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Education and Inspections Bill

I greatly enjoyed the comments of the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes). He must have had one of his lunches at the Savoy in order to perform so well. Much of our recent debate on these issues has become rather adversarial, which has polarised philosophies. A belief has grown that there is a stark choice to be made in regard to the means of educating special needs children between inclusion and special schools. That view is unhelpful, because it ignores the fact that children with special needs are as individual as the rest of us, that they often present with complex sets of needs, and that their education should to be tailored to reflect that. The hon. Gentleman’s comments hinted that he understood that and showed some movement from the position that he held some time ago. Our debate should therefore focus on how best we can develop a spectrum of provision in each local authority area. Such a spectrum should encapsulate special schools and special educational needs units in mainstream schools, as well as learning support units—which have a role to play—and pupil referral units, alongside provision developed and managed by the voluntary sector. In my constituency, for instance, we have an excellent facility called Pit Stop, which takes children with learning difficulties out of school and gives them the breathing space and focused attention that they need to get them back on track. Pit Stop works closely with its partner secondary schools and has a wonderful record of bringing children back into mainstream education. It is an excellent example of how special needs education can work more flexibly in the interests of the individual child. It is true that many special needs children need the kind of education that only a special school can offer. I have no problem admitting that. However, those children can also benefit from mixing with their peers in a mainstream setting. Increasingly, special needs professionals are recognising that a flexible mix of provision, achieved by schools working together, is the way forward. That is why my local authority is redeveloping its provision, and building new fit-for-purpose special schools across the city, alongside the development of a series of SEN units in mainstream schools. This is not an either/or approach; it uses both options. New clause 5 is unhelpful because it would limit the ability of local authorities to plan strategically the spectrum of provision that I have described. It would, for instance, limit Sheffield’s plans slightly to reduce the number of special school places available for children with learning disabilities while increasing the number of special school places for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Local authorities are best placed to recognise and to consult on local need, and to remould the spectrum of provision accordingly. New clause 4 would replace section 316 of the Education Act 1996. In so doing, it would remove the requirement for local authorities to consider in the statementing process the need to ensure that a child receives the provision that his learning difficulty calls for. It would replace that requirement with proposed new subsection 3, which asserts the rights of parents. That substitution ignores the fact that schedule 27 to the 1996 Act makes it clear that there is already a presumption in favour of parental preference for the placement of a child in a particular school. The schedule also contains the important qualification that, if a statement names a school, the school should be suitable in relation to the child’s age, ability and/or special needs.