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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

If I may, I should like to say a few words on this group of amendments. I seem to have caught the late spot for the second time this week, but not quite as late as the Minister, I have no doubt. I am a bit worried about deleting subsections (3) and (4), because, if we delete those, I fear that we will be giving behaviour and attendance partnerships a responsibility without accountability. I have a raft of statistics here to demonstrate the link between special educational needs, poor behaviour and exclusions, but I imagine the House would be glad to be spared these and take the matter on trust at this stage of the evening. Placing a responsibility on school behaviour and attendance partnerships through statutory guidance to address the disproportionate exclusion of children with SEN and disability is a simple and sensible step to help address this problem. In the first place, improving behaviour and reducing exclusions are intimately linked and both can easily be accommodated within the partnership framework. Requiring reports to be made to children’s trust boards seems only right from the point of view of providing an essential accountability mechanism for behaviour and attendance partnerships. Such reports should certainly not be seen as a means of naming and shaming individual schools or areas, but rather as a way of ensuring accountability and providing schools with a further collective incentive to ensure that they are focusing on steps they can take to avoid the exclusion of children with SEN and disabilities. So I am sorry to say it to the noble Baroness, but it does seem to me that the Government have got it right on this.