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Special Educational Needs

I commend the Select Committee on its excellent report. I intend to be brief, because I want to focus on a specific and extremely important issue identified by the Committee—that of collaboration between, and the co-location of, mainstream and special schools, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) and several other of my hon. Friends. I strongly support the Committee in what it says at paragraph 360. It urges the Government to"““resolve apparent contradictions in its strategy outlined in the Education and Inspection Bill between, on the one hand, giving greater autonomy to individual schools including a greater number of City Academies and, on the other hand, its SEN strategy that urges schools to be working in partnership to build collaboration to share resources and specialist knowledge.””" Those contradictions are more than apparent to two schools in the Oldham part of my constituency, because the lack of joined-up thinking in those elements of Government education policy is seriously putting at risk one of the best and most successful special needs initiatives that we have seen anywhere in the country in recent years. A few years ago, Oldham council took the wise and bold decision to invest in a new purpose-built school to consolidate its special educational needs provision into one state-of-the-art special school. The boldness of that decision was to co-locate what we now know as New Bridge school on the same site as the existing mainstream Kaskenmoor school in the Hollinwood area. The potential benefits of co-location were rightly heavily promoted by the council during consultation. Co-location is now into its second year, and the gains have exceeded all expectations. Both schools have benefited significantly from being located on the same site, to the extent that they are now a living example of the kind of facility that the Select Committee so strongly recommends. There are many instances of day-to-day collaboration, interaction and sharing of resources on the campus, which increasingly sees itself as a learning village rather than two schools on the same site. I shall give one example of what that means. Kaskenmoor and New Bridge schools recently entered the Kielder challenge, with a team of four young people from each school. It is an outdoor adventure competition for children aged between 13 and 16, with and without disabilities, from schools and youth centres throughout the United Kingdom. More than 200 teams entered the challenge and the New Bridge-Kaskenmoor team won an award as the team that was"““the most unified, friendly, and integrated throughout the weekend””." That is the reality and the benefit of co-location and collaboration between special needs and mainstream schools. It is also the realisation of the Committee’s recommendations and of the Government’s ambitions as voiced by Lord Adonis. When he gave evidence to the Committee in March, he referred to Government policies as seeking to"““bring together special schools and mainstream schools in terms of their interaction””," and bringing"““special schools and mainstream schools in closer proximity, which through Building Schools for the Future will be more possible as there is a complete rebuilding of school estates””." I know from what Lord Adonis said to me during his visit to the New Bridge-Kaskenmoor campus earlier this year that he believed he was witnessing the realisation of that policy approach and that it really worked. Paragraph 360 of the Committee’s report recommends that the Government should"““provide specific funding to local authorities to increase the extent to which they are able to facilitate and encourage collaborative arrangements where communities of schools work together, sharing facilities and professional expertise, to improve the outcomes for children with SEN””." We are already at that stage in Oldham, and New Bridge-Kaskenmoor is the embodiment of the Committee’s recommendation. It is no surprise that the local council with the vision to create such a campus is also bidding to be part of the early wave of funding for ““Building Schools for the Future””. What is surprising and even shocking is that in its plans for ““Building Schools for the Future””, Oldham council proposes to close Kaskenmoor and, in doing so, bring that flagship example of co-location of mainstream and special needs provision to an end. The academy that is likely to serve as the replacement for Kaskenmoor will be on a different site and away from New Bridge. The main factor in causing Oldham council to propose this incoherent plan is that it has been made crystal clear that its best hope for inclusion in an early wave of ““Building Schools for the Future”” funding is for it to embrace the academy principle. It is being steered towards a bid that, to be acceptable, should include at least two and possibly three academies. The inevitable consequence of that is that several secondary schools will need to be closed to be replaced by academies. The candidates for closure are the schools that have had lower levels of academic attainment and, measured against past performance, Kaskenmoor would fall into that category as GCSE A to C results have been below floor targets. However, this year we have seen a remarkable improvement and attainment levels have doubled. The school is on a clearly improving path and the prediction based on current year 11 performance is for another step change improvement in the next round of results. It is impossible to prove that co-location and collaboration with a special needs school has brought about those results. Although I firmly believe that that is the key factor, new leadership for the school has also been important. The cohort of Hollinwood children who have benefited from the country’s first ever Sure Start unit are now coming through to Kaskenmoor and, until recently, three of Kaskenmoor’s feeder schools were in special measures. The turnaround of those schools is also having an impact. The point at which those and many other measures are starting to come together to allow the young people of Hollinwood to succeed is surely the wrong time to talk about closure and depriving the community of the school it so clearly identifies as its secondary school. At the same time, closure would risk destroying the synergy and on-site collaboration that has served mainstream and special needs so well at New Bridge and Kaskenmoor schools. It is ironic that, as a consequence of an inflexible, ideological attachment to driving through academies as a condition for accessing ““Building Schools for the Future”” funding, what we are witnessing in Oldham is the exact opposite of the policy that the Committee urged the Government to adopt. It is also the exact opposite of what Lord Adonis predicted when he forecast that special schools and mainstream schools would be brought into closer proximity through ““Building Schools for the Future””. As far as Oldham is concerned, Lord Adonis was wrong. I hope that the debate will encourage a rethink and cause Ministers and officials to take a critical look at the negative consequences for special needs education inherent in Oldham council’s ““Building Schools for the Future”” proposals. Lord Adonis has a strong commitment to the co-location of mainstream and special school provision and a genuine understanding of the benefits for all the pupils involved. I hope that he will act to ensure that where such provision exists and is clearly working, it is not dismantled in the rush to implement other new initiatives.