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Speech and Language Difficulties (Education)

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) on securing the debate and on speaking so powerfully about a subject on which he obviously has a very deep interest. He talked about a continuum applying to children who have deafness and hearing impairment, and that continuum necessitates a diversity of provision when it comes to education. I am fortunate that there are a number of specialist schools in my constituency which deal with many learning difficulties, including speech and hearing impairment. I am referring to Maple Ridge school, Dove House school, The Loddon school and Limington House school. All are of immense value to our community in north Hampshire. The commitment of the staff and the leadership of the head teachers mean that the children in my community who have perhaps more severe needs are dealt with in a way that is a credit to both our community and our education authority. In considering the delivery of education to the children on the continuum that my hon. Friend talked about, we should also consider the importance of provision for those who can attend mainstream schools. Hon. Members may well have seen a report issued by Ofsted in July this year which said that obviously there are sometimes difficulties in providing specialist units in mainstream schools, but when there is effective qualified specialist teaching, those units can be immensely valuable for children who have these needs, particularly speech and hearing impairment. The National Deaf Children’s Society feels strongly that it is important that there are choices of mainstream provision for children who have to deal with such problems. Its chief executive, Susan Daniels, has said that choice is important, but also draws out the problem that choice is rare and urges local authorities to do more by way of forward planning and to work with neighbouring authorities to ensure that such choice is available in local communities. My hon. Friends talked about the lottery of provision. Perhaps I, in Basingstoke, am fortunate to have drawn the right numbers, or perhaps I just have an excellent local education authority that understands the importance of both specialist provision and provision of education in mainstream schools for children with hearing impairment and deafness. In my constituency, there is a local pyramid of schools with deaf and hearing impaired units. At secondary level that is provided at Aldworth science college, and at junior and infants level it is provided at Park View infant school and Park View junior school. We are very fortunate to have those facilities locally for children who have that particular need, providing the sort of choice that the National Deaf Children’s Society has advocated so strongly. My concern is that each of those three valuable units faces the threat of closure. That threat exists for one simple reason: the local authority needs to consider their viability. Of course, when specialists in education talk about viability, they look at numbers, but I believe they also look at the money. Although Hampshire has an excellent local education authority, it receives one of the lowest dedicated school grants in the country, as I am sure the Minister is aware. The formula certainly does not work in the favour of the children in my constituency. The loss of those three units would be a great loss to my community. It would mean a loss of expertise in teaching. When one visits those schools and talks to their head teachers, it is clear that that expertise has been built up not just over recent years, but over a lifetime of dedication to serving children who have those particular needs. It would also mean a loss of teaching in the community for children with those needs. They already face great difficulties, which many of us would find difficult to contemplate for ourselves. To remove the choice so that they have to be shipped out to schools that are not in their community—I know that constituents of many hon. Members are in that situation—is a very retrograde step. It is perhaps worth drawing out one other line of thought, which has been brought to my attention locally by health visitors. As my hon. Friend said, health visitors have an important role because they see children very early in their lives and are often integral in identifying hearing problems at an early age. I was therefore most concerned to hear from mothers and health visitors about the loss of the eight-month check for young children in Basingstoke and the north Hampshire area. In the context of reviewing a child’s development, that check is important for many reasons, but one of its most important aspects is to check a child’s hearing, just as it is important to check language and speech development at the age of two. Both those checks are being put to one side in north Hampshire because of financial pressures. That is another retrograde step, and I would appreciate the Minister’s comments on it. As my hon. Friend said, late intervention in speech and language matters can create enormous future problems for children. We should be concerned about the loss of the ability to identify those concerns early in a child’s life through health visitors, and we should seek a Government response. We should not be looking for the closure of the units in my constituency. If anything, we should be thinking about how to increase the support for those units in future. My hon. Friend talked about effective education of deaf and hearing-impaired children, and that is indeed what we should be focusing on, through specialist schools as well as by supporting units in the mainstream sector. I want to hear what the Minister would like to do to support local authorities such as mine, which are, frankly, struggling to support specialist units in the community. We need to do all that we can to ensure that the group of children in question, who face immense problems as it is, are not dislocated from their community. They already face significant challenges and we should do all that we can to reduce the pressure on them and their families, rather than increasing it by closing units.