Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

This is a probing amendment, on a subject that is appearing in a number of other amendments to other clauses. It is by no means the first time that this subject has been raised. It was raised in connection with the Education and Skills Bill only last year. The Minister at that time undertook to take the subject away and bring it back again in the Bill that is now before the Committee. I am very grateful to her for doing that, and for the meetings we have had with her and the Bill team in preparation for Committee on this Bill. What are we probing? The amendments came from an organisation called the Communication Trust—a coalition of 30-plus organisations that are working in the field of speech, language and communication, such as dyslexia trusts and the Autism Trust. I have also talked to organisations that deal with the deaf. We are dealing with a whole spectrum of people who come to the educational arena with problems that prevent them from engaging immediately in it. The trusts’ concern is that there is significant variation around the country in the provision of assessment and referral to specialist services for those with hidden difficulties. If you are talking about an education system, it is essential to talk about the ability of everyone to engage with it to make certain that the opportunities are there and that any remedial action is laid down and prepared. I do not want to burden the Committee again with the story of how I came to be involved in all this, but I remind your Lordships that the governor of a young offender prison in Scotland told me that if he had to get rid of all his staff, the last one out of the gate would be his speech and language therapist. I had never come across a speech and language therapist in a prison before, and I asked him why. He said, "These young people cannot communicate, and unless they can communicate both with us and with each other, we do not know what is wrong with them, so we cannot start any process of helping them to live useful and law-abiding lives". I discovered that by carrying out a speech and language assessment, the therapist could find out not only about problems of communication, such as the ability to talk to people, but about healthcare problems, memory loss, hearing problems and the inability to see the blackboard, quite apart from all the difficulties that we associate with learning. Because of that, they were unable to conduct relationships with each other. Relationships conducted with the fist are not the same as those conducted by the voice, so by enabling them to conduct normal relationships, the whole atmosphere in that place changed, as did the relationships between the staff and prisoners. The education and healthcare staff were able to take proper remedial action. Out of that came the clear understanding that because of what is happening around us now, the inability to communicate is the scourge of the 20th century. People do not communicate in families. They do not have meals or discussions together. They do not have the normal life which I am sure noble Lords have had. Then they go to school and cannot communicate with each other, their family or their friends. They cannot communicate with the teacher. If you arrive at school unable to communicate with the teacher, you have a terrible problem to overcome. That is why I said in connection with the statement made by the Education Minister earlier in the week that it is extraordinary that people are allowed to move on from the very basic level in primary school before they have learnt to read and therefore to help communication so they can engage in further education. We therefore damage them even further. Later amendments aim to make certain that every child receives an assessment, before they begin primary school, that will identify what are described as the hidden problems—dyslexia, autism and other learning difficulties—to enable something to be done to prepare them to communicate to begin the educational process. Were the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, in his place, he would tell us that Northern Ireland, sponsored by the National Health Service, has recently passed legislation to make certain that every child in Northern Ireland is assessed at the age of two. You cannot obviously understand all the nuances of the problem at the age of two, but certainly you can identify that there is something which needs to be looked at to enable that child to make progress. Frequently people talk about evidence. I declare an interest as an adviser to the Helen Hamlyn Trust. Following what we discovered in prisons, she funded a child for two years with speech and language therapists in young offender establishments to find out the size and shape of the problem. That trial was conducted by Professor Karen Brown from Surrey University, who wrote this up academically over a period of two years. She proved conclusively that if action had been taken at a much earlier stage, the child would not have got to the age of 15 with all the problems still there. Goodness knows what that meant, other than that their education between the ages of seven and 15 had not been properly conducted because they were not able to engage with it. My reason for deliberately putting down the probing amendment and putting my name to other amendments to other clauses which address this issue, and the issue of young offenders in detention when we come to it, is that, if this education is going to be delegated again to local education authorities, it is essential that spelt out in the Bill is the action that they need to take to make certain that people with these learning difficulties can engage in what local education authorities are now being commissioned to provide. I beg to move.