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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, the amendments focus on the role of special schools. As the Minister responsible for special schools and special educational needs, I should say at the outset that there is no category of schools in our educational system that performs a more valuable or important role than special schools. Special schools often offer the only opportunity that pupils with moderate or severe learning difficulties will ever have for a decent start in life. They have exceptionally good specialist resources that they are able to make available. The Government have no policy whatever of favouring the closure of special schools. Our policy is that the interests of local children must come first, and local authorities, which have a duty to make decisions in this regard, must, as they are required to do under the Education Act 1996, take full account of the needs of pupils in their area in arranging the pattern of provision between schools. Perhaps I may back that up, because in my experience there is no better testament to whether the Government take something seriously than whether they are prepared to put money behind it. It is wrong to say that we are not putting resources into either special educational needs at large, on which there has been an almost 50 per cent increase in resources over the past five years, or special schools in particular. Perhaps I may give the House the statistics for special schools. Spending on special schools that are maintained by local authorities has increased since 2000 from £890 million to £1.3 billion. That is a huge increase to enable the quality of provision in those schools to improve. In addition to that £1.3 billion, we also spend £506 million on fees for pupils at independent special schools. That figure is up from £287 million in 2000. So there has been considerable public investment in sustaining and improving the quality of special schools in recent years, and we stand by them. Another material factor is that the proportion of pupils with statements who attend special schools has risen over the past three years, and the raw figures on the closure of special schools, of which the noble Baroness has made much, are very misleading. At the local level, we are seeing a good deal of reconfiguration of special educational needs provision in order to improve it. That often includes the amalgamation of special schools that are on totally unsatisfactory sites because there has not been the required level of investment over recent years, or the establishment of units attached to mainstream schools, of which a significant number have opened in recent years. In addition to the 80,000 pupils who attend special schools, 20,000 are located in units that have the same quality of special needs provision but are attached to mainstream schools. That has been a big area of development in recent years. There is also resourced provision, by which I mean specialist provision in respect of particular special educational needs provided in mainstream schools. Resourced provision in mainstream schools has increased significantly in both quality and quantity in recent years. Perhaps I may quote Ofsted's judgment in its report, which was published only in July, on the different forms of special educational needs provision. Its conclusions are very pertinent to the discussion that we are having today. It said that there was, "““little difference in the quality of provision and outcomes for pupils across primary and secondary mainstream schools and special schools. However, mainstream schools with additionally resourced provision””—" that is, mainstream schools with funding specifically to develop specialist special needs provision— "““were particularly successful in achieving high outcomes for pupils academically, socially and personally””." We are supporting the capacity of local authorities, taking account of the interests of their localities, to develop their provision, whether in units, in special schools, which may be reconfigured or brought together, or within mainstream schools. We do not believe that a moratorium on the closure of special schools at present or an inquiry of the kind envisaged by the noble Baroness, which would have the effect of throwing in flux our whole policy on special educational needs, would be desirable. I shall finish dealing with Amendment No. 32 by turning to the question of an inquiry. When I became a Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, a former Secretary of State, gave me very good advice. He said that my starting action when considering any issue relating to education policy should be to read the relevant Ofsted report. I have taken that advice to heart, and I always follow it when considering any issue. We have just gone through an exhaustive inquiry with the House of Commons Select Committee on special educational needs, and, as the noble Baroness said, we responded to it in full last week. Ofsted's strong advice to us was not to conduct a fundamental review at present, only two years after the publication of our major policy statement, Removing Barriers to Achievement, which includes an important continuing role for special schools. I shall quote Ofsted's advice to the Select Committee: "““If we had a big review at this time, the danger is that it would diversify work, resources and developments in such a way that it could send us back to the point of the slow progress that we were having prior to 2004””." That was the judgment of Ofsted. Brian Lamb, the highly respected chair of the Special Educational Consortium, said the same to us. After we had published our response to the Select Committee, he said that the SEC was very pleased that the DfES had renewed its commitment to its 10-year strategy in Removing Barriers to Achievement. He said: "““We don’t need a radical review. We want to make the system work better. There are lots of things here that will help with that””." Finally, if I may, I shall quote the judgment of Treehouse, which, as noble Lords will know, is the national charity for autism education and whose president is, I believe, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. It runs the outstanding school in north London for children on the autistic spectrum. When we published our response to the Select Committee, it issued a press release saying that it agreed with the conclusion of the Government, Ofsted and the Special Educational Consortium that the existing evidence does not support a wholesale review of the SEN system or structural reorganisation of local authority commissioning. So I believe that we have a substantial body of inspectorate and respected professional opinion behind us in developing our policies in the way that we are, including substantial additional investments. However, I am constantly mindful of the need to keep the existing system under review and to seek to improve it. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked me particularly about the statementing process. We considered very carefully whether there was a case for the wholesale replacement of the process, but we decided that that would not be appropriate at present as no proposals have come forward, and none has come forward in our intensive internal consideration, that offer a better prospect than the statementing process at large as a way of allocating resources for those with high levels of special educational needs. However, our advisers are working constantly with local authorities to promote best practice in statementing. We want to see much more joint working between local authorities, for example, in the commissioning of provision and in the way in which they manage the statementing process to ensure that outcomes are improved. As the noble Baroness will know, we recently commissioned an audit of low-incidence special educational needs—an area of particular pressure within the special needs community. Our report on that has led to a substantial body of work in joint commissioning between local authorities and to approaches that will improve outcomes of pupils who are statemented and the operation of the statementing process. We are very mindful of the need constantly to improve the statementing process and to accelerate the speed with which local authorities deal with statements. There has now been a significant improvement in that but, in response to the Select Committee, we set out a number of new performance indicators that we wish to agree with the Local Government Association to accelerate the issuing of statements and the proper consideration of professional reports, which are essential to the production of statements. So we are constantly seeking to improve the system and we will look at all reasonable proposals to do so. However, we do not believe that a fundamental review at present, contrary to the advice of Ofsted and the other professional bodies that I have cited, would be in the best interests of children with special educational needs. Elected local authorities take their responsibilities very seriously in this area, and we think that removing their discretion to improve the arrangements for special educational needs by changing the pattern of local provision, in the way envisaged by Amendment No. 33, would work against, and not in favour of, the interests of children with special educational needs.