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Speech and Language Difficulties (Education)

I am mindful of your injunction about the time, Miss Begg, and I shall try to let all my colleagues in. It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who is also my constituency neighbour. He spoke with great passion and knowledge and, if he will forgive me, it was not least an oratorical tour de force to speak for that long without a single note. I heard Lord Ramsbotham speak many years ago at a conference, and he made the point that if he had to sack every single member of staff in a prison at which he was governor, the last person that he would want to go through the prison gate would be the speech and language therapist. That remark struck me forcefully. As my hon. Friend has already mentioned, we must wonder how many people are languishing at Her Majesty’s pleasure for want of having speech and language difficulties addressed earlier. In my constituency, I have been aware of the general difficulty in speech and language provision for some time. In particular, it seems that there is a gap between the provision made by the Department of Health and that made by the Department for Education and Skills and the local education authority. I am not a great fan of local area agreements as I think that they are just another quango imposition on local authorities. I have said to my own local authorities that I will set them a simple test. If they can show me that the local area agreement in Bedfordshire can actually close the gap and get health services and education services working together to meet children’s needs, the agreement will be worth while. However, we will have to wait and see what happens. In my own county of Bedfordshire there are no specialist speech and language units. I understand that in the neighbouring county of Hertfordshire there are eight stand-alone speech and language units, whereas Essex county council recently closed all its speech and language units so all the provision is in mainstream schools. There is a patchwork of provision, differing according to local authority area. I am not saying that mainstream provision can never work, but it should be of concern that provision is so different in neighbouring local authorities. There is a patchwork lottery, no doubt for historic reasons, or reflecting the local taxpayer base and other issues. That is a matter of concern. I want to focus my remarks on one child in my constituency. She is a six-year-old little girl by the name of Jade Chambers who until recently attended Heathwood lower school in my constituency. I have visited the school and met the head teacher and other teachers, and overall it is a good school providing a good education. Jade Chambers was placed in the school, and when her needs were assessed in October 2005 the school made it clear that it was concerned that Heathwood lower school was perhaps not the right place for Jade to be educated. The local education authority did not agree with that assessment and Jade was placed in an enhanced language provision in the school. The aspect of that case that most concerns me and on which I want to focus the bulk of my remarks—I should be grateful if the Minister would provide some idea of his thoughts on it—is the issue of the physical restraint of all children. This is a debate on children with speech and language difficulties: Jade Chambers has speech and language difficulties. She is a six-year-old girl with the speech and language understanding of a three-year-old child, who has been placed in a mainstream setting. At home she is not a difficult child, but at school, because she does not understand what is going on around her, she often presents in a difficult manner to the extent that the police were called to the school on a number of occasions. Indeed, the police will be acting as witnesses at the special educational needs and disability tribunal for this case on 5 December. The issue that I find totally unacceptable is that a child can be repeatedly physically restrained in a school without the parents knowing that it is happening. I hope that the Minister is aware of the circular from the Education Act 1996 known as 10/98, which only provides guidance on that issue and is not mandatory. There are, of course, many reasons why schools will need—absolutely rightly, properly and correctly, although regrettably—to restrain children. They may be behaving appallingly badly or putting other children or staff in danger. Sadly, physical restraint is, of course, needed in our schools. However, the relationship between the child and the school is triangular, not linear. The parents are absolutely key and want to be part of the solution and to be integrally involved in ensuring the success of their children’s education. At the very least, they need to know whether physical restraint is being applied even once, let alone repeatedly, to a child. When we are talking about children with speech and language difficulties, a further issue is that these children cannot come home and tell their parents what is happening. The first that Jade Chambers’ mother knew about what was happening was when her daughter came home with ripped trousers, had a tremor on her lip and was barely able to describe what had happened. That is simply unacceptable. The Government have said that the Minister’s colleague in another place, Lord Adonis, does not know how many children are being physically restrained in our schools and that is unacceptable. We should gather those data, and some local authorities have made it mandatory as far as circular 10/98 is concerned. I do not know a lot about St. Helens council—I am not even precisely sure where it is—but it has made the policy contained in the circular mandatory. It has decided to do so in its capacity as a local education authority. The Minister will know that the Education and Inspections Act 2006 has actually given schools more powers in that area. Sadly, there is perhaps good reason and need for that—I understand that. But may we please have in tandem with that the requirement that parents are kept informed, and that there is training in the use of restraint? Account should be taken of a pupil’s age, gender and size, and the use of restraint should be properly recorded, with detailed notification being given in writing and orally to the parents when it has happened. In addition, Ofsted and a designated school governor should review the restraint registers.