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Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill

I join all the other Members in the House today in congratulating the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson) on presenting her private Member’s Bill. It has spurred on an incredibly constructive and useful debate, which will, I am sure, be the start of many more. The hon. Lady spoke with passion and conviction. She painted a vivid picture of the reality of the problems faced by the parents of children with special educational needs and highlighted the importance of all those children reaching their potential. I congratulate her on her courage in bringing her personal experience into the debate. The support she has received from both sides of the House is—as she said to me in a quick note yesterday—because so many of us share similar experiences of special educational need, either through our constituency work or through our families. In my Basingstoke constituency, I know of the incredible work of parents, support groups and teachers. They work tirelessly for the support that their children require if they have particular special educational needs. The hon. Lady made the important point that her Bill should not be an additional burden on schools; we should rationalise the data that are collected and focus on what will create a real difference in helping children with special educational needs to do better in the classroom. The hon. Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove) picked up on that point when she said that we cannot continue to let children fall through the net. A number of hon. Members spoke about the scale of the problem that we face. The hon. Member for South Swindon talked about the problem of interpreting that scale given the diversity of special educational needs and—these are my words, not hers—the unsophisticated way in which they are assessed by what she called the establishment. I take it that she meant the teaching establishment. We know from the briefing notes that we have received that the issue is not marginal. The problem is experienced by one in five of the total school population. There are clearly concerns about under-reporting, and the Bill will help with them in some way. As the Government’s SEN strategy said in 2004:"““Every teacher should expect to teach children with SEN – and we must ensure that they are equipped with the skills to do so””." Today’s debate would suggest that we have a way to go. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge in his response that there is still room for improvement. We have also heard from hon. Members about the human cost of undiagnosed or incorrectly supported special educational needs. The hon. Member for Worsley (Barbara Keeley) highlighted the significant attainment gap experienced by deaf children and how unacceptable that is given the nature of that special educational need. I was concerned to hear that the gap between deaf children and those with no special educational needs was 24 per cent. Other hon. Members talked about the economic costs of undiagnosed special educational needs. The Minister will leave the debate with a clear message that hon. Members from across the House feel that the situation cannot persist. The Bill is simple and straightforward. It plans to collect and publish information about outcomes for pupils with special needs and to place a spotlight on the quality and efficiency of special educational needs support that is delivered in schools and by local authorities. The type of data is key. An avalanche of data is available, but it is clearly not providing what is needed. My hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) has responsibilities on disabilities in the official Opposition, and so he speaks with a great deal of knowledge. He talked about the importance of information in driving up local standards. That was a good point, which we will need to consider when we look at the detail of the Bill in Committee. If we are trying to assist children and get the right support in classrooms, we need to ensure that those children are correctly supported in a way that will allow parents to understand what is available in schools and how they can get the best support for their children at a local level. The Opposition will support the Bill, because it will help parents to make better choices for their children. Importantly, it will highlight the gap between what we talk about in Parliament and local authorities and the reality of what is delivered on the ground, which we all know about as constituency MPs. We need to use the data that are collected to ensure that resources are focused where they matter—in the classroom. Unsurprisingly, the Bill has received a high level of support from many organisations. They have praised the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West for her campaigning work and for promoting the Bill. Dyslexia Action said:"““The Bill promises useful information that will help determine the state of affairs re SEN and give parents the clarity and evidence to help them secure support for their children””." The hon. Lady has also received support from the Joint Epilepsy Council, the RNID, the National Children’s Bureau, Xtraordinary People—a group that campaigns for dyslexic children—TreeHouse and many other groups. She is to be congratulated on the tremendous work that she has put into galvanising bodies to provide that amount of support. To focus the Minister in his response, I should like to quote from the briefing that TreeHouse sent to Members before this debate:"““It is hard to imagine how the government can have a strategic approach to autism, or other special educational needs, without holding SEN-specific statistics. TreeHouse therefore fully supports the SEN (Information) Bill and recommends that the government commits to a review of the data currently collected on SEN.””" It is surprising that those basic data are not in place, particularly as the Government have made many announcements over the past decade on special educational needs. Indeed, in the past 10 years, five out of six Secretaries of State for education have made significant announcements on special educational needs. They are fine words indeed, but Members who have taken note of those announcements might be forgiven—I hope that the Minister will forgive me—for feeling that listening to and re-reading those announcements is a little like ““Groundhog Day””. In 1997, in the Government’s Green Paper ““Excellence for all children””, the then Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), pointed out the importance of early identification and said that by 2002 there would be a clear structure for teachers’ professional development in special educational needs. The Labour party’s 2001 manifesto also mentioned, quite rightly, the importance of identifying children’s special educational needs earlier. In November 2001, the special educational needs code of practice was presented by the then right hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, now Baroness Morris of Yardley. The code of practice again pointed out the importance of teacher training to meet SEN children’s specific learning needs. By February 2004, in ““Removing Barriers to Achievement””, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) again said that all teachers needed to have skills, confidence and access to specialist advice where necessary in order to help children with special educational needs reach their potential, and that data and training needed to be improved. In October 2006, the national programme for professional development under the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) reiterated the need for continuing professional development and mandatory training for special educational needs co-ordinators. Last but by no means least, in December last year the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families reiterated in ““The Children’s Plan”” the importance of specialist training, better data and, this time, consultation on regulations regarding the training of SENCOs.