My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 67 and 68. The current test in the Bill for whether someone has special educational needs is
whether they have a learning difficulty or a disability that would require special educational provision, defined in Clause 21 as,
“educational or training provision that is additional to, or different from, that made generally for others of the same age”.
Amendment 68 would mean that the test of whether someone has a special educational need would be based not on whether they need special educational provision but, instead, on whether provision has to be made for them to access education. What is the difference? Someone could have barriers to their accessing education which do not require,
“educational or training provision that is additional to, or different from, that made generally”.
For example, simply being unable to access a class, due to stairs, for a wheelchair user, is nothing to do with education or training provision but instead about their ability to access education.
Why do I think that this amendment is important? When the Government originally published their proposals for the Bill, when Sarah Teather was the Children’s Minister, the focus was very much on special education and disability needs. The Government have said that this does not prevent the provisions being applied to disabled children when there are barriers to them accessing education. Clause 20 includes disabled children as people who have special educational needs. However, clarity is needed about what might constitute a barrier to education. Are we just talking about things such as additional support—Braille, and so on—or do we include the simple ability to get to a class or get through a lesson due to a spinal problem? This amendment is a probing one to clarify that educational or training provision includes the ability to access education and does not apply only to the actual classroom or teaching session.
I move on to Amendments 220, 221 and 222. Your Lordships all get letters, briefings and, in some cases, speaking notes from a whole host of organisations. I am always amazed at the fortitude of those organisations in campaigning, rightly, for what they really believe in. But sometimes, in the barrage of the correspondence, we get personal letters or comments from individuals who are not part of a gigantic campaign—they are individual snapshots of how that person feels. One such letter came to me some time ago, about allergies. I remember in my own school children with nut allergies. Knowing nothing about it, I did a bit of exploration and realised that this was very serious. If they had an allergy, we needed to make sure that their photographs were pinned up by the canteen and that the Epipen that they needed to save their lives was readily available.
I want to read you this letter from a child, whose name I shall not mention, because it shows how important it is that no child with a medical condition should be prevented from having full-time school provision. The letter says:
“Since the age of 9 months I have had to use the EPI-PEN 13 times. Regardless of all my allergies I have always had a positive attitude to life, and that’s how my mum has always taught me to help me learn how to live in the bigger wider world and my dad has always taught me to smile. Because of this I have been able to live my life to the fullest and we have travelled and had fun whilst
doing many exciting things. Nursery, primary and my first year of high school were great and memorable years and the schools have always managed with my allergies.
Now we zoom into 2013 and let’s see what’s going on now. We’ve moved in a new area and my mum applied for schools in our area as they were more nearer to home, we didn’t get the schools we applied for but in the meantime I was offered a place in another school straight away. But all the staff in my new school are worried about my allergies and they aren’t giving me a starting date, it’s been 8 weeks I’ve been out of school and still don’t know when I’m starting!”.
I read that letter as an example of how a medical condition, which the school should cater for, is preventing that poor little girl being able to get to school.
4.30 pm
I say straightaway that some schools provide significant support to children with health conditions, but it is obvious that other schools do not provide any support at all. That means that there are inconsistencies in how children are supported, depending on the school that they attend. Those inconsistencies have been highlighted in a report by the charity Epilepsy Action, which commissioned research specifically for this Bill about children and young people with epilepsy who are either currently in full-time education or who have left full-time education in the past 10 years. I will not read all the figures, but the survey found that only 14% of those currently in full-time education said that their education establishment had a written plan for their needs.
My point is simple: whether you need injections for diabetes, tablets for cystic fibrosis or support with epilepsy, that should not be a barrier to full-time education. I have always thought that the Bill is progressive. I do not think that anybody would say, “Down with the Bill!”; I think that everyone feels that the Bill is a real way forward. What we are about is making it better. I was delighted to see the Minister’s amendment—I thank him for it—which means that, for the first time, there will be a duty of care, there will be statutory guidance and we will, I hope, circulate good practice. I spoke this week to Ofsted, which is keen to be involved to ensure that that good practice and statutory guidance are delivered. The real issue will be the quality and substance of the statutory guidance, but I hope that, once it has been issued, there will be no more letters from little girls saying that they have been barred from or delayed in starting school because of a simple condition that the school could deal with.