Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, following the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, I realise that they are indeed true parliamentarians, while I, a mere ex-actor, still have to speak to a script—although I may have written the script myself. I must first declare an interest in the debate as president of the Royal Mencap Society, which is a member of the Special Educational Consortium. I must also declare an interest as the grandfather of a little boy who, following a long and unnecessarily adversarial appeals process, was recently given a statement of special educational needs. I want to say a few words about the context in which special educational needs and disability have been debated so far in another place. The debate seemed to focus to a great extent on special schools, partly because of the way in which the amendments were grouped and partly because some Members of another place have a great interest in special schools. That is a perfectly laudable and understandable interest, but it is not the be all and end all of special educational needs. I am sure we all agree that parental choice of school is important. I know that that belief is shared by those who are arguing so strongly against the closure of special schools but, to be a real choice, parental choice cannot simply mean the ability of parents to choose to put their child into a special school; it must also mean the ability to choose to put their child into a good mainstream school. It follows, therefore, that if we believe that parents should have the right to choose and that children with SEN and disabilities have a right to be educated in the mainstream, we must concern ourselves not only with special schools but with all schools. This is particularly important, given that 60 per cent of pupils with statements of SEN are in mainstream schools and that more than 15 per cent of all mainstream pupils have identified SEN. In other words, of the 7.4 million pupils in England, about 1.4 million have special educational needs, of whom only about 250,000 have a statement. Obviously many of these children with SEN in mainstream schools are also disabled, with a physical, sensory or learning disability. They have a right to be there, and their parents may well want them to be there. The key question is not how we get those children out of such schools, but how we make those schools better for disabled children and children with SEN. That is a question with a number of answers, but those answers can be boiled down to a simple one; we make schools better for those children by ensuring that they are properly inclusive and accessible, and that the people who are responsible for running them understand the children’s needs. At the moment, only 20 per cent of primary schools and 10 per cent of secondary schools are fully accessible for children with disabilities. This must change. One way in which to help to ensure that the needs of disabled children and children with SEN are properly taken into account is to ensure that the staff understand those needs. It is absurd that a whole range of educational professionals—not only teachers and head teachers but choice advisers, school improvement partners, school inspectors and those who draw up school behaviour policies—are not required to demonstrate an understanding of special educational needs and disability legislation. Why are they not required to do so? If they do not understand the needs of such children, they cannot be expected to meet them. But, of course, they should be expected to meet them, so they should be expected and trained to understand them. Full inclusion is impossible if disabled children and children with SEN do not have the same right of access to the school their parents want for them that other children have. I am delighted, therefore, that the Government have amended Clause 1 to say that local education authorities in England have a duty to ensure fair access to educational opportunity. That is indeed good news, but it still leaves an anomaly for parents of children with a statement. If they express a preference for an academy, they do not have the same right of access to it as they do to any other school maintained by public funds. Rather than requiring parents to go through the stress and bother of appealing to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal, would it not be much more straightforward to have the same right of access to academies that there is to other schools? Another key issue is discipline and exclusions. Pupils with SEN are vastly overrepresented in exclusions. They constitute almost nine out of 10 permanent exclusions from primary schools, and six out of 10 from secondary schools. That means that discipline and exclusion policy will have a disproportionate impact on pupils with SEN. Yet the Steer report, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred and on which the discipline measures in the Bill are based, explicitly sets aside any consideration of children with SEN and disabled children. I know that a wide range of organisations, and other noble Lords, share my concern that the measures will do nothing to prevent disabled children and children with SEN being disciplined inappropriately, rather than having reasonable adjustments made for them. Given the widespread interest across the House in SEN and disability issues, I wonder if the Minister will be able to replicate the constructive and conciliatory approach he has taken on other recent pieces of legislation by meeting a few of us to discuss matters further, perhaps over a cup of his department’s excellent tea or coffee. On the previous occasion I visited the Minister, his agreement was so speedy that I had no time for either beverage. If we see him again, I hope that we will be treated to the same speedy approval of our ideas. I am sure that other noble Lords will be grateful for the opportunity to go into these issues at greater length. As always, I am optimistic that improvements can be made to the Bill so that all schools can provide high quality education to disabled children and those with special educational needs, giving all parents a real choice so that they do not have to follow Henry Ford’s dictum, ““Any colour so long as it’s black””.