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Education and Inspections Bill

My amendment gives the Committee the opportunity to discuss how far guidance should be statutory and how far you need only have regard to it. What has been said by other noble Lords merely illustrates the position. We all know that some schools pay no attention to the rules. The whole process of an appeal to the governors’ committee in such schools tends to be a bit of a whitewash, and going on to tribunals is unnecessarily difficult. Nevertheless, it is necessary to balance that against the difficulties which would arise if the guidance were statutory and parents could appeal against failure to follow any particular dot or comma in the regulations. We need to improve things because, as everyone has said, the figures show that the situation is wrong. Such a high proportion of SEN children should not be excluded because exclusion is almost always the wrong answer for a child with SEN. An agreed placement in a different institution may be the right thing if the school cannot meet a child’s needs, but if the child is getting to the point of being excluded, their needs have not been met for some considerable time. One needs to work back up the chain and, I hope, produce a system which sees this proportion falling over time. In that context, I am very attracted to what the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said. I missed the letter that was placed in the Library—perhaps it is waiting there for me to read in the Recess, among the pile of things to which I have not yet paid full attention—but what is proposed would seem the right approach. You are saying to schools, ““You cannot get rid of these children because they are your pupils, but you can place them in a different context if that is required to ensure the best possible education for them and other pupils””. There are some very good PRUs around the country but they become part of the school family. These children continue to be part of the mainstream education system, and it would be a change of spirit and an arrangement which could be extremely constructive, perhaps also bringing in generalised special schools. As, I am sure, noble Lords know, many of those schools are extremely good at remedial treatment. They pick up children who have become emotionally damaged as a result of their special educational needs and who need a period of respite and specialist attention before going back into mainstream education. It seems a very constructive approach and I hope that the Government will take it seriously.