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Special Educational Needs

It is a privilege to follow not only my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on which I was proud to serve and who gave us a broad and eloquent overview of the matters that we were concerned about, but the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) who on this and numerous occasions in the House, not least recently on the Education and Inspections Bill, has demonstrated his commitment to and eloquence on this matter. I want to touch on a number of different aspects of what we are trying to get across in our report and to touch as lightly as I can on the Government’s response to them. I shall start by talking about collaboration because special educational needs, although highly specific and relating to a particular group of parents and children, resonate in what we do across the whole of education policy. In our report we said that there was no simple solution and no magic bullet for special educational needs, which is why we refused to come down on one side or the other of the sometimes sterile argument about special schools and provision in mainstream schools. We concluded from the mass of evidence and memoranda that children would sometimes be better served in a special school setting and sometimes in a mainstream setting. There is no doubt that when special schools and mainstream schools are able to collaborate—perhaps when they are physically proximate, as is the case in a couple of examples in my constituency—there is a far better chance of good outcomes for children than when they occupy separate silos. The emphasis of the evidence that we heard and our recommendations was on collaboration. The Government do not say in their response that there is an inherent contradiction between giving greater autonomy to individual schools and collaboration. I accept that, but I also think that there is an onus on them to put some flesh on the bones and not just to say, as they did, that collaboration arises naturally. That sometimes happens when there are good, spirited and committed individuals in both sectors, but the truth of the matter is that we should legislate and plan for the majority, not the fortunate minority who have that sort of leadership. The Government must look at the dangers of schools being given more autonomy and more focus on the standards agenda without considering the position of children with special educational needs. Standards are fine as a long-term focus, but the short-term way of achieving that is to make personalised learning the appropriate provision for every child, whatever his or her needs. If collaboration is to mean anything, there must be some impetus from schools. That is where the local education authority has a role and where the Government’s envisaged schools commission should have a role. I argued for that in another debate on the Education and Inspections Bill. We received a lot of highly specific and relevant evidence from various sectors on the urgent need to promote training. I welcome the Government’s announcement of new professional standards, what the Minister said and the amendment that was tabled in the other place in response to Baroness Walmsley who spoke the other day. I pay tribute to the detailed and constructive way in which the Minister in the other place, Lord Adonis, responded. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry) and I went to see him twice during the passage of the Education and Inspections Bill through the House of Commons and we were genuinely impressed by his response, which has now had flesh put on its bones in the Lords amendment. That is all very good, but I hope that the current pilots that are envisaged under that will be rolled out as soon as possible. I also hope that when that is done some attention will be paid to the necessary funding and commitment that will be needed and that that is given. The £1.2 million that was originally allocated is a good start, but in no way will it address the degree of SEN and disability training that must be provided through teacher training and ongoing professional development. I agree absolutely with the Special Educational Consortium—Baroness Walmsley also touched on this—that"““it is the minority of teachers who go through the three- and four-year training courses. SEC would like””," as would I and, I believe, the Select Committee,"““a much clearer commitment to ensuring that all teachers””," including those on the one-year courses,"““entering the profession have training on SEN and disability...The consequences of not including SEN and disability are to leave trainee teachers uncertain and unprepared for their work with disabled pupils and pupils with SEN.””" It is terribly important that the Government take that up. On continuous professional development, again if the ends are willed, the means must be willed. The Government rejected the Select Committee’s recommendation that there should be mandatory timetabling of that. That is fair enough and I accept that it is a broad aspiration, but the onus is then on the Government to return with something more substantive and specific on how all teachers will receive continuous professional development training in SEN. I pay tribute to Lord Adonis and welcome the guarantees that special educational needs co-ordinators will be qualified teachers and senior management. That is an important development, but again the devil is in the detail and organisations such as TreeHouse, which Lord Adonis and other Ministers visited earlier this year, told me and other hon. Members that they welcome the commitment on training for new SENCOs, but asked about existing SENCOs. We welcome the commitment on support and funding for continuous professional development, but what about teachers who are already in post? We cannot work on the assumption that we must wait 10 or 15 years for a new generation of well-informed teachers to deal with those issues in schools. There must be action and support for those who are there now. The Government should carefully consider that.