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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

In intervening in the general debate on these amendments, my eye has been particularly drawn to Amendment 115. Before you do anything else, an assessment and identification of those with any form of learning difficulty is vital. By definition, these people do not fit into the normal learning pattern and unless you know what you are dealing with you are going to get it wrong. The only question is the extent to which you get it wrong. Unless you identify the original problem, you will get it wrong. If the person has a hidden disability—such as dyspraxia and dyslexia, which is probably the most common—and you do not get it right, everything else you do will be inappropriate. If you identify the disability and confirm to the person involved that that is the reason why they have not succeeded and that it is not because they are intrinsically thick and cannot succeed, you will have taken the first step towards giving them a chance to engage in the system. This is primarily because you have told the person that their disability is the reason why they have not succeeded—or have not succeeded to a far greater extent—not because they are stupid. Those with hidden disabilities are often written off as being stupid, lazy or whatever, but if you can start that communication with them they stand a better chance of succeeding. I am particularly attracted to something that gives a proper assessment of that person. That means that you can start to communicate with them. Much of the rest of what goes on does not happen unless the person is willing to come to you. Anyone who has learnt anything about education knows that the first step is to get the other person willing to engage. If we do that and we are thus prepared—I am assuming that we are prepared at least to have a knowledge of what not to do with, for example, a dyslexic—then we will start to progress. Unless we get some form of assessment of what has gone wrong, though, we are not going to succeed. I hope that the amendments that follow the line of finding out what is there are worked into the Bill. They would have to be formalised because the staff are simply not well enough trained at the moment to do it without this. It would enable the rest of the provisions to stand a chance of coming into effect.