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Education and Inspections Bill

moved Amendment No. 15: Page 74, line 42, at end insert- ““( ) The Secretary of State shall issue, and may from time to time revise, statutory guidance containing guidelines setting out aims, objectives and other matters, and such practical guidance as he thinks appropriate, in respect of the discharge by persons to whom this section applies of their functions under this section.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this amendment requests the sort of statutory guidance which the Government have recently put in place to address the important issue we have just been debating, but in this case it concerns training for teachers on the appropriate use of physical restraint, and in particular on children with physical or mental difficulties. We have been advised by the charity TreeHouse, the Advisory Centre for Education and the National Autistic Society. The Minister has stated that he is content with the current position and he has repeatedly assured us that the DfES is not aware that the current powers have caused any difficulties since 1998. However, the charities that have briefed us can all point to examples where school staff have made inappropriate physical interventions with no training and with serious consequences for pupils and adults. A couple of weeks ago a special report by Channel 4 News showed a case involving a six year-old girl with autism and other communication conditions which highlighted the lack of training on appropriate handling methods and proper post-incident procedures in a mainstream primary school. The six year-old girl was restrained firmly on several occasions. The girl’s treatment at school came to the attention of her parents only when she came home with ripped clothing. The parents requested a full incident log and found that their daughter had been held repeatedly, removed from classrooms and the toilet, and that staff had not received or requested training until the situation became known to the parents. No incident had been reported to the parents. A joint investigation by the police and the local authority found serious procedural errors in the school, which had no policy on physical interventions. The department has conceded that it does not collect data on the number of incidents involving pupils with SEN, but as the Channel 4 News investigation found from research it commissioned, many mainstream schools have been ““unaffected”” by the non-statutory guidance. What is the basis for the Minister’s assertion that the DfES is not aware that the current powers have caused difficulties, given the lack of monitoring and data collection? How can he say that when he does not really know? A DfES audit of allegations against teachers and other staff in the education service for September 2003-04 found that the largest number of allegations against staff arose from inappropriate physical handling in a mainstream secondary setting. A report by the National Foundation for Educational Research supports the argument that mainstream staff need to be better equipped to manage the challenging behaviours they are increasingly facing today. The report makes it clear that special schools, for which there is good guidance that is well known to them, have the highest frequency of incidents but the least likelihood of a complaint arising. It is pretty obvious why; their staff have proper training. Equally, the report goes on to note that mainstream schools have the fewest incidents but the highest number of complaints. They do not have proper training and they are not all aware of the non-statutory guidance. Plainly, behind this research and these case studies there is a very high human and financial cost of inappropriate interventions, in terms of exclusions, police time, physical injury, anxiety and the possible need for alternative, out-of-county placements. This issue is too important to be left to chance, by placing documents on the Teachernet website and leaving schools to carry out their own risk assessments. We believe that statutory guidance will ensure that all schools prioritise this issue when they come to consider their whole school behaviour and their inclusion and disability discrimination policies. This is the best way of ensuring that we achieve a more proactive, preventive and constructive approach across all schools. The Bill gives a clear statement of the rights of all members of the school’s work-force to use force where appropriate and necessary. We believe that there should be a countervailing responsibility on all schools—especially mainstream schools, where most children, with autism, for example, are educated—to train their staff effectively, so that they are as aware and as skilled as many staff in special schools are in how to deal appropriately with these situations. I beg to move.