SEND and Alternative Provision Statement The following Statement
was made in the House of Commons on Monday 6 March. “With
permission, I will make a Statement on our progress to improve
outcomes for children and young people with special educational
needs and disabilities or in alternative provision in England. For
those with special educational needs and disabilities, many schools
and councils are doing a brilliant job. I have met many wonderful
teachers who...Request free trial
SEND and Alternative
Provision
Statement
The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on
Monday 6 March.
“With permission, I will make a Statement on our progress to
improve outcomes for children and young people with special
educational needs and disabilities or in alternative provision in
England. For those with special educational needs and
disabilities, many schools and councils are doing a brilliant
job. I have met many wonderful teachers who are unbelievably
passionate about supporting children to be happier, more
confident and better prepared for adulthood. However, too often
our children and young people do not get the support they need
and their parents have lost trust in the system. Our special
educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision
Green Paper set out proposals to deliver a more inclusive system,
and I give credit to my predecessors, particularly my honourable
friend the Member for Colchester, , and my right honourable friend
the Member for Chelmsford, , for the work they have put
into this area.
I would like to put on record my thanks to the thousands of
people who responded to the Green Paper consultation, and to the
parents, children and young people who shared their experiences
with us. Most people agreed that the experiences and outcomes of
children and young people vary significantly around the country.
We heard too many stories of families who were frustrated by the
system, and who were battling to access specialist education,
health or care services, including mental health services. I
assure the House that we have taken those contributions and
comments on board.
On Thursday, we published the ‘Special Educational Needs and
Disabilities and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan’ jointly
with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health
and Social Care. The plan sets out the next steps that we will
take to deliver a more positive experience for children and
families. Our mission is threefold. First, we want every child
and young person to enjoy their childhood, and feel well prepared
for their next step, whether that is into employment, higher
education or adult services. Secondly, we know that the system
has lost the confidence of parents and carers. We need to regain
their trust by improving the support that is ordinarily
available. Finally, we have increased the high-needs budget by
over 50% in the past four years; we now need to make sure that
the funding is being well spent.
We will establish a single national system that delivers for
every child and young person with special educational needs and
disabilities from birth to age 25. To do that, we will develop
new national special educational needs and disabilities and
alternative provision standards, which will cover early years,
school, and post-16 provision. The standards will set out what
types of support should be available, and who, according to the
best possible evidence, should be responsible for making sure
that it is. That will include clarifying the types of support
that should ordinarily be available in mainstream settings, so
that families can have confidence and clarity about how their
children’s needs will be met. We will develop new practice guides
to support front-line professionals in implementing
evidence-based best practice. We will start by building on best
practice, including on early language support, autism and mental
health and well-being.
To deliver for children and their families locally, we will
establish local SEND and AP partnerships. They will support local
authorities in producing, together with families, local inclusion
plans that are in line with the national standards. Those plans
will set out how good-quality alternative provision will be made
available. In our new approach to AP, instead of it being a
permanent destination, it will be used as an intervention, in
order to support those who may feel anxious, or struggle with
their behaviour, in mainstream school. This system will mean that
more children and young people have their needs met effectively
in mainstream settings. That will reduce the reliance on
education, health and care plans for accessing support.
Early intervention is crucial. That is why we are training
thousands more early years special educational needs
co-ordinators and 400 more educational psychologists, who will be
able to identify children who need support, and to provide expert
advice. We will ensure that children and young people who require
an education, health and care plan or specialist provision will
get prompt access to the support that they need, within a less
adversarial system. We will introduce new standardised EHCPs, and
will support local authorities in increasing their use of digital
technology, so that the process is easier and quicker for
families. By providing a tailored list of settings that are able
to meet the needs set out in an EHCP, we will ensure that
families can express an informed preference for a placement, so
that children and young people can get the right support in the
right setting. We will continue to work closely with families and
local authorities as we test this proposal.
It is crucial to have the right school places in an area. We will
invest £2.6 billion by 2025 in new special and alternative
provision places, and in improving provision, including by
opening 33 new special free schools; a further 49 are already in
the pipeline. We will shortly launch competitions to run these
schools.
I am determined to ensure that all children and young people
progress to the next stage of life with confidence and optimism,
so we will publish guidance on ensuring effective transitions
between all stages of education, and an effective transition into
employment and adult services. To improve transitions into
employment, we are investing in supported internships; we aim to
double the capacity of the programme between 2022 and 2025. We
will also continue to work with the Department for Work and
Pensions on the introduction of the adjustments passport, so that
employers know what support young people require.
I know that the whole House will wish to join me in thanking
everyone who works so hard to deliver for children and young
people with SEND or in alternative provision. Honestly, some of
the most inspirational visits that I go on involve meeting them.
For our reforms to succeed, we need a strong, confident workforce
with robust leadership, and access to specialists where needed.
We will deliver a new leadership-level national professional
qualification for special educational needs co-ordinators, so
that this key part of the workforce receives high-quality,
evidence-based training. We are also extending the alternative
provision specialist taskforce pilot programme, which co-locates
a diverse specialist workforce in alternative provision
schools.
Informed by a stronger evidence base, we will take a joint
approach to workforce planning with the Department of Health and
Social Care, and we will establish a steering group this year to
drive this work forward. We will also partner with NHS England to
trial new ways of working to better identify and support children
with speech, language and communication needs in early years and
primary schools. Meeting children’s social, emotional and mental
health needs is also a crucial aspect of strong special
educational needs provision. Our school and college mental health
support teams will be expanded to around 400 operational teams
later this year, covering around 35% of pupils in England,
reaching around 500 operational teams by 2024.
I began by saying that we had to regain parents’ trust, and I
know that part of this means strengthening accountability across
the board so that everyone is held to account for supporting
children and young people. The new Ofsted and Care Quality
Commission area SEND inspection framework now focuses on the
experience of children and young people with SEND or in AP. Going
forward, Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and the Department
for Education will provide oversight and ongoing monitoring of
reforms, including delivery in line with the local inclusion
plans. From this autumn, parents will be able to monitor the
performance of their local systems through the establishment of
local and national inclusion dashboards. Where there are
disagreements about an individual’s special educational needs
provision or support, we will make it clearer how concerns and
complaints should be dealt with by local areas. We will also
strengthen the quality of mediation and test different approaches
for resolving disputes earlier.
So that all children and young people can access the support they
need to fulfil their potential, we must put the system on a
stable and sustainable financial footing. We secured £2 billion a
year in additional schools funding in the Autumn Statement from
this April, of which £400 million has been earmarked for SEND and
AP. We are working with local authorities to address deficits
through our delivering better value and safety valve programmes.
Parents told us that some reforms would need careful
consideration, so I am pleased to announce that a £70 million
change programme will fund up to nine regional expert
partnerships to design and test our reform proposals in
collaboration with parents. To get this under way, we are today
launching the tender for the programme’s delivery partner.
Oversight of reform will be provided through a new national
special educational needs and disabilities and alternative
provision implementation board, jointly chaired by myself and the
Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my
honourable friend the Member for Lewes, , who is the Minister
responsible for mental health and the women’s health strategy.
Delivering for children and young people is of the utmost
importance. My priority is to make sure that every single child
and young person can access the support they need to make the
most of their lives. I commend this Statement to the House.”
14:03:00
(Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the Statement. There
is much to welcome in this long-awaited SEND improvement plan.
Children and young people with special educational needs, as well
as those with disabilities, all too often have to battle an
unwelcoming and sometimes unsupportive world, including at
school. Labour has some concerns, however, which I would be
grateful if the Minister could address.
First, as your Lordships might be aware, the Children’s
Commissioner has raised concerns that much of the substance of
this plan, including the welcome new national standards, is not
coming into effect until 2025 or even 2026. Children needing SEND
assessments cannot put their lives on hold. Can the Minister
reassure the House that this delay will not subject children, in
the words of the Children’s Commissioner, to years of a vicious
cycle of poor outcomes?
In particular, when will the initial teacher training review
conclude? For the new area SEND inspection framework, we are told
that timeliness will be assessed. What amount of time will be
considered timely to have a SEND assessment initiated and
completed? This involves pupils and parents who have spent their
school lives waiting for appropriate assessments and subsequent
placements, so time really is of the essence for this pupil
group. The focus on additional skills in the workforce to improve
SEND provision is welcome, as is the commitment to review the
initial teacher training and early career frameworks. However,
the timeline is not clear. Can the Minister advise this House
when the review will be completed?
I note that Speech and Language UK is keen that the review of
teacher training should also include how to support children with
speech and language challenges, from early years and throughout
school. Will this be included?
I would particularly like to highlight paragraph 75 of chapter 2
of the plan, which refers to data on inequalities
“in relation to certain characteristics such as place, gender and
race”
and is the only paragraph that refers to gender or race. This is
unduly light on detail, given that black children with special
educational needs are increasingly likely to be permanently
excluded from school for behaviour due to their condition, rather
than malicious intent. Can the Minister assure the House of the
Government’s commitment to addressing disproportionality?
Looked-after children also face particular issues in accessing
SEND provision; this is referred to in the plan. As the
Children’s Commissioner also highlighted, there are
“serious gaps in the Plan”.
She continued:
“Much of the Plan assumes that children will have familial
support and does not consider how children in the care of the
state will be represented and supported”.
References to looked-after children in this plan are limited. Can
the Minister provide a timeline for when the work referred to in
the plan to ensure that looked-after children get the best
provision will be complete?
Finally, the plan sets out the aim of reducing the number of
children with education, health and care plans. If this reduction
is made through improving support in mainstream schools and
getting better support in place early, it would be welcome. But
the reduction must not be a means of reducing costs or making it
even harder for children and young people to access support, and
to access an education, health and care plan if required. How
will the newly forming ICBs bring together health and education
to support SEND children?
Parents, guardians, carers and, critically, children with special
educational needs and disabilities are crying out for a more
sustainable solution to the current patchwork of SEND provision.
I had hoped this plan would be more ambitious in seeking to
provide that. As yet, regrettably, I am still sceptical.
(LD)
My Lords, I should first declare my interests: I am president of
the British Dyslexia Association and chairman of Microlink, which
is an assisted tech company that works in the education sector. I
also realised when preparing for this debate that I made my
maiden speech almost 35 years ago on special educational
needs.
When we look at the Statement, the most important bit is really
where it says that:
“we know that the system has lost the confidence of parents and
carers. We need to regain their trust by improving the support
that is ordinarily available.”
That is the essence of it. We have a system that has got bogged
down in legalese, buck-shifting and dodging. With the best of
intentions, what was set up under the 2014 Act—I was involved in
that, so I take a share of the blame—is not addressing need and
is chasing itself around. The big beneficiaries of the education,
health and care plans have been lawyers. The appeals procedure
has become ridiculous, and I thank the Government for recognising
that. There are also other structural changes.
A school is expected to have £6,000 to support a person going
through. If you are planning a budget in a school, you actually
have a disincentive to identify needs and get help and care
through. That money could be far better spent on improving
your staff structure to deal with the problems as they come
through and on making sure the system can give support,
particularly to those with commonly occurring conditions.
Therefore, you would actually have something which means people
do not go through the legal process of the plan, for the simple
reason that a structure would be there to deal with it.
The best way to get high needs, if you have one of the commonly
occurring conditions, is not to have them addressed for several
years, so you are behind the curve, have not acquired the skills
and have therefore got problems. It is also important to remember
that, with the education system, you are only there for a fixed
period of time. You are on a conveyor belt of acquiring skills to
acquire more knowledge to pass exams. It should be more than
that, but I am afraid that is the essence of it—and it has become
more so of late.
I ask the Minister—I feel that she is a little bit like the poor
infantry on this, but there we are, I am still going to shoot at
her—if this is coming forward, how are we going to make sure that
teachers are properly trained and have the support to intervene?
We talk about better training here and about educational
psychologists. An educational psychologist said to me in the
all-party group on dyslexia, “We usually rely on people having
failed for X number of years before we intervene.” Think about
it: that is guaranteeing more failure. Are we going to get to
something with better assessment and planning? There are tools in
planning and screening tools available that can help with
identification, but people need to train to be able to interpret
results. Level 3 is not enough; they need to be at level 5 or
level 7 to make these assessments. Are we going to passport this
identification forward so that help can be accessed more quickly?
That would be a huge change.
In the Commons, a great deal of attention was paid to special
schools. I think 83 schools were promised—some now and some
planned in future. Special schools, hopefully, should be for
high-need pupils. They should not be for ordinary problems, or
for people waiting to acquire high needs by failing. This was
very common and many of the Government’s own supporters raised
this. If you have got these special schools, how are you going to
make sure people get the right one? Are you going to make sure
that people can travel and that support—or indeed boarding
arrangements—are there? Are you integrating them? How are you
going to overcome certain education authorities or others saying,
“No, we won’t send them there”—which is a very common thing in
these processes when people are fighting forward. How will we
start to address that? We need to know how the Government are
going to use the private sector, which has been used in the past.
These are questions which need to be answered.
I appreciate that the Government have started a process. I feel
that there was enough information out there to have missed out
some of this assessment, or perhaps to have got it done far more
quickly. However, I have the Government to thank. They said we
would be talking about this in September, but I have won a £5 bet
because it is happening in March. We have got to get a little bit
more speed and we know this. It has been a long time coming; many
of these problems have already been established and everybody
knows about them. I hope that the Minister can give us some
guidance here, because we are not dealing with a new thing. We do
not need to spend time looking at it. I hope the Government can
go to the vast body of knowledge they have, give us a little bit
more speed and tell us how they are going to meet these very
well-established problems.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education () (Con)
I thank both the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, and the noble
Lord, , for welcoming our
announcement last week and I will do my best to address some of
the points that they raised. I think I heard a shared ambition
across the House for children with special educational needs.
Last week, we set out our ambition to make sure that all
children, but particularly these children, fulfil their
potential, to rebuild the parental trust the noble Lord, , referred to, which has been
eroded, and to provide financial sustainability.
Much of the questioning focused on timeliness and timing, and I
will endeavour to reassure the House about the speed of delivery.
But, as we discussed with your Lordships in relation to the
children’s social care reforms, the balance between ambition and
the quality of implementation is incredibly sensitive and
delicate, and extremely important. This is not the first time
that a Government have tried to improve support for children with
special educational needs and disabilities, particularly those in
the care of the local authority. If this were easy, Governments
would have cracked it previously. But we are determined to make
this work, in terms of both the vision and the quality of
implementation.
As your Lordships know, we will establish a single national
system that will, importantly, focus on children from minority
communities and children in the care of the local authority. We
will have the systems of accountability, clarity and transparency
for parents, which means that we very much hope and believe that
that will work better than the system we have today and will
achieve good outcomes for those children.
We are laser focused on the early identification of educational
needs and ensuring that high-quality support is in place, without
the need for a diagnosis or a label. Crucial within that is the
work happening with the workforce, some of which has already
started. The first cohort of early years SENCOs have completed
their training, and they will re-enter the workforce. The House
is aware that we funded training for up to 5,000 SENCOs in early
years, which is obviously not the only place we should have them,
but it is an absolutely critical place. We have already funded
additional educational psychologists and have announced more
funding for an additional 400, all of whom are critical to
delivering this plan.
Similarly, when we recently reviewed initial teacher training, we
made adjustments to the training for early career teachers so
that there is a focus in their courses on how you make classroom
adjustments and how you can be truly inclusive in your classroom
for children with additional needs. Obviously, as we said in the
Statement, that work continues at pace this year to try to
identify whether other aspects within the mainstream workforce
can support this.
Last night, I met the chair of a multi-academy trust, and I said,
“I’ve got the Statement tomorrow; tell me what you do to support
your children with special educational needs and disabilities in
your school”. The answer was having twice as many teaching staff
per pupil and incredibly regular communication with home. Not
every school or trust will be in a position to do that, but that
approach of putting children, resource and communication with
parents first struck me as perhaps something that we aspire to in
this area. The national standards will also place much greater
emphasis on the role that mainstream settings will play, but of
course we want to be sure that children and young people with
special educational needs who need an education, health and care
plan—and their parents—have a less adversarial system.
Therefore, we are adding resources to make sure that we have real
clarity of need, in terms of speed. We have been and are adding
resource for clarity of support for children and, critically, we
are adding capacity in the availability of new schools. The House
has regularly talked about the fact that some children are sent
very far from home, which is clearly far from ideal. For the
record, we have delivered 92 new special schools and 49 are in
the pipeline, seven of which will open in September. Last week,
we announced a further 33 local authority areas that will get a
new special school. Capacity is absolutely going into the
sector.
14:20:00
(Con)
My Lords, I welcome the plan and declare my interests as a
non-executive board member at Ofsted and a member of the court of
the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. I want to ask about an
important part of the plan, which is transition to adult
services, employment or higher education, which the Government
have set out clearly as an ambition. Can my noble friend say a
little about how the Government will assess whether things are
getting better and whether the experience of when children are
often at their most vulnerable is improving? What will be the
measurement for that?
(Con)
My noble friend will have seen from the plan that, particularly
in relation to employment, we are investing £18 million to double
the capacity of the supported internships programme. We will work
with the Department for Work and Pensions on the adjustment
passport so that young people do not have to retell their story
endlessly and that employers are clear about what support they
need. On accountability, together with parents, local authorities
and health partners, we will develop local inclusion plans and
local inclusion dashboards—I appreciate that that sounds slightly
Sir Humphrey-ish, if that is a term. Importantly, parents,
providers and local authorities will be able to track and see the
impact of their plans, to compare their performance to that of
other local authorities, and to understand how they can build,
improve and learn. We are committed to improving the quality of
data that we use so that everyone in the sector, who are all
doing their absolute best to deliver for those young people, can
work as effectively as possible.
(Lab)
My Lords, I am sure that no one would want to understate the
importance of making sure that we do everything we can for
children and young people with special educational needs and
disabilities, and their families, but I believe that a lot of
teachers have lost trust and confidence in the system, partly
because of the £6,000 question but also because it is quite
opaque in some cases, so a new approach is helpful.
It is good that the Statement talked about reducing the reliance
on education, health and care plans, so that there can be access
to what is ordinarily available in mainstream classrooms. Is the
Minister aware that there are some difficulties for children in
year 6 in accessing a place in a secondary school, because that
school is able to say that it cannot meet the needs of that plan?
Frankly, it is terrible that children are made to feel as though
they are not wanted. I would be pleased if the Minister were able
to say something about that.
I do not think that there is complete confidence in the
profession about ITT, so I hope that we will continue to look at
that. Finally, if we are going to rely continuously on teaching
assistants, who do a fantastic job, we need to have regard not
just to their training but to their level of remuneration.
(Con)
On the noble Baroness’s first point about teachers having lost
confidence in the system, I hope that some of the work that we
are doing will help rebuild that. As she knows, the national
standards will set much clearer definitions of need in
particular, rather than necessarily diagnosis, so that there is
clarity and consistency across schools and local authority
areas.
We are also producing a number of practice guides for teachers
and schools, which we hope will be really helpful. They focus on
what are perhaps three of the most prevalent and important
areas—autism, speech and language, and mental health and
well-being—which, as the noble Baroness knows very well, are all
extremely important issues. We are establishing the nine regional
expert partnerships to create this co-operation between parents,
local authorities, schools and health, ensuring that whatever we
are doing is tested in practice to make sure that it works in the
interests of both the child and the workforce.
I imagine that the question on the admissions issue is, in part,
an extension of the first question on confidence. The other thing
we see which is really different in different parts of the
country is the degree of co-operation between real specialists.
In some places, there are providers of special schools with huge
expertise, which are in a position to work very collaboratively
with their local mainstream schools, but that is less the case in
other places. In the areas of alternative provision, behaviour
management and support, and special educational needs and
disabilities, that collaboration and co-operation is felt to be a
really productive and rich place to start to ensure that every
child can get to the school they want to go to.
My Lords, I too thank His Majesty’s Government for the
improvement plan. I commend what they are doing to try to get a
much more integrated approach and some of the resources mentioned
in the plan. However, I share the concern raised by the noble
Baroness, Lady Twycross, about implementation. The stories I pick
up from grass-roots situations in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire,
where I serve, show that there are still some very serious
problems, and some children are now being failed immediately.
I will ask a couple of questions. First, having a specialised
workforce in place will be crucial, so can the Minister tell us
what support they expect to receive from the DHSC, especially as
such a great strain is placed on the health and social care
workforce? The second question is about diagnosis, so that
children can have access to the support mentioned in the content
of the plan. What support is the DHSC able to provide to CAMHS to
ensure that there is support to deliver this plan?
(Con)
As the right reverend Prelate said, that co-operation between
health, education and children’s social care is absolutely
critical, so that they are closely joined together. We will bring
more clarity and clearer accountability through new inspections
conducted jointly by Ofsted and the CQC, which will focus very
much on outcomes and experiences for children, young people and
their families. In turn, that will feed into and reflect the
local inclusion plans, where health is a critical partner.
On issues around the mental health workforce, the right reverend
Prelate will be aware that we are doing a lot of work to ensure
that we have direct support in schools, so that, wherever
possible, mental health issues do not need to escalate to
CAMHS.
(LD)
My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local
Government Association and as one of the infantry working on the
Children and Families Bill, as were other Members of your
Lordships’ House. We felt that that was a ground-breaking change
to the system, but one of the fundamental reasons it has failed
is because the funding, both for children and for the assessment
of children and young people, was not ring-fenced, causing real
problems for both local authorities and schools. So will the
Minister ensure that there will be ring-fencing for this funding,
because it is not fair for local authorities to have to find it
from other resources, when other resources are clearly being so
pressured?
I also want to follow on from the question asked by the right
reverend Prelate the and focus on those
children who will need an EHCP, especially the health element.
For those with high needs in terms of physical disabilities, the
proposal is to move much more to special schools, but for some
young people special schools do not actually help their academic
achievements because the standards are set so low—so will that be
addressed in this or in relationships with schools?
Finally, those who were there for debates on the Children and
Families Bill will know that there was ground-breaking statutory
guidance for support for children in school with medical
conditions. That has now been watered down. Will it be
strengthened to ensure that every child with a serious medical
condition gets the support that they need to go on school trips
and take part in everyday activities?
(Con)
In relation to funding, I do not fully recognise the picture that
the noble Baroness paints. Revenue funding in this area is up 50%
since 2019, and we have committed £2.6 billion in high-needs
capital funding to build, as I have already mentioned, 92 new
special schools that are being delivered, with 49 in the pipeline
and 33 on their way.
For children with physical disabilities at a high level, the
aspiration is absolutely clear—we need to get the right place for
every child, including those children. Therefore, if it is
possible, we will include those children in the mainstream, as
that clearly is the aspiration and direction of our work. I shall
need to revert to the noble Baroness, as she has raised this
issue with me before and my memory fails me on the current status
of her final point.
(Con)
My Lords, like others I welcome the provisions in the Statement,
which will provide a better deal for parents and children with
special needs, and I welcome the interaction between Ministers
and noble Lords during the consultation. On workforce training,
does my noble friend accept that the new NPQ will need
significant adjustment, if it is going to meet the needs of the
SENCOs envisaged in the Statement? The current NASENCO course
that it replaces is for 600 hours. Does my noble friend agree
that the strength of those courses needs to be carried through
into the proposed NPQ?
I welcome the national standard as it will remove the postcode
lottery. Can my noble friend assure me that the Treasury will
have nothing to do with those national standards as a means of
controlling costs, that costs will be based on the needs of
children and that there will be the resources behind them to
provide the finances for the EHCPs?
(Con)
In relation to my noble friend’s first question, of course the
new NPQ will definitely learn from the NASENCO qualification, but
its focus, to put it in simple terms, will be very practical and
on the classroom. It tries to address the practical requirements
of teachers in the classroom, and it will have less of the
academic and research focus that has traditionally been
associated with the NASENCO.
In relation to not letting the Treasury anywhere near that,
clearly, I would have to reserve judgment—but I hear the spirit
of my noble friend’s question. The important thing is that the
standards are being developed in collaboration with families,
local authorities, health providers and schools. There are
tensions pulling in different directions, but there is a shared
aspiration for the earliest possible intervention, and the
earlier that we can intervene the less likely it is that many
children will need to go into specialist provision and need to
have an EHCP. Therefore, absolutely front and centre, the most
important thing is that that is the right outcome for that child,
but the secondary helpful benefit is that it then frees up
funding, as my noble friend suggests, for those children who need
an EHCP.
(Lab)
My Lords, there are many welcome aspects of the Statement, but it
seems the Government still have not grasped the urgency of the
situation surrounding children with special educational needs and
disabilities. A SEND pupil in year 7 when the review was launched
in 2019 will have left school by the time the reforms are
implemented—if indeed they are fully implemented—by 2026. That
means, as the right reverend Prelate said, that a child being
failed now will continue to be failed, which is just
unacceptable.
I have two questions for the Minister on alternative provision,
and they go to moral leadership from the Government and from
senior practitioners. Will the reforms force mainstream schools
to accept vulnerable pupils presented to them? Will those reforms
force mainstream schools to pass on funding for children that
they exclude to alternative provision? Because, at the moment,
neither of those are guaranteed.
(Con)
I really do not accept the premise of the noble Lord’s first
statement. I am sure he would not want us to implement everything
tomorrow and then find that it is not having the impact we want.
We live in a world where we have to make sure that this works in
practice; hence the nine regional expert partnerships where we
will be testing everything. As I already mentioned, we have
already made reforms in terms of teacher training; we have
already increased our expenditure by 50% since 2019; we have
already massively increased the capital budget and delivered more
places; we have already started to increase the number of
educational psychologists; and we are already delivering
qualified SENCOs for early years pupils. So, there is a great
deal happening that will help that year 7 child before they leave
school, and I hope the noble Lord accepts that.
As for forcing children into mainstream, and forcing the funding
to follow them, I just think it is not the approach that we are
taking. It is not that we do not take this seriously or that we
do not have grave concerns about children who are excluded from
school and never return: those are key metrics that we will be
tracking, but we need to work with people and make sure that we
deliver for those children. As always, we will be looking at the
areas that are doing this brilliantly today, learning from them
and working with areas that have perhaps not yet reached that
level of practice and supporting them to deliver for those
children. I share the noble Lord’s concerns about those very
children.
(LD)
My Lords, a lot of the Statement is welcome, but it does seem to
be jam tomorrow. I have two questions. The first is that children
with special educational needs learn differently: what efforts
are being made to ensure that their teachers understand that
while they do not have to work harder, they do have to work more
smartly to understand the different ways in which SEND pupils
learn? Secondly, Scope has found that SEND pupils are twice as
likely to be unemployed as non-disabled people, so what are the
Government doing to give young people with SEND the skills and
opportunities to enable them to be employed?
(Con)
The Government absolutely recognise the point the noble Baroness
raises. We are already providing professional development focused
on special educational needs and disabilities; we have online
training; we run live webinars; we offer peer mentoring for
school and college staff through our universal services
programme; and we aim to reach at least 70% of schools and FE
colleges each year until 2025, while also expanding the assistive
technology pilot, which is expanding training to increase staff
confidence in using assistive technology. In my response to the
noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, I touched on some of the measures that
we are taking to support people with disabilities and additional
needs into the workforce.
(Con)
My Lords, I too warmly welcome the White Paper today,
particularly the new national standards plans. The Minister is
aware that very often EHCPs and indeed tribunals get badly
delayed because of a shortage of available educational
psychologists. I looked at page 52 of the White Paper, and the
new money for training educational psychologists is very welcome,
but can she give some indication to the House as to the actual
numbers of new educational psychologists we will see?
(Con)
I thank my noble friend. We are anticipating an additional 400
educational psychologists from the funding that we have just
announced.
(GP)
My Lords, I am going to do something unusual: agree with the
point in the Statement about providers doing a brilliant job. I
say that in reference to a visit I made, with the Learn with the
Lords scheme, to the North West Kent Alternative Provision
Service in Gravesend, which is an absolutely amazing institution;
I would commend to all noble Lords the opportunity to visit an
institution like that. It was the first time that Learn with the
Lords has ever visited an alternative provision site and it is
well worth praising.
I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government
Association. I have two quick questions. First, there is concern
that the £70 million of funding for implementation will be
inadequate; will this be subject to regular review with the
potential for further inputs, if it proves insufficient?
Secondly, I reflect on a meeting I had this week with the
disabled Green groups. Pupils often need transport to access
special schools and alternative provision; I know there is a real
issue about the quality and safety of provision in Leicester at
the moment, and I think that may be a broader problem around the
country. What are the Government doing to ensure that there is
enough transport so that pupils can get safely and appropriately
to this provision?
(Con)
With regard to the noble Baroness’s first question, we have
obviously done some pretty careful costings to reach our figure
of £70 million but, equally, there is a massive commitment from
the Government to deliver on this. The noble Baroness asked if we
would keep this under review; clearly, we will do so.
In relation to her question regarding transport, that is very
much part of thinking about a local inclusion plan and making
sure that it really thinks through the experience of the child or
young person and their families, and what is practical, realistic
and safe for them to access the education that they need.
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