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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I will be delighted to help the Committee in that way. Coming to Amendments 118 and 136, the Bill inserts new Section 18A in the Education Act 1996 so that local authorities, in securing suitable provision for people in juvenile custody, will have to have regard to the desirability of enabling people to complete programmes of study that they have already begun. As I have said, that is extremely important and local authorities must have regard to any relevant curriculum and the desirability that the education should be comparable. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, asked what our aspirations are. We are clearly saying that our aspiration is that education in the community and that delivered in custody should be comparable, taking account of—and being tailored according to—individual needs. In the Our Future: Building a 21st Century Schools System White Paper, we talked a lot about small group work and one-to-one provision in communities, and that comparison is very important for young people in the juvenile setting. The duties have been carefully drafted to ensure that local authorities secure high-quality provision in juvenile custody that can be tailored to meet the needs of young people. We will make it clear in the statutory guidance that I have already talked about that, whenever appropriate, learning in custody should complement prior learning; we will be very clear about what is expected of the system. However, we recognise that this may not always be desirable or possible and that provision should be capable of being tailored to best meet the needs of young people. We must have not only high aspirations but flexibility. The information-sharing requirements and the YJB’s E-Asset system to which I have already referred will also help to ensure continuity, which the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, most eloquently described to us as key. Amendments 115, 121 and 122 relate to provision for young people with special educational needs. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, are particularly concerned about this. I fully agree that we must ensure that children and young people’s learning difficulties are identified and their needs met both when they are in custody and when they are in the community. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, talked, as he has in the past, about the challenges that bring young people into the system and how they need to be taken account of. I know that he appreciates those challenges. We have been clear in new Section 18A that when local authorities secure suitable learning provision in juvenile custody, they must have regard to any special educational needs or learning difficulties that these young people may have. As we know, custody can provide a real opportunity for them to improve their skills and to re-engage in learning, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and others have argued. Young people are often in custody for only a short time of between three and four months, and it is important that their needs can be identified quickly and that we make the most of their short time in custody. I am happy to confirm to the Committee that, in setting out how host local authorities should fulfil their obligations, we will say in statutory guidance that local authorities should ensure that general learning assessments, including using a short screening tool for learning difficulties and disabilities, are conducted quickly for all young people and used, along with educational information provided by the home authority, to inform decisions about the education or training to be provided to a person. This should continue to be recorded in the young person’s learning plan and will form part of a wider sentence plan. The LSC commissioned Dyslexia Action to develop a tool to screen for learning disabilities, and a training programme to support its use is due to be rolled out very soon—from August—in young offender institutions. This is a similar screening tool to the one used in custody in Northern Ireland to screen for indicators of dyslexia, which the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has already talked about in Committee. The new tool will enable learning providers to screen for a range of hidden disabilities. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, is concerned about these, and they include dyslexia and dyspraxia as well as disabilities on the autism spectrum. The Communication Trust is also considering this tool and whether it should be extended beyond YOIs to wider youth justice settings; so I think noble Lords will see some progress.