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Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill

I shall speak briefly. I listened with interest to the intelligent remarks of the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke). Like her, I am a member of the all-party parliamentary group on dyslexia and heard the Secretary of State's address at the meeting. The hon. Lady made the point that the notion of special needs goes far wider than dyslexia, and there are a variety of other special needs that many of us would accept are not being properly addressed in our school and educational systems. Dyslexia is more typical, however, and I am afraid to say that there are a number of people, including teachers, who still do not accept that dyslexia exists. I am absolutely convinced that there is a strong genetic component involved, and we heard that on Second Reading from hon. Members who are dyslexic themselves and have dyslexic children. We have some way to go to convince some teachers that dyslexia really exists. There may even be something of a genetic pool in Britain because it seems that we suffer more from dyslexia than other countries. It might be a factor that affects Britain in particular. The hon. Lady talked about parents and I am one of those Members—I am sure that there are others—who have had struggles with their local authority over provision for children with special needs. Parents are sometimes at their wits' end trying to get such special needs provision. Knowing what is available, as the hon. Lady said, is at least a start, but many parents do not know about it. They may be unaware of what their child's problem is; they may know that they have a problem, but are not sure what it is. Another issue to consider is the range of special needs and their severity. Some conditions are mild and some are more extreme, and that is particularly so in respect of behavioural and learning difficulties. Physical disabilities are more obvious, and there is often reasonable provision for physical disabilities of one sort or another. Some behavioural problems may be genetic, and some may be environmental. We hear almost by the week of chemical factors in food that affect children, for example, so other factors are involved. Ensuring that parents are aware of what is available is important, and in my constituency, the local authority have made provision available in schools. Some have special units for behavioural problems, and there are some remaining special schools, although there was a fashion, which I hope is coming to an end, for closing special schools and forcing children into mainstream schools, which, in my view, were not necessarily appropriate for those children. The teachers and parents certainly think that, but the local authority sometimes has a view—a dogma, almost—that inclusion at all costs is the best approach. There are local special schools, and there are also, for smaller numbers of young people and children with more rare difficulties, residential schools, which may serve a much wider area. I have suggested, among other things, that public provision made by a group of local authorities in a region might be the way forward. Making information available is absolutely crucial to take pressure off parents, so that they do not get to the point where they are so desperate that they go to see their Member of Parliament. A battle may then ensue, which sometimes becomes public, to get the provision that they need. Providing information is crucial so that parents at least know what they can ask for from the local authority, and so that the authority cannot sidle away from its responsibilities. My wife was a infants school teacher—she is now retired—and was the special needs co-ordinator in that school, and other relatives of mine and many of my friends have been teachers. Their minds are focused on the problems of children with special needs in their classes, not just because they are concerned about the children, but because they are concerned about the other children in the class and about the difficulties of teaching children with behavioural problems. We are moving in the right direction now, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will tell us more, but we recognise that we need to make better and more specialist provision available for children with special educational needs. I very much welcome the Bill and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson) on introducing it. I have been an enthusiastic supporter of her in that process because I have seen so much of the difficulties in question at first hand and the sort of unhappiness they can cause to children, parents and the communities in which they live. It is also economically sensible to address such matters because behavioural difficulties can lead to all sorts of social behaviour that is costly to society.