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Education and Skills Bill

My Lords, I add my voice to those describing the enormous importance of this amendment. I am grateful that we have been able to hear an able defence of it. The crucial word in the amendment is in subsection (5), which says that anyone nominated for a full assessment should be entitled to receive ““appropriate”” support. It is of the greatest importance that schools, particularly when they deal with children under the age of six, should not be able to get away with saying that there is support and extra help, with classroom assistants and other people who can help these children to get started. Anyone who supplies support to children with dyslexia, or any of the range of problems coming under this heading, must have had special training and must be an expert. A non-expert may be full of good will but may do more harm than good to a child because she will not have the expertise and the child will not progress. The child will feel that his position is hopeless and will therefore get worse. A child, as we heard not long ago, can learn more in eight weeks from an expert than in many years from someone who has not been trained. I hope that, in the new Bill, it will be emphasised that when every child enters school they will be assessed and have appropriate access to a genuine expert teacher and not simply be propped up by someone who has not been trained.