusion also remains about the co-ordinating role in order to ensure that all of our young people get the support that they need."
He said the new Young People's Learning Agency has no experience of dealing with special needs or of this provision.
"So to rely upon it as the vehicle or body that will try to ensure that the Secretary of State is informed about whether an academy is appropriately using the money that it gets to support children with SEN is simply a wish rather than something that the government have evidence to demonstrate will actually work."
However, Coaker withdrew the amendment as government made "some significant concessions".
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