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Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill

In Committee, I indicated that I wanted to return to the issue of information provided to parents by local authorities. In Committee, the Minister pointed to an existing duty on local authorities to provide information on their arrangements for special educational needs, including information on planning and reviewing special needs provision in their areas. He noted in relation to parent partnership services that the Department had issued exemplary guidance setting out minimum good practice and best practice for the provision of information, and he referred to the new duties under the Childcare Act 2006. I remain greatly concerned that although parents can access impartial information in theory, that is not necessarily the case across the whole country. Some research has come my way since the Bill was in Committee that underlines my feelings and the experience of my constituents. A survey by CentreForum of one third of all local authorities in England and Wales found that only 5 per cent. of them are meeting their legal duty to provide information about special educational needs provision. In 2001, the Government introduced a legal requirement for councils to publish information on their websites describing local special educational needs policies—obviously, the provision of information is vital for helping parents to negotiate a complex system. It has been suggested that local authorities are manifestly failing to provide the information required by law. Overall, just 5 per cent. of local authorities provided all the information that they are supposed to publish, while only 27 per cent. gave information about the funding available to support children in the school action and school action plus categories. The finding in the report that only 39 per cent. of authorities explain how they monitor the allocation and effectiveness of special educational needs spending and resource deployment is especially concerning. Lucy Wilkins, the report's author, has said that the last time that local authorities were surveyed in 2003, only 5 per cent. of them were publishing all the information that they are required to publish. Five years later, still only 5 per cent. are in full compliance with the law. That underlines the difficulties faced by parents in trying to access support for children with learning difficulties. From our constituency experience, we know how parents feel when they are not confident that they have information on all the options available to their children, and they have great difficulty in making and accessing the best choice. The report highlights the concerns that, while we are very happy with the general principles of the Bill, previous legislation required information to be published, but, according to that recent study, that information is not being provided. After all, parents, not politicians, are best placed to decide where and how their child should be educated, but how can parents access choice if they are not given the information that they need? I feel that it is important to introduce tough regulations, possibly in the Bill, to make it clear that information must be provided to parents. Personally, I am strongly in favour of the recommendation made by the Children, Schools and Families Committee in its first report in 2006 on special educational needs. It recommended local maps of provision. I understand that local authorities that already adopt a mapping approach report a marked improvement in practice and in parental confidence levels. For example, a senior officer at Wiltshire county council said that the detailing of the precise provision that parents can expect, depending on their child's needs, has helped make the system fairer and improved the quality of provision. Other local authorities report that the particular practice of mapping not only where the provision is but its exact details is very helpful and builds on the work of the pupil-parent partnerships. Following our Committee report, I should make it clear that when I pointed out that there were issues with pupil-parent partnerships, I was not criticising a particular one. However, there is a perception among the parents whom I meet here in the House of Commons and in my constituency, which has two children's services authorities, that pupil-parent partnerships are not independent. That is another issue that the Government need to consider. Overall, despite past legislation, there is a real information gap. One of the most important points is that parents of children with special educational needs should be empowered. However, they cannot be unless they have the necessary information in front of them. I would like there to be reconsideration of the new clause, which we tabled in Committee because I feel that there should be a lot more discussion and response and that the Department should be working to ensure that local authorities are meeting their existing commitments before we move towards more vague promises about more information. I should like to refer next to amendment No. 1, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) and I tabled after listening carefully to the discussion in Committee. The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) had tabled an amendment requiring an annual report, and I felt that there was a lot of merit in that proposal, although perhaps it was too precise in requiring an annual debate. I thought about the issue and have suggested that subsection (1) of new section 332D, which is entitled ““Publication of information””, should read, ““The Secretary of State must in each calendar year publish, or arrange to be published, special needs information which has been obtained under this Act and a report on how this may assist the Secretary of State or other persons in improving the well-being of children in England with special educational needs.”” In other words, the report should be widely available and should not contain only select information, which would mean that we did not know why the Secretary of State had decided that children's well-being would be improved. The amendment would provide some back-up for what is published. A debate following such a move would give clear indications for future policy and the improvement of future provision. If the amendment is not agreed to, I fear that we will just have a mass of information without an underlying set of purposes and without more detail than just ““improving the well-being”” of the child. It is easy to justify any amount of information in general terms, as important as that is. My amendment would give something much more specific and make sure that the focus was continually on improving the outcomes for children with special educational needs.