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Education and Inspections Bill

I want to speak in favour of new clauses 4 and 5. New clause 4 relates to the provision of education for children with statements of special educational needs. Subsection (3) of the proposed new section 316 refers to ensuring that a child with special educational needs"““is educated in either a mainstream school or a special school””." There is no trench warfare between mainstream and special schools. It is acknowledged that each child has individual needs, on which will depend whether that child is placed in a mainstream or a special school. The wishes of the parent are very important. New subsection (3)(b) refers to"““the provision of efficient education for other children””," which is indeed an important consideration in mainstream schools. It is essential for proper provision to be made for the support of a child with special needs in a mainstream classroom, especially in practical terms. The practical tasks involved in looking after a child who is a wheelchair user and is unable to transfer from the wheelchair to an ordinary chair, or who needs a standing frame, are very time-consuming. There must be sufficient teaching and welfare support in the classroom, so that the education of the other children is not compromised. New subsection (5), which has already been mentioned several times, states:"““A child with special educational needs being provided for under section (3) above shall not be educated in a mainstream school if that is incompatible with the wishes of his parents.””" New subsection (4) is central to the decision that parents must make. Many parents, particularly if the child with special needs is their first and they have no recent experience of schools—perhaps no experience since they were at school themselves—will not know which is the best placement for their child. They will need to be presented with all the options and all the information that is available. They should be able to visit both local mainstream schools and special schools to gain an impression of provision there. They should be able to speak to head teachers, past teachers and assistants, and to members of the education authority, so that they can reach an informed decision about the best provision for their particular child. I worked in a special school for many years during the 1970s and 1980s. The first thing that comes to mind is that it is impossible to generalise about children with special needs, and that therefore provision cannot be generalised. There was a fair amount of movement between the school where I worked, which is not there any more, and local mainstream schools, in both directions and with varying degrees of success. Again, it is impossible to generalise about whether movement from special school to mainstream or from mainstream to special school will succeed. It is necessary to take account of the individual child. I recall one child with brittle bones who was highly intelligent. Her parents wanted her to try her luck in a mainstream school. She acquired a large degree of independence in a special school, because one of the rules was that, whatever a child’s disability, that child should enjoy as much independence as possible. Unfortunately, when the girl went to a mainstream school, she was seen as a novelty: everyone wanted to help her, particularly the other children, who would fetch and carry for her. She lost much of the independence that she gained in the special school. There was an enormous spectrum of disability at the school where I worked, from complex conditions affecting mobility such as Freeman-Sheldon syndrome, Friedrich’s ataxia and spastic quadriplegia to disabilities that are not visible, such as chronic asthma, diabetes and heart conditions. In the middle of the spectrum are all sorts of other conditions which require very sensitive handling. Special schools provide much more than education. Because they are so used to dealing with children with profound special needs, they are sensitive even to changes of mood, and to how a child may be affected by an incident in the classroom. They can avert episodes of children being unable to cope. It is that experience, built up over many years, that is so valuable to children, in terms not just of education but of emotional support. It enables them to cope with life as well as learning. I recall another child. The hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) observed that people are not always conscious that children with special needs are often highly intelligent. There is an assumption that they are of low intelligence, which is wrong. One of our pupils, aged 16, had very mild cerebral palsy which affected only his speech. We discovered belatedly that his own family did not realise that he understood what they were saying to him. Because they did not understand what he was saying to them, it did not occur to them that his thought processes and intellect were perfectly normal. He reached the age of 16 before we were able to discover that, and to explain to the family that they could speak to him perfectly normally, as they spoke to everyone else, and he would understand: the mechanics of speech were his only problem. Speech and language have been mentioned several times today. Even in the 1970s, there was a chronic, long-standing shortage of speech and language therapists. Since I have been in the House, I have conducted some research into why that might be. It is very difficult to get to the bottom of it. We have plenty of colleges and courses involving speech and language. They are full—they are not short of students—and they have a high success rate. Many students qualify, and there is not an unusually high drop-out rate. The mystery is, where do all the students go when they have qualified? They do not seem to go into the national health service, because my primary care trust cannot recruit speech and language therapists, and they do not go into special schools. The challenge for all of us is to redirect speech and language graduates to special schools and the NHS, where there is an enormous need for speech and language therapy. Whatever other problems they may have, if children cannot communicate with people whom they meet, that is almost the worst handicap that they could suffer. Like the hon. Member for Blackpool, South, I have three superb special schools in my constituency: Corbets Tey, Dycorts and Ravensbourne. None of them, thankfully, is threatened with closure, which would be unthinkable. I cannot think of a single pupil in any of those schools who would be better off in a mainstream school. The children are flourishing, and their educational and social needs are being met. The schools also provide a support system for families. They often have great difficulty in conducting anything resembling what we would recognise as a normal daily life, particularly if they have children on the autistic spectrum. One function of those schools is giving additional support to parents and siblings. With the best will in the world, mainstream schools—given how busy they are and the enormous demands and pressures that are placed on them—do not have the time to provide such extra services to families with children with special needs.