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Education and Skills Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for what she said. There are within what she said hooks on which policies can be hung and, more importantly, urged forward in the months to come. Before I withdraw the amendment, I must emphasise the importance of getting to children early. My noble friend was talking about six; it is by six that the Jesuits need to get to a child to keep him for life, and I think the same can be said by the teachers of dyslexic children. That does not mean that you do not have a later screening, because some children slip through the net, and that is why the amendment provided for three screens. We touched on the question of cost. I have introduced the idea of screening as something less than assessment, with an idea that this would make it much less expensive. It is not rocket science to identify children with real difficulties, and I am glad that the Government are moving towards every initial teacher training programme having a compulsory module on identification of SEN. I am a bit puzzled by the academic inviolability, for two reasons. First, the Government fund the whole education programme and therefore they are the customer. They buy the teachers, so they can specify what they want to be produced by the producers. Secondly, there is something called the QCA which is supposed to have a voice in all of this and which, as far as I can make out, operates almost entirely at the behest of the Government. So I think that any problem there can be swept away. The real anxiety is money. My noble friend—or rather the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, although he is in fact my friend—put his finger on it: where there is more than one source of funding for one activity, no funding is forthcoming, just a cat fight. I hope that the Government’s decision to put this responsibility on to local education authorities will simplify that. However, as long as prisoners are banged up because of staff shortages due to overcrowding of prisoners, they will not be let out to receive the education. Therefore, it is essential that she and her successors pursue this matter with their colleagues who control the Prison Service. I add my thanks to those which other noble Lords who have spoken have given to the Minister for her courtesy and patience at our meeting with her. I also thank Sarah McCarthy-Fry for coming to listen to what we at this end of the Corridor are proposing so that she can understand it at the other. It is difficult to overstate the importance of what we are talking about. Every child is born with a divine spark of enthusiasm, intelligence and energy. When that comes up against a barrier of misunderstanding, the result is frustration and the deforming of a life. We now discover that an enormous proportion of our population—some 10 per cent, and at least 53 per cent of the prison population—are victims of learning difficulties. It is on their behalf, and the behalf of those who will follow them if we do not act, that I make this plea to the Government to carry on in the faltering but welcome steps that the noble Baroness has announced. With my thanks, hopes and a promise of not letting this matter go in the next Session or the next Parliament, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.