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Education and Inspections Bill

I am delighted to speak to new clause 4, and the other new clauses and amendments in this group. For the benefit of the House, the new clauses that I have tabled with my hon. Friends mount a strong defence of the role of special schools in the service of special needs children. Last night, we ended our consideration of the Bill with a debate on school discipline and the quality of life in schools: their ethos and atmosphere. I hope that that debate marks the start of a war on thugs and bullies and a crusade for their victims. Most strong, confident, able children will survive any school, but that is not so for the most vulnerable, including children with special educational needs. They are indeed special, and they deserve our special care and concern. Every parent knows the protective instinct evoked by a fragile, innocent child as we wonder at their beauty. Imagine the intensity of those feelings in the case of a child who is especially fragile, physically or emotionally, because of special needs. I invite the House, in considering the new clauses and amendments, to attempt for a short time to share those emotions. I do so with little doubt about the good will in all parts of the House on the subject, which is not a matter of party affinity or prejudice. It is not, however, unaffected by ideology or even dogma. The unrelenting pursuit of the integrationist policies that followed the Warnock report in 1978 and the Education Act 1981, which was introduced by a Conservative Government, could hardly have been more dogmatic. That dogma has coloured our perception for too long. When introducing the Special Needs and Disability Bill—I was pleased to serve as a Front-Bench spokesmen on the Standing Committee that considered that Bill—Baroness Blackstone said in the Lords that"““commitment to inclusion has been strong and constant…The potential social, moral and educational benefits are significant.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 19 December 2000; Vol. 620, c. 635.]" As I said in Committee, the order in which she listed those benefits is interesting. We are, of course, concerned about the social, moral and cultural needs of people with learning difficulties, but their educational needs are always more significant than any cultural or social benefits that we might derive for them, their contemporaries or their schools. I could put it more bluntly: children’s futures count—not the guilt-ridden consciences of the liberal bourgeoisie. Closed minds have closed schools, and thus damaged lives. Of course, none of that was malevolent, and much of it was fuelled by the best intentions. But as we know, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. The integrationist broad-brush approach to an infinitely complex issue has damaged the educational prospects of countless children. Of course, many children with special educational needs, where their parents wish it and where their needs can be accommodated, do well in mainstream schools and in special units attached to mainstream schools. I celebrate the work of those schools and of the teachers so committed to their important duty. However, there are two fundamental problems with integration. The first is that the resources necessary properly to meet the stated needs of children rarely follow them into mainstream schools. That is certainly true of staff training. The former head of a middle school with a special unit tells of the practical costs of the policy in a letter referring to these matters published in the national media this week. He writes:"““When I was appointed head, I was not asked at the interview if I had any experience of children with special needs. I didn’t. When I took up the post, I discovered that the teachers at the unit of 24 children with special needs ranging from emotional behavioural difficulties to mild autism also had no specialist qualifications. In a school of 400, these children took up at least half of my administrative time. The teachers were often off sick and most of the children in the unit would, in my view, have been better served in special schools. Inclusion may sound good in theory, but the practicalities often tell a different story.””" So it is not surprising that, according to the comprehensive review conducted by The Times Educational Supplement last year, two thirds of teachers receive less than one day’s training in how to teach children with special needs, and 90 per cent. of head teachers thought that their schools did not receive sufficient resources to fund integration. That is perhaps why the amendments have been welcomed by the National Union of Teachers as an important set of improvements to the Bill. It is why the orthodox thinking on the subject among teachers and others has moved to the position that I have held from the early 1980s onwards, when I first became interested in special educational needs. I recall from that period—the mid-1980s—supporting many struggling parents who wanted their children taught in special schools, sometimes out of authority or even out of country, because they knew that that was the best way of allowing their children to fulfil their potential.