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Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We know about the cases that are diagnosed, and children born with FAS constitute the largest group of children with non-inherited disabilities, and their number is growing in the UK. At least with the Bill in place, we will be better able to plan, train and develop and ultimately improve the outcomes for those children. The Bill will be useful, too, at the regional and local authority level. My local authority, Dudley council, faces a £3 million overspend on children’s services. The leader of the council and the portfolio holder both attribute that to the growing number of children with special needs who require special assistance and education, often out of the borough. Many of those cases are at crisis point, which would be mostly avoidable with decent planning, based on the information that the Bill will bring to our attention. Knowledge of the numbers of children affected, as well as of the types of SEN, will assist such authorities in better planning so that there is less crisis management. At the school level, experts across the sector agree that there is insufficient information available adequately to determine the scale of SEN in our schools or to monitor the effectiveness of the support that SEN pupils receive. The Bill is the first step in equipping schools with the data they need to assess the progress of children with SEN and the effectiveness of individual schools’ support and strategy. At national, local and school level, improved information has a part to play in improving outcomes for children with SEN. As the Royal National Institute for Deaf People states in its briefing, the Bill has the potential to improve our understanding of what works; raise expectations; provide a better base to evaluate projects and progress; provide a secure basis for sharing good practice; improve our understanding of training and development needs; and provide a more secure basis for future national policy. Raising expectations is key for all children, but for children with SEN it is vital if we really do desire better outcomes. We can improve expectations only by improving our data and information on the children’s progress. That is the cornerstone to improving the outcomes for children with SEN so I, too, commend the Bill to the House.