Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I congratulate all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for initiating it. It has been a very wide-ranging and illuminating debate. On Amendment 98, I share the concern that we should continue improving the identification and assessment of children and young people with learning difficulties. It is right that learners’ needs must be central to the commissioning process and to the functions of local authorities. I reassure the Committee that local authorities, alongside post-16 providers, will continue to play an important role in identifying young people with learning difficulties. Many colleges and other providers have their own assessment tools to identify young people’s needs. They are also able to refer young people to the local authority and other specialist agencies if there is a previously undiagnosed difficulty or concern. Local authorities have duties under Section 139A of the Learning and Skills Act 2000 to carry out assessments of pupils with statements in their final year of compulsory schooling, or during the sixth form, who are intending to access further education or HE. This is to ensure effective transition and that the special educational needs of these young people will be met. We have strengthened the draft statutory guidance on learning difficulties assessments, which is currently subject to consultation, to make it clear where local authorities should provide an assessment for young people without a statement. Using the Learning for Living and Work Framework, the local authority, in conducting the assessment, will work closely with a number of practitioners to ensure a truly multi-agency process. The more relevant agencies involved in this process, the greater the opportunity for ensuring that particular issues are picked up. The assessment process should build on the views and expertise of these agencies and of other people who have already supported the young person. This is to ensure that the assessment of their educational and training needs, and the provision needed to meet them, is evidence-based and valid. It will result in a report on a young person’s needs that identifies the provision and support required to meet those needs. Local authorities will be required through the national commissioning framework to have regard to the requirements set out in this report. Of course, it is critical that these procedures work well in practice. I reassure noble Lords that Ofsted is currently conducting a major review of provision for children with special educational needs. This will include the consideration of issues around young people’s transition from school to further education and the assessment and support that they receive to help with that transition and their continued success in further education. Ofsted will be reporting in the summer of 2010. While I understand the intention behind Amendment 101, the definition used in this Bill is the established definition, which is more or less the same in both the Education Act 1996 and the Learning and Skills Act 2000, just altered slightly to take account of the different ages of learners and the different types of institution that they attend. It is a broad definition that rightly includes the difficulties listed in the amendment, as well as many others. It is therefore not necessary to list selected ones separately. Indeed, I would be concerned that doing so would risk creating the impression that other types of learning difficulties were less important, or even creating a hierarchy of needs, which I am sure is not the intention of the amendment. We appreciate that there are some serious challenges here, and we are taking steps to improve the identification and assessment of learning difficulties for our young people and young adults, but we acknowledge that a great deal more needs to be done. I shall address some of the specific points that were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, talked about the importance of early screening. On the question of why we do not introduce the screening of all children for a condition such as dyslexia, a review was conducted by Jim Rose that concluded that blanket screening for dyslexia is questionable, not least because screening tests for that purpose are as yet unreliable. His report says that a better way to identify children at risk of literacy difficulties and dyslexia is to closely observe and assess their responses to pre-reading and early reading activities in comparison to their typically developing peers in the reception year of primary school and beyond. The review found that the first step advocated in identifying children who may have learning difficulties including dyslexia is to notice those making poor progress in comparison with their typically developing peers receiving high quality wave 1 literacy teaching. We have endorsed all the recommendations and have made available £10 million to support their implementation.