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Special Educational Needs and Disability (Support) Bill

The symbiotic relationship between the hon. Gentleman and me on these matters is becoming increasingly uncanny. He says "frightening" and I am inclined to say "frightening" too, and the Tory Whips who despaired of me a long time ago will probably find it equally frightening and alarming—it will add to their rather paranoid conspiracy theory of the world. The truth of the matter is that the hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. I am quite attracted by the idea. My response is this: I do not really mind how it is done. If it is done by more staff carrying out the inspection on the same day as the rest of the school is inspected, if there are sufficient staff and a sufficient allocation of staff time—and expert time—to consider the SEN children on the same day, that is fine. If it is argued, however, that it is too difficult to do that, then by all means let us have a separate and dedicated inspection. My main gripe about present arrangements is that all too often the inspection is by way of giving a cursory glance at SEN provision in the school. I know that Ofsted has a duty to report to the Secretary of State about its overall view on education, including about catering to the needs of SEN and disabled children, but it seems to me that that is going to be very broad-brush unless copious reports from the local level are available. Unfortunately, they are often not. Anyone who has studied Ofsted inspection reports and looked at their special educational needs' features can testify that more often than not the references to SEN are few and far between. There is often, as I say, a cursory approach—a perfunctory, box-ticking, "let us get it out of the way" sort of reference to those issues, almost as an optional extra or periodic afterthought. Up with that, as Churchill would have said, parents and others are increasingly not willing to put—and they are quite right to be dissatisfied and to insist that we improve the arrangements. That leads me to clause 3, which focuses on the subject of permanent exclusions of children with special educational needs and disability. I know that there has been a litany of statistics in this debate, but for the avoidance of doubt, let me say that there is only one statistic that needs to be underlined because it is at the kernel of this debate: children with SEN or disability are no fewer than nine times more likely to be permanently excluded from school. What my clause 3 says—and it is a breathtakingly reasonable clause from a breathtakingly reasonable Member of the House, as I hope the Minister will be quick to acknowledge—is that no child with SEN or disability should be permanently excluded from school until a review has been undertaken of""the sufficiency and effectiveness of the reasonable adjustments"" that have been made under the Disability Discrimination Act in order to seek to continue to accommodate that pupil in school. Moreover, the clause says that in respect specifically of an SEN as opposed to a disabled pupil, the exclusion should not take place until the review has been undertaken of the special educational needs provision that is being made for that child. That seems to me to be entirely justified.