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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I have one basic question. The noble Baroness said that there would be an assessment coming through. How will that tie into this basic idea, and where is the meeting of minds between the Government and the Opposition on it? I know that it is an uncomfortable place when you find yourself having to agree in public but I think that we should occasionally bite our tongues and do it. One thing that is slightly worrying about this is the obsession with reading, when you are dealing with many disabilities that mean that reading words will be that much more difficult. I suggest that we must be very careful about how we do that. Thus, I suggest that although the idea behind the amendment is fine, I do not think that the wording is quite flexible enough to embrace many of those groups. As my noble friend said, preparation for how to cope with conditions such as dyslexia is as important as the acquisition of reading and literacy skills. For instance, with modern technology, you have to acquire enough reading to use the technology to have articles read back to you—text put in something called Clarity, which I have recently discovered and wish that it was there 20 years ago, something that allows you to take text and have it read back to you. Having enough literacy skill to be able to use it—enough to understand how to use voice-operated activity—may be appropriate to match day-to-day skills, but it may not be the sole aim here. I approve of the aim, but it may not be flexible enough to provide real-life skills or real-life coping strategies for many people with those conditions.