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Special Educational Needs and Disability (Support) Bill

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We must consider not only the cost of the in-house staff but the even greater cost of the external legal specialists who are employed by the local authority to fight the cases against these poor, unsuspecting parents. A enormous amount of money is wasted: witness the huge number of appeals—not just one or two—that are upheld in favour of the parents. That shows that the parents have a very strong case in an awful lot of those situations. I also want to talk about inclusion, to which I shall return, and about teacher training. We believe that, because speech and language development is the foundation of all education, all initial teacher training should include the teaching of some basic skills in identifying problems in this area. At the moment, such modules are all but unobtainable. In-service teacher training for speech and language special needs should also be more widely available, and schools should be encouraged to have at least one member of staff trained in that way. That goes to the heart of the first clause of the Bill. There is also evidence that, although an adequate number of speech and language therapists are being trained, there are not enough posts available for them. They therefore seek other employment and can often be lost to the profession. That is an obvious waste of resources, but this dysfunction could be remedied if recommendations that we have made on assessment and funding were to be accepted. I shall come back to that shortly. My hon. Friend referred to the "dark abyss of nothingness" in relation to secondary-level provision. There is certainly evidence that many secondary school pupils, as well as those in further education, find it difficult, if not impossible, to access appropriate speech and language therapy. Best practice really needs to include better transition arrangements when a child with a special educational need moves up to secondary school and then on to further education. At the moment, such arrangements simply do not exist. A further problem exists with information transparency and accountability. Evidence suggests that many parents of children with special educational needs often feel that they have been left without much understanding of their child's needs and of how they can assist. Best practice should ensure that proper feedback and assistance are given to parents. That aim was also part of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West last year. Best practice should also include better support for carers from the relevant agencies. We support moves to encourage schools to publish more transparent information about their record, and about their facilities for SEN pupils, which could form part of the Ofsted inspection process. That relates to the second clause of my hon. Friend's Bill. It is particularly relevant to the problems with joined-up thinking that have already been highlighted. My hon. Friend has given the House many worrying statistics. He said that 40 per cent. of children with autism were bullied at school. In surveys of staff at schools, many readily admit that they are ill prepared to give proper support to children with special educational needs. Teachers acknowledge that they are struggling. My hon. Friend has alluded to the poor educational achievement by too many children with special educational needs, but I do not think that he mentioned that 75 per cent. of children in pupil referral units had special educational needs. That is another moot point. It is absolutely right that we take this problem seriously. It is a false economy not to do so. Further figures show that disabled adults are half as likely to be in employment as people without a disability. Only 15 per cent. of adults with autism are likely to be in full-time paid employment. It is essential—and, of course, absolutely right—that we get early detection, early intervention and early provision absolutely right, as the Bill seeks to do. As hon. Members have said, we are not just talking about learning disabilities. The word "disability" appears in the title of the Bill, and it covers not only physical disabilities but mental illnesses, whose treatment is very much a Cinderella service. The hon. Member for Wakefield mentioned children and adolescent mental health services—CAMHS—in this context. The hon. Lady and my hon. Friend touched on the subject of deaf children. The National Deaf Children's Society has said that deaf children are 41 per cent. less likely to achieve five GCSEs, and that 28 per cent. fail to achieve level 3 at key stage 2 English, compared with just 6 per cent. of all children. More that 80 per cent. of deaf children attend mainstream schools, but an NDCS survey for the "Must Do Better" report on the educational underachievement of deaf children found that one in four parents felt that the deaf awareness of their child's teacher was not good. This is all about proper communication with staff and between schools and teachers. The crazy thing is that none of that is new; this has been going on for far too long. We had more reports this year. The report back in February from Sir Alan Steer on behaviour in schools urged action to tackle the disproportionate exclusion of children with special educational needs. We need to think a lot more smartly about how we exclude children from school and, more importantly, about what they go on to outside the school if they are excluded. My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham also mentioned the excellent preliminary findings in the inquiry by Brian Lamb, who made a number of recommendations, including that""SEN and disability training for all school improvement partners working in mainstream schools";" that""Ofsted's parent questionnaires should include questions for parents of SEN and disabled pupils";" and that""Local authority websites should include SEN policies and disability equality schemes for all schools in their area."" Brian Lamb also highlighted the fact that too much bureaucracy is associated with SEN and recommended the scrapping of the obligation on schools to produce so many policies relating to SEN provision. We are in danger of not being able to see the wood for the trees. A lot has gone on, but the quality of the outcomes leaves a lot to be desired.