Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, as I am sure the noble Baroness will appreciate, some time has passed since this amendment was tabled, and there have been a number of significant developments since then which are relevant to it. First, the new school inspection arrangements, with their strengthened focus on pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, are being implemented in schools across the country, starting this term. Secondly, the Lamb inquiry has, at the request of the Secretary of State, published an interim report addressing the specific issue of whether legislative measures are necessary to strengthen these arrangements in respect of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. That report welcomed the new framework, but recommended that it should be underpinned by a duty on Ofsted to report on special educational needs and disabilities as part of school inspection. The Government have accepted this, and are committed to bringing forward this measure at the earliest opportunity. These developments provide an important context for considering this amendment. The noble Baroness rightly focuses on training of inspectors, an issue which Brian Lamb also considered in his August report. He recommended that training arrangements should indeed be strengthened, but did not conclude that legislation was needed to achieve this. We agree with that position, although we warmly support the noble Baroness’s view on the importance of the training. Inspectors’ expertise is routinely updated through a wide-ranging programme of professional development that regularly involves special educational needs and disability, while Ofsted is further enhancing its training arrangements so that school inspectors are provided with training on this important matter annually. It will respond formally following the publication of the final report of the Lamb inquiry, which is expected shortly. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, asked whether an interim statement should be issued where pupils with special educational needs and disabilities are judged not to be learning and progressing as well as pupils more generally. I believe that I can reassure the noble Baroness on this important matter. Under Ofsted’s new arrangements, a school will only be eligible for an interim statement—and a longer interval between inspections—where its previous inspection report shows the learning and progress of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities to be either "good" or "outstanding". Any school which is "satisfactory" or "inadequate" in that respect will continue to be inspected within a three-year period. I hope that we cannot have a situation where a school might be assessed as generally good but where the SEN portion of that school would be only satisfactory. This provision would not allow it to have a longer period, so I hope that we have reassured your Lordships in that respect. On Amendment 292, proposing that academies should also receive the report, local authorities have no responsibilities in respect of academies so it would be inappropriate to impose a legal obligation for an academy’s reports to be sent to the local authority. However, I can reassure the noble Baroness that because each academy must have at least one local authority representative on its governing body, and the reports will be placed in the public domain, local authorities will have access to those reports. In the light of these reassurances, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel capable of withdrawing the amendment.