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Education and Inspections Bill

I confess to the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) that, at one time, I was dogmatic. I was dogmatic for a brief period—I promise that it was brief—when I came out of a special residential environment. I spent six years in integrated education for the first time, on day-release from work and at evening class, before going into full-time integrated education for the first time at university. I was dogmatic because my experience had been a difficult one. My schooling had not offered the academic achievement that we would want for our own children, and, as with so many schools, the physical environment left something to be desired. In the 1960s and 1970s, special schools, be they day or residential, were not what they are today. One precise reason why Baroness Warnock has changed her mind on this issue—and why, by the time that I became Secretary of State for Education and Employment, I began to see that it was absolutely crucial not to be dogmatic—is that the world has changed. When I went to primary school, most of those whom I was at school with had just one special need: they could not see. By the time that that school closed because the number who simply could not see had dropped, the incidence of multiple disability—the multiple special needs that children had—had grown to the point where that type of education could no longer cope. So the school closed not because people wanted to eliminate a facility, but because it needed to be re-shaped for a different era, in which medical science had eliminated the original causes of special need, but had also kept alive children who previously would not have been in school at all, because they would not have reached school age. So we are dealing with a different environment, and I appeal to the House, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) did, to come together. None of us wants a system that does not take account of the special needs of the individual child and their family. Various issues have been raised this afternoon, such as the proper of training of teachers, professional development, the training of learning support workers—there are now 110,000 such workers in mainstream schools throughout the country; they did not exist nine years ago—and the ability of learning mentors to develop, alongside special educational needs co-ordinators, the specialism of guiding and supporting families and others in the school environment. We need to recognise that those issues are crucial. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister for Schools on intervening to get the statistics right, and I believe that the Government are listening and responding. However, I have two or three regrets that I want to put on the record. In 1998, when I was Secretary of State for Education and Employment, we moved towards regional planning. I believe strongly that, without it, we cannot maintain centres of excellence, expertise and the necessary facilities. Even with the best resources in the world, no single education authority can possibly provide for every specialism and every need. In any case, the level of expertise across the country is limited. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith) described what my own authority is doing, but there are authorities such as Derbyshire that come very close to being exemplars. It is at the local level that an understanding must be shown of people’s specific needs. However, we can do things at a regional level that cannot be done at the purely local. I now regret that the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 did not place greater emphasis on ensuring that that happened.