Asked by Lord Storey To ask Her Majesty’s Government what
assessment they have made of the impact of education, health and
care plans on children with special educational needs. The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education
(Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con) My Lords, more than 98% of
statements of SEN were reviewed by 31 March of...Request free trial
Asked by
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To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have
made of the impact of education, health and care plans on
children with special educational needs.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, more than 98% of statements of SEN were reviewed
by 31 March of this year, this being the deadline for
introducing education, health and care plans. A survey of
13,000 people who received an EHC plan during 2015 found
that 73% agreed that it led to the child or young person
getting the right support. Ofsted and the Care Quality
Commission are undertaking joint SEND inspections in all
local authority areas. These are providing evidence of
progress, including positive feedback on the impact of
these plans.
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(LD)
I think we all had high hopes when education, health and
care plans were introduced. However, with vacancies in and
shortages of educational psychologists, speech therapists,
occupational therapists and SENCOs—and, added to that,
schools having tough budgets and spending less on
educational needs—young people and children often do not
get the support that they need. A family from Liverpool
wrote to me about Eva, who is at nursery. The nursery staff
think that she is autistic, but she will have to wait 12 to
18 months because there is only one occupational therapist
at Alder Hey Hospital to put her on the pathway. What would
the Minister advise on this?
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of Oulton
My Lords, in 2018-19 the high needs block will rise by £142
million, to a total of £6 billion across England, which is
up from £5 billion in 2013. Just last week we announced an
additional £50 million of capital funding, bringing the
total to £265 million of capital funding, to help build new
places at mainstream and special schools. I would be happy
to meet the noble Lord on the specific request he makes to
discuss the case and, if necessary, I will ask the Minister
for Children to write to the local authority.
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of Handsworth
(Lab)
My Lords, there is a group of children whose interests are
hardly ever mentioned in your Lordships’ House, and those
are the children whose mothers are being detained in Yarl’s
Wood detention centre. How are these children being
educated, and what progress is being measured in respect of
their detention?
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of Oulton
My Lords, I do not have that information to hand, but I am
very happy to write to the noble Lord with it.
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(Con)
Does my noble friend agree that some of the reports last
week of young children being badly educated in basic
hygiene point to the need for parenting classes? What is
being done to increase those?
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A noble Lord
Sure Start!
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of Oulton
My Lords, I cannot speak about the increase in the Sure
Start programme. I am sorry to disappoint Members opposite
me. We have made a huge investment in early years
education, both for two and three year-olds and for
slightly older children. This takes pressure off families
from poor backgrounds, enables them to go to work and
generally makes their lives easier. That is the policy that
we are pursuing.
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The Lord
My Lords, in Cumbria where I live, a huge proportion of
schools are classified as small and are often very small.
Their funding, especially for children with special
educational needs, is greatly limited by their ability to
access economies of scale. Does the Minister agree that in
smaller schools educational outcomes can at present be
disproportionately affected by current funding models?
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of Oulton
My Lords, as I mentioned in answer to an earlier question,
we have increased the overall funding for children in need
to £6 billion, up from £5 billion in 2013. When we brought
in the specific changes to the SEN process in 2014, we
allocated some £391 million to this programme, which
includes the burdens on local authorities and help for
other partners involved, including schools.
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(CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as co-chair of the
All-Party Group on Speech and Language Difficulties. Do the
figures the Minister gave for those on plans include young
people in custody?
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of Oulton
My Lords, I cannot answer specifically for young children
in custody, but I will add that to the answer to the other
noble Lord.
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(LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that it has been
something like more than two decades since we brought in
the statement system? The statements or plans often deal
with very commonly occurring conditions which we know are
going to be there. Why are we dependent on something
outside the school to deal with a condition which we will
know will occur? Should we not be investing in better
teacher training and in support within schools?
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of Oulton
To answer the first part of the noble Lord’s question, the
changes we brought about were to join the system up so that
we were not dealing in silos for children who often have
complex needs. One of the most important changes was to
ensure that there was cross-agency working, not just with
education but with health and social care. The other
important change was to be much more focused on outcomes
for children in need of this sort of support with
flexibility in, for example, being able to provide a
personal budget for children and families who need this
support.
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(Lab)
My Lords, autism is the most common type of special
educational need of children who have an EHC plan or
statement, with 27% of those children having autism as
their main need. Despite these numbers, too many children
on the autism spectrum are held back from getting the
support they need to succeed and 43% of appeals to the SEND
tribunal are on behalf of those children. The Minister
spoke earlier of the £50 million funding to create more
places for SEND children. Capital funding is not the most
pressing need. What will the Government do to ensure that
the necessary staff capacity is provided to prevent so many
children with autism falling through the cracks in the
support system?
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of Oulton
My Lords, we have introduced a number of improvements in
teacher training over the past six years, including changes
to teacher standards in 2012 to require that teachers have a
clear understanding of the needs of all pupils, including
those with SEND. In 2016, we changed the content of initial
teacher training to require training providers to include
modules on specific types of SEND. Each school must have a
SEND co-ordinator, who must hold qualified teacher status.
They must usually undertake a master’s-level national award
in SEND co-ordination within three years of being appointed.
Awareness of these conditions is becoming much wider.
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