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Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson) on introducing the Bill. I am proud to support her Bill, which is a model of its kind. May I say how disappointed I am that the Press Gallery is not bursting at the seams? We in this House are criticised, rightly, when things go wrong. On days when we consider private Members’ Bills, many hon. Members promote Bills such as this one, which gain support across the House. They do noble things, yet the press are not present to listen. I understand that notable members of the Press Gallery have children with special needs, and it is a shame that the Bill will not reach the wider audience that it deserves. However, I am sure that we will do our best as individuals to ensure that it receives wide approbation in our constituencies. My hon. Friend has worked tremendously hard to gain Government and Opposition support for her Bill. She has had many meetings, which she has enjoyed, to negotiate with Ministers and others. I shall use that model for my private Member’s Bill once the Government finally decide which Minister is responsible for it—after all, it was published only two months ago. I have been involved in special educational needs since I was a volunteer assistant at a special school at the tender age of 16. It was as a result of that experience that I became interested in a career in education. As we used groundbreaking drama techniques and trust exercises with the young people, I also became interested in pursuing an educational drama career, which was quite unusual for someone from my school. It was tremendously inspiring and I remember that time well, even though it was many years ago. Since then, special educational needs training and teaching have come on in leaps and bounds, but we have still not done enough. People are still teaching in schools where the necessary information on the children that they are teaching is not gathered, and that teaching is not as good as it could be if we had the right information and could properly target in-house teacher training courses.