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Special Educational Needs

I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) and other members of the Education and Skills Committee on putting together a report that achieves a great deal. A lot of evidence was presented to the Committee and it was considered in a spirit of cross-partisanship that has produced an excellent report. I hope that that spirit will be carried through into this debate. The report’s key achievement is to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the national policy of inclusion, while acknowledging that inclusion has a role to play. It makes it clear that there is no question of returning to the bad old days, pre-1978, when exclusion was the norm. However, it presents evidence that inclusion is not always right. I was particularly pleased with the Committee’s visit to my constituency in Essex, where it examined special needs education in the aftermath of the closure of The Leas special school in Clacton-on-Sea. Inclusion was used to drive numbers down at the school and to justify its closure, which has created enormous problems for local families and particularly for the children who have been forced into the mainstream as a result of that outrageous decision. Families have had to deal with bullying problems and the disruption of their children’s education, which has caused a great deal of trauma. As one parent said to me, ““Life is tough enough as it is, trying to raise a child with special needs. It is a lot tougher when you know that some remote bureaucrat is trying to shut your child’s school.”” I commend the report for its recognition that inclusion is not always the answer and that a one-size-fits-all policy does not suit everybody. The second achievement of the report is that it nails down responsibility. Town halls and local government are not the driving force behind the policy that I call ““enforced inclusion.”” The report makes it clear that it emanates from Whitehall. It mentions the 2004 SEN paper ““Removing Barriers to Achievement””, saying that the Government set out their position in their guidance to local authorities. It says that the policy of enforced inclusion is driven by statutory and non-statutory guidelines that make it clear that it is Whitehall’s policy and there is no point in blaming town halls alone, although I believe that a good measure of criticism is merited for some town halls. The report states that"““it is reasonable for those involved in SEN to assume that the Government holds a policy of inclusion””." Despite the evidence that Lord Adonis, that famous unelected politician, gave us, he does not really have any wiggle room. The centre must take responsibility for the policy. My criticisms of the report—they are moderate criticisms—arise because having correctly understood the problem of enforced inclusion, or what I might call ““inclusion without choice,”” it fails to offer an effective remedy. It falls back on the default mindset of pretty much every post-war politician, recommending more government as the solution, but an intrusive central Government created the problem in the first place. Baroness Warnock was brave in 2005 when she condemned the policy of which she was herself the chief architect, but she was guilty of recommending a top-down solution to a top-down problem. She talked about creating a national commission to find an alternative to the national policy of inclusion. The problem is that the policy of special needs education is formed by remote experts. We should not replace the policy of inclusion with another top-down policy devised by such people. We know that inclusion can work; we know equally that it sometimes does not. The problem with the term ““national policy of inclusion”” is in the first two words, ““national policy,”” not the last. We need to scrap the idea of having a central national policy. It is not a matter of swinging the pendulum back from the centre towards a policy that is slightly less inclusionist; it is about allowing local choices that suit local children. We must rid ourselves of the idea that we need a one-size-fits-all policy on special needs education. There are huge differences between children with special needs. Even within families there can be big differences, with parents choosing to send some children to mainstream schools and others to special needs schools. Even in a child’s school career there can be occasions when both mainstream and special schools suit their circumstances. I therefore oppose the idea of a national framework, which is why I have issued my own version of chapter 5 of the report. A national framework would set in place the mechanism for policy from on high, when we should be seeking policy from down below. A national framework is unimaginative and is the default mindset. I propose a radical alternative that would allow inclusion and special schools and a co-existence between the two ways of dealing with special needs. Before I outline my idea, I wish to deal with the matter of the postcode lottery. It is often claimed that that is what we have in the provision of special needs education, and it is true that there is huge variation; one of the report’s findings is the extent to which special needs provision varies depending on where one lives. In fact, it is a lottery in the literal sense of the word: people have to put up with what they are given. It is chance, rather than choice or design, that determines the special needs provision for a child depending on where they live. Giving greater laissez-faire responsibility to town halls without proper accountability to parents would only exacerbate the situation. We need to push power not from Whitehall to town halls but directly to parents. Parental power is the solution, not LEA power. One might say that we need double devolution. Instead of making LEAs more upwardly accountable to the experts in Whitehall through a national framework, they should be made downwardly accountable by giving parents new legal rights. I propose that we give parents and guardians of every child with a statement a legal right to request and receive control over their child’s share of local authority funding. That would mean a radical overhaul of the statementing process, and would require statements not only to specify in great detail the intended outcome for that child, but to quantify a form of financial entitlement enforceable through the courts. I am open-minded about who should make the decision and who should quantify the amount of entitlement, and I fully take on board the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) made. However, it is the parents and the guardians who should control the money. As one witness to our Committee put it, the money could be velcroed to the child. That would solve the problem of SEN funding dissolving into the system without meeting the needs of the child and in many cases would give a real choice of the setting in which the education was received—mainstream, special school or a mixture of the two. There is a danger in creating new independent structures to deliver special needs education. It is tempting to say that the system involving town halls and LEAs does not work and to look for alternatives that involve new independent bodies. However, one person’s independent body is another person’s unaccountable quango. Pluralism should be the answer in delivering special needs education. Let 1,000 flowers bloom. Pluralism with choice should drive up standards in SEN provision. It is the current top-down provision that has provided us with the postcode lottery. Finally, I add two sentences. The tone of the Government’s response suggests a bureaucracy that is at best flustered and at worst somewhat arrogant. I regret the Government’s limited response to the Committee’s important report, which addresses a topic of concern to mums and dads throughout the country who are not too interested in party politics.