---

Special Educational Needs

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point and I agree absolutely. I would go further and say that there is a parallel here with issues that have arisen in the past about the way we treat disabled people in higher and further education. There is no point in having responsibility at a relatively low level in the management of a university or further education college if that message cannot be communicated to all members of those establishments. There must be a champion at a senior level. That is exactly the point that the Select Committee and the hon. Gentleman are making. Exclusions trouble me and many others greatly, and those grave concerns led me to table amendments to the Education and Inspections Bill to tease out the Government’s response. The Special Educational Consortium—not the Committee—has said that it"““is deeply concerned that the Government’s response to the Committee’s Report does so little to address this issue.””" I remind hon. Members that the figures are stark and that, according to the pupil level annual school census of 2003-04, two thirds of exclusions are of pupils with SEN. The Audit Commission report, Ofsted and organisations such as the National Autistic Society have given the Government and all of us in the House the same message. The Government cite changes in the statistics as evidence of a reduction, but those changes reflect the way in which SEN is recorded, not changes in the level of exclusions. It is also important to consider whether provision for excluded children in pupil referral units is appropriate and adequate, because the Committee received evidence that it is not. There is enormous concern about the issue out there, and I am also particularly concerned about multiple and fixed-term exclusions. In seaside constituencies such as mine and, indeed, in inner-city areas, such issues are compounded by people’s enormous mobility and transience, and much of that relates to families with particular problems, who have special educational needs children or disabled children. The Committee heard quite a bit of evidence about early intervention. We heard about the importance of involving parents, establishing flexible local networks and encouraging LEAs to learn from best practice. Again, however, the Government did not really acknowledge one of the issues that we raised—that of parents with SEN children who might have SEN problems themselves. I have experience of that from my constituency, as I am sure many other hon. Members do. How will such parents be supported and assisted in making decisions on behalf of their children? How will they ensure that their children get the most appropriate provision? I think that I am right in saying that there was no response on that issue, and there should be. As regards a national framework, the Government have said that ““Every Child Matters”” should be suitable, and it does, indeed, provide a very good overall view. However, we cannot have a situation in which meeting the specific needs of special educational needs children depends on something that is continuing to grow and which is growing at different speeds in different local authorities. In particular, there is an issue about the continuity between educational support for children with SEN and social care support. My right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) and my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) have chaired a series of parliamentary hearings into the experience of disabled children, and their findings are being published this afternoon. One of the statistics in the responses to those hearings shows that 80 per cent. of the parents who were interviewed believed that the social care response was poor, while 52 per cent. and 48 per cent thought that the education response and the health response respectively were poor. There is no point getting SEN education right for people up to 3.15 pm if we do not get it right for them after 3.15 pm. As regards the importance of parental involvement, I welcome the Government’s commitment on parent partnership schemes. Again, however, I must echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield. Some of the Government’s responses were condescending in the extreme; indeed, at one point, they said that it was important to ““deal sympathetically”” with parents. The issue is not dealing sympathetically with parents, but offering the level of specialised provision that they need for their children. At another point, the Government said that one third of parents were dissatisfied with the education of their autistic child. I assume that the situation was seen as satisfactory because two thirds of parents were satisfied, but that is not, and never should be, the case. That clashes with the view of Ministers. In conclusion, we should be looking in our special educational needs policy to echo the Olympic motto—higher, faster and stronger. We should be aiming higher in what we expect for disabled children, we should be going faster in implementing some of the improvements that the Select Committee report recommended and we should be stronger in the support that we offer. We should not have a dislocation between the understanding and enthusiasm of Ministers and the condescension and over-defensiveness of officials.