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Special Educational Needs and Disability (Support) Bill

I think that I shall draw a curtain around this particular aspect of the debate, save to say, if I may make so bold, that I am sure an extremely good source of reading for both prenatal and postnatal children would be some of the excellent books that you have penned, Mr. Deputy Speaker. To return to the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield made, what concerns me about appointments is not only that they are often held during the day in the case of children who are identified as having special educational needs. We must also consider prenatal appointments, and we need to examine much more closely the availability of time slots both for parents whose children have special educational needs and for those who have yet to have their children. A working mother, for example, has to take time out of her working day to attend appointments, whether they are formal, part of a support network, or a way of engaging with their small children later on. There needs to be a much better look at how we structure appointments, so that they are held not for the benefit of the staff but for the benefit of service users. My hon. Friend made very well an important point about violence. A case came to me, as a constituency MP, involving a parent of teenage child who had, in their earliest years, exhibited violent behaviour as a result of their special needs, which had never been formally picked up on and assessed. When the child was small it could be controlled, contained and dealt with, but as they got older and moved through the teenage years, there came the stage that my hon. Friend talked about. My constituent was effectively being beaten by an older teenage child. I understand that the response from the authorities, in the wider sense of the word, was, "Well, you'd better report it to the police." That is not what we want. We need to ensure that parents, and especially the young person concerned, get help and support, rather than involve the criminal system. That seems completely against what we should be looking to do, which is encourage people to come forward and ask for help and support. Thankfully, that situation has been satisfactorily resolved, but it flags up an important issue about violence and what happens around it. The target to reduce the number of statements has been mentioned several times today, but therein lies very dangerous ground, because, sadly, many local authorities throughout the country are already reluctant to investigate the root of statementing. If there were something behind which they could hide and say, "Well, it is a Government target that we do not have as many statements," I suspect and fear that some of the less progressive and less well-meaning authorities would use it as a fig leaf to mask their inaction and the great difficulty that some parents have in entering the statementing process itself. My local authority in Stoke-on-Trent has a good record on the time that it takes to process a statement, but I am yet to be convinced that it even scratches the surface in respect of those young people who need to be statemented. I shall now deal with the issue of stigma. I have had many experiences, with constituents and in previous occupations, of the positive and negative impacts of stigma. For example, when I was a councillor in the city of Birmingham, I was also on the governing body of a primary school, and we had an application for a child with a sight impairment. He wanted to go to the school and his parents were very keen for him to go, but because of his sight problems, involving difficulties in very bright light and with finding his way around, there was a concern on the governing body about whether the school would be able to cater for him. We successfully made sure that the school would be able to accommodate and welcome that young person, however, and the school benefited hugely from the experience. That young person entered a school with a warm and wonderful atmosphere. It was, and I believe still is, a very good school, and the interaction of the other pupils with that visually impaired pupil was superb. They learned so much and became more understanding and accommodating of somebody whose life experiences were outwith their own; and the adaptations and amendments that were required were straightforward and simple. That little bit of drive and forethought enabled the school to become accessible to someone with a visual impairment, and that is brilliant. More recently, I visited a primary school in my constituency—I am blessed with some absolutely excellent primary schools throughout my constituency—that has a pupil with Down's syndrome. I have known her through her family for a year or two, and she is a wonderful pupil. When I visited, a cooking session was taking place, and some pupils had been taken to it. Each week, there is great competition to be picked to take part in that Friday lunchtime session, and as I walked down the corridor, I saw that the pupils were in a small kitchen making some cakes. That was of great interest to me, given my sylph-like figure. The children were resplendent in chefs hats and outfits, we spoke, the head teacher showed me around, we talked with staff and, as we left and started to walk down to the next class to continue our tour of the school, the young lady in question, Nadia, who I am sure will forgive me for mentioning her name, emerged into the corridor. She had been learning French, and with a swoop of her arm—a gesture—she said, "Bonjour!" For me, that typifies both the properly supported integration of children with special educational needs, which is what we should be driving for, and how we should aim to ensure not only that every child matters, but that every disabled child matters, so that everybody is given the opportunity to grow their unique talents. As I mentioned, children without statements have even greater challenges than children who have been statemented. From what I have seen in the primary schools in my constituency and from my previous experience, I am concerned about some children who have not been statemented or not been through the system of identifying what extra support and resources. Often, such children are quite rightly given support, but in a school environment where the head teacher, the senior management or perhaps even the class teacher have recognised the need for additional support, but it falls to a worker in that school—be it a teacher or a welfare assistant—to support additional children who perhaps have additional needs. That misses the point. It is right that those children should have that support, but it should be given properly and in a way that ensures that their needs are properly assessed. Perhaps I can bring to my hon. Friend the Minister's attention to the need for a piece of work to be done whereby schools can be audited to find out how many of their children receive informal additional support, but have not been statemented. That might give us a much more accurate figure than the one that the hon. Member for Buckingham talked about at the start of his speech. Clause 1(2) states:""It shall be the duty of local authorities in England to ensure that all teaching staff employed in schools have sufficient training and expertise to provide an appropriate education"." We also need to ensure not only that teaching and non-teaching staff have the additional training and expertise to provide education for pupils with SEN, but that they have the ability to recognise pupils with SEN. All too often, the stereotypical view of a teacher in a primary school is of someone in a classroom with perhaps 30 demanding, curious and questioning pupils. With the best will in the world, unless that teacher or other members of staff, be they teaching or non-teaching staff, have the training to spot things and say, "That pupil responded in an interesting way in that lesson—we should find out whether there something that we should identify" or "That pupil there seems to be constantly withdrawn and seems never to want to engage," there will be another hurdle in giving our young people the additional support that they need. Not only should we ensure that staff—not just teaching staff, but non-teaching staff—have sufficient training and expertise to provide an appropriate education; we should ensure that they have the training to recognise when a pupil is demonstrating signs of special educational need. The other issue is ensuring that our schools up and down the country have enough trained staff—enough welfare assistants and teaching staff—to provide the proper level of education, whether it be formal education in a classroom setting or even just education in basic life skills and engaging in positive play in the playground. That reminds me that one key group of staff in many schools is the dinner supervision staff, whether they are on the catering side or working in support of it. When children are out playing at lunchtime, often the lunchtime supervisory staff also need the training and expertise to know how to deal with, assess and sometimes—dare I say it—cope with the demands of a child with special educational needs. We have some fantastic staff up and down the country. Indeed, the lunchtime supervisory staff and catering staff whom I have met on the rounds of the various schools in my constituency have always demonstrated the highest level of commitment to the children in their care, but it helps and rewards them more if they are given support and training.