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Special Educational Needs and Disability (Support) Bill

One of the things that I find most disappointing and disconcerting about the SEN debate is that all too often, whatever the intentions of its participants, it tends to boil down into a kind of ping-pong match in which the players are expected to be either the advocates of wholesale inclusion on one hand or the supporters of special schools on the other. The argument that I have sought consistently to make, when challenged as to the side of the argument upon which I fall, is that what I believe is necessary if we are effectively to cater to the needs of SEN and disability children across the country is a continuum of provision. We need mainstream schools, with support, to cater to the often quite modest and maybe temporary needs of some SEN children. We also need language units or other resourced provisions, attached to and forming part of mainstream schools, in which the appropriate designated children will spend a proportion of their time as part of their school experience, and we need special schools. We have to have that mix. If my hon. Friend asks me towards which form of provision the Bill leans, I shall be candid with him and say that it does not lean in any one particular direction. I am trying, perhaps inadequately, to take a holistic view of the situation by asking what is the overall problem, and how we can lever in appropriate policies, mechanisms of support, streams of funding and demonstrations of Government priority to secure improvements, in the hope that those improvements for the sector and all the children in it will come about over a period.