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Special Educational Needs

First, I pay tribute to the enormous amount of good work involved in special needs provision. Unfortunately, as we all know, not all the allocated provision is giving what individual children need. Secondly, I congratulate the Chairman of the Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), and his Committee on producing an excellent report that is also timely. It is perhaps just in time for some children, and I hope that it is not too late for many others. The report is timely because it is essential that we face the fact that many parents and their children have been and are getting a raw deal. Many parents have been forced into adversarial situations in which they are fighting for their children’s rights. I recently met a local support group for parents of children with autism and I came away with these words ringing in my ears, ““Why do I continually have to fight?”” Of course, there are others who have not been in a position to keep up the fight. Why should parents and carers of children with special needs be constantly engaged in battles, sometimes from the moment of birth? I am talking about pre-school, the choice of primary and secondary schools, statements, resources and specialist support in school, including speech therapy, and post-16 education. What choices are offered at that level? That is not to mention dealings with the health service and social services for respite care. I have been proud to serve on the commission for children with disabilities, to which other hon. Members referred. The Government response to the report makes much of the ““Every Child Matters”” agenda and the requirement that all local authorities carry out an audit and record in their children and young people’s plan how services will be provided locally according to need. It states:"““The audit should then lead to integrated commissioning arrangements for services through children’s trusts, which involve links to Primary Care Trusts for health services…This is happening in practice””." I have examples of where it is still not happening as it should. It is incredibly complacent to make that statement in the response, and we have a long way to go. Although I commend the Government on, for example, the early support programme—I am pleased that that will be rolled out nationally—and the endeavours to promote joint working, we are not there yet. Areas of agreement have emerged between the Committee, many interested organisations and, indeed, the Government in their response. For example, I concur with what many other hon. Members said about the training of teachers. Important points were also made about the SENCO—the special educational needs co-ordinator—being brought into the senior management team. Other aspects of teacher training were mentioned. Of course, it is important for all teachers to receive training throughout their career. Teachers have to be able to understand and respond to the needs of individual children, while having a good knowledge of conditions such as dyslexia, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—obviously, I could go on. I designate statements as a battleground, and the Committee says that it has been a long time since the flaws in the system were pointed out. To statement or not to statement? I have been a chairman of education and the situation is very difficult. One desperately wants to get the resources through to the children so that one can help to support them, and the statement process can get in the way, but parents do not have any confidence in the system unless the child has a statement. I agree with the Committee that there is a case for a national framework, but I would want quite a lot of local flexibility. I want to touch on the Committee’s recommendation on what I would call the separation of functions in respect of statementing. There is identification and prescription on one hand, and commissioning on the other. I sincerely concur that there has to be a separation of those functions. Otherwise, the system cannot work, and it does not work. Again, I have agonised about that as a chairman of education, but what surprises me is the number of objections that the Government put up against the proposal. It is utterly unreasonable to throw the whole idea out of the window on what are false arguments. It needs to be investigated properly and we need to see how it can work. Of course, there is a monetary implication, and although I would not go as far as the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Carswell), we have to face the fact that the cost of giving an individual child the right provision might come to £100,000 a year. That is very difficult for a small authority. We have to get to grips with that, because it makes the conflict even greater when a small authority knows that the budget will go absolutely haywire. The Government response concedes that statements must be completed in the statutory time scale of 26 weeks. We are told:"““The Secretary of State takes very seriously any failure to meet the statutory time scale””." Why, then, are the Government not responding to the serious situation involving educational psychologists? At the relevant point in the Government response, I have noted in the margin ““outrageous””. As the report says, and as a number of professionals in the area have said over the past few years, there is a crisis in the funding for the training of educational psychologists. How, then, can the statements be completed? This September, the profession moved from a one-year master’s degree training for psychology graduates with teaching experience to a three-year doctorate for psychology graduates with some experience of working with children. Historically, the one-year programme was funded by local government through a top-slicing arrangement. With the end of that arrangement, no funding mechanism appears to be in place at all. It has been suggested to me that the only way to fund educational psychologist training is for the local authority to employ a trainee on a trainee salary and pay their university fees for three years. The estimated cost over three years is about £90,000. My contact in a local authority suggests that that funding could be provided only by reducing the number of educational psychologists that the authority employs. That is an enormous crisis. The importance of educational psychologists is covered in many reports. For example, the Steer report on discipline acknowledges how very important their function is.