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Education and Skills Bill

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their kind remarks and for the passion that they have brought to this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, triggered—as he has done previously—an important and enlightening debate which gives me the opportunity, for which I am grateful, to put on the record some of the comments made in the letter I sent to noble Lords. It would be foolish of me to comment on Ministers coming and going, but I shall comment on their enthusiasm, which I am glad has been noted. I, too, am enthusiastic about this issue. However, noble Lords are not interested in that; they want to hear what we are going to do. I do not want to make any jokes about waiting for a Liberal Democrat Government, because we need to get on with the task. I thank noble Lords for the helpful discussions that we have had with my honourable friend, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, the Minister responsible for this matter in another place. I am absolutely sure that the debate will be the beginning of many conversations that we will have with your Lordships on this subject, to which I look forward. I share noble Lords’ concerns that we should continue improving the school workforce’s identification and teaching of children with special educational needs, and that we must continue improving educational provision in custodial settings, including for prisoners with learning difficulties. However, as noble Lords are aware from discussions and from the correspondence last week—I am glad that noble Lords found that helpful—we are currently addressing these concerns in ways that are different from those proposed in this amendment. There is already a statutory duty placed on schools to use their best endeavours to ensure that necessary provision is made for pupils with special educational needs. That is a very important duty. The professional standards for teachers require trainee teachers to demonstrate that they can make effective personalised provision for those they teach, including those who have special educational needs. The Training and Development Agency for Schools is encouraging training providers to use new specialist units which include material on learning and teaching for pupils with dyslexia or who require support with speech, language and communication. The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, is absolutely right to highlight the importance of high-quality training for all our educators. As the noble Lord, Lord Elton, is aware, although we cannot require higher education institutions to include these specialist units, we expect that, with support and encouragement, nearly all providers will be using them by the end of this year. I believe that that will meet noble Lords’ concerns about initial teacher training. We have also developed the inclusion development programme for the serving school workforce. In addition, we have asked Sir Jim Rose, who noble Lords recently had the opportunity to meet, to make recommendations on the identification and teaching of children with dyslexia. I think that he indicated at our meeting that he was drawing the definition of dyslexia quite widely. He will report early next year. We are also preparing our action plan responding to John Bercow’s important review of speech, language and communication provision, which we plan to publish before the end of the year. We have already announced £12 million to take forward his recommendations. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, raised concerns about the education of young people in custody. We intend to place statutory duties on local authorities to fund and commission education in juvenile custody. That will include legislation relating to those with special needs. In the mean time, we are developing training materials on dyslexia and speech, language and communication needs during 2009-10 for those responsible for the education of young people in custody. On the education of adults in prison, through the Learning and Skills Council we are broadening the assessment requirement for learning difficulties which is placed on offender learning and skills service providers, with effect from August 2009. As noble Lords are aware, the Learning and Skills Council is developing tools to identify additional learning needs and a training programme to support their use. I recognise noble Lords’ concerns about the need to do more for children and young people with dyslexia or speech, language and communication needs and the need to do more for offenders with those needs. I share those concerns and the sense of urgency. I hope that I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that we will be looking at the evidence in developing proposals for the new Session. We are taking practical steps to improve the position and undertaking expert reviews which we will take seriously and move forward on with speed. I appreciate that this is a subject that we will return to on many occasions, and I welcome that opportunity.