---

Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He has made my next point for me. The Minister will take my comments in the constructive spirit in which they are meant, but it is not a question of making pronouncements on the issue; it is about putting the procedures and processes in place to ensure that those important ideals are carried through into the classroom, and to secure the outcomes that the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West seeks—data and positive reassurances that the policies are a success on the ground. The Bill is a clear and straightforward document. It states that it wishes to secure"““in particular, the provision of special needs information which would, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, be likely to assist the Secretary of State or other persons in improving the well-being of children in England with special educational needs.””" However, the type of data is key. An avalanche of data has already been collected but, as has been said, it does not help or inform us as much as we need. Several critical pieces of information could be collected and published that directly affect outcomes for pupils with special needs and would place a spotlight on exactly what the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West wants: better delivery for children in the classroom. I hope that the Under-Secretary will comment on that in his response. I want to consider three matters, which I hope we can consider in Committee. The first was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Fraser), who gave me a note to say that he has unfortunately had to leave the debate early because of a pressing constituency engagement to visit two schools, which have recently been awarded specialist school status. He sends his apologies for not being here. However, he mentioned the importance of giving teachers the skills to support children with special educational needs and of taking into account children’s very different learning needs. I therefore suggest to the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West that we should ascertain whether there are ways of including in the Bill a provision for detailing the availability by school of data on teachers, classroom assistants or SENCOs who are trained in identifying special educational needs early or, indeed, to teach children with special educational needs. In 1997, the Green Paper ““Excellence for all children”” clearly stated that there should be a structure for teachers’ professional development in SEN. In 2004, the Government stated:"““Every teacher should expect to teach children with SEN and we must ensure that they are equipped with the skills to do that effectively””—" little wonder, given that one in five children have special educational needs. Yet when, in my research for the debate, I approached the Library, which is an oracle for information that the Government have made available, it could not find any official statistics on the number of trainee or qualified teachers who had received SEN training at any point in their career. However, there is a huge paper trail of teachers’ feelings about being ill equipped to meet the wide range of special educational needs that they face in the classroom. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) does excellent work in the Select Committee that he chairs. The then Select Committee on Education and Skills considered training in July 2006. Its report stated:"““Based on evidence that demonstrates the level of need and demand from the teachers for training on SEN, SEN training should become a core, compulsory part of initial teacher training for all teachers. The Government should restart negotiations with TDA on these grounds and… SEN training””" should be"““part of initial teacher training, induction and continual professional development.””" The report continued:"““We recommend that the Government fully implements its own strategic approach to training outlined in the SEN strategy putting into practice the ‘triangle of needs’ in order to achieve the proposed three tiers of specialism””." It also stated that little progress had been made since 2004. Ofsted reiterated that point in July 2006. It commented on the importance of providing extra resources, emphasising that those resources need to be specialist teachers. The hon. Member for Stourbridge (Lynda Waltho) spoke with personal experience of the problems faced by teachers as a result of inadequate training and of the problems in getting SEN training as part of continuous professional development. She mentioned the resulting attrition rate among her teacher colleagues; a significant proportion of the people with whom she trained were lost. She said that the situation may have changed in respect of training and continuous professional development. However, although the Government have made very little assessment of that, just over a year ago the NUT undertook a comprehensive piece of research that suggests that what the hon. Lady hopes for is not going on in the classroom. The report dealt with teachers from a range of schools throughout the country, the vast majority of whom—86 per cent.—had not received specific professional development on severe learning difficulties. More than two thirds of teachers identified a lack of professional development as the greatest barrier to dealing with that group. Some 76 per cent. of the teachers had not received specific professional development on even moderate learning difficulties in the previous 12 months, and about 70 per cent. identified that as a significant problem. Only a quarter of the teachers in the report had received specific professional development on behavioural, emotional and social difficulties in the previous 12 months. The situation is perhaps what hon. Members fear in some of the more specific areas: only a third of the teachers felt confident about teaching children with dyslexia and only 28 per cent. felt so about teaching children with visual impairment. My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) will be concerned to hear that only 6 per cent. of teachers said that they had received specific professional development on teaching children with sensory impairment. The list goes on. As the report is not currently available on the NUT website—for technical reasons, I believe—I will make copies of it available to hon. Members if they want them.