I thank the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Wilkins, for tabling their amendments on inclusive provision. I had the great pleasure of meeting the noble Lord, Lord Low, recently. I was grateful for his time and singularly impressed by his breadth of knowledge and wisdom in this area. As I said before, I am indebted to noble Lords for their help in developing my understanding.
Thankfully, we have come a long way since 1970, when some children were written off as uneducable. It was in the 1970s that the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and her committee of inquiry published their report. As I have already said, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the noble Baroness and her committee, as their work led to the Education Act 1981 and the special educational needs framework, which did so much to improve the identification of and support for children and young people with SEN, particularly in the mainstream. Subsequent changes were made to that framework through the Special Education Needs and Disability Act 2001, which applied disability discrimination law to education and strengthened the right to a mainstream education where parents want it.
In 2012 this Government included the provision of auxiliary aids and services, such as specialised computer programmes, sign language interpreters and hoists, within the reasonable adjustments duty for schools under the Equality Act 2010. With the Bill, the Government are seeking to build on what has gone before and create a new framework to improve support for children and young people and increase choice for parents and young people. All the amendments in this
group are concerned in some way with the principle of inclusion. The debate today has demonstrated that while we all share a common desire to improve provision for children and young people, we may differ on how that objective is best achieved. I hope that we can make much of our common ground and shared objectives as the Bill progresses.
I shall speak first to Amendment 65D, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Low. I know that this is an area that was raised by the Joint Commission on Human Rights in its consideration of the Bill. This Government have taken action in a number of ways to support the objective sought by this amendment and to meet our obligations under the UN convention, which we take very seriously. I welcome the opportunity to set these out. In doing so, I hope to be able to persuade your Lordships of the case for giving effect to this principle in a range of ways other than by amending Clause 19. The Bill maintains the general principle of inclusion in a number of its key provisions. It places duties on schools and colleges to use their best endeavours to ensure that those with SEN get the support they need. It also recognises that children and young people have different needs and different preferences for where they wish to be educated, including specialist settings such as special schools and independent specialist colleges, and seeks to improve the options available to them.
Beyond the Bill, as I have mentioned, schools and colleges have important duties under the Equality Act 2010 to prevent discrimination against disabled people; to promote equality of opportunity; to plan to increase access over time; and to make reasonable adjustments to their policy and practice. I want to make it clear that nothing in the Bill replaces or overrides those provisions. Indeed, we have drawn attention to those duties and set out examples of the reasonable steps schools and colleges can take to include children and young people in mainstream settings in Section 7(11) of the draft SEN code of practice. Chapter 6 of the draft code provides strong guidance to all mainstream early years settings, schools and colleges to ensure they have high expectations for all their pupils and students, provide high-quality teaching and have clear systems for identifying those who need additional support and providing that support as quickly as possible.
We make it clear that schools are responsible for setting their own priorities for the continuous professional development of their staff and recognise the key role played by the SENCO in this and other ways. A number of steps are being taken to support schools and colleges in developing their staff. The teaching schools programme is supporting the development of expertise in supporting children with SEN. We are also providing bursaries of up to £9,000 to high-quality graduates undertaking training programmes with a focus on teaching learners with SEN and £1 million in bursaries to support existing further education teachers in undertaking training to develop their specialist skills and knowledge to support those with SEN.
Following recommendations from the Rose review 3,200 teachers have obtained specialist qualifications in dyslexia and since 2009 10,000 new SENCOs have
been funded through the master’s-level National Award for SEN Co-ordination with a further 800 places on this award in 2013-14. We worked with the Training and Development Agency—now the National College for Teaching and Learning—to develop specialist resources for initial teacher training and new advanced-level online modules on areas including dyslexia, autism and speech and language needs, to enhance teachers’ knowledge, understanding and skills. We have also funded the National Association for Special Educational Needs to deliver additional training in SEN for established SENCOs; this has now offered training to around 5,000 SENCOs.
We have also awarded contracts to a number of sector specialists including the Autism Trust, Communications Trust—to which the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham referred—Dyslexia-SpLD Trust and National Sensory Impairment Partnership to provide information and advice to schools and teachers. We have also provided resources in a number of other areas and I will be very happy to write to the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Wilkins, with further details. Taken together, I believe these measures help mainstream schools to develop an effective approach to inclusion and help to equip teaching staff with the skills to support a broad range of pupils and students.
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Amendment 157B from the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, applies to Clause 39 where a parent or young person asks for a particular school or post-16 institution to be named in an EHC plan. Noble Lords have made it clear that the purpose of this amendment is to require local authorities, schools and colleges to show there are no reasonable steps that they could take to prevent the parent’s or young person’s request being ruled out under the exceptions set out in Clause 39(4). They referred in the debate to the duties in the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people.
I want to make some important principles clear. First, parents should be able to request a particular school or post-16 institution and have their request met as far as possible. Secondly, children and young people should be educated at a mainstream school or college unless the parents or the young person themselves wish for other provision and so long as the education of others is safeguarded. The first is a general principle that extends beyond Part 3 of this Bill. However, children and young people with EHC plans have a stronger right than others. This is reflected in Clause 39, which says that a local authority must name the parent’s or young person’s preferred school or college unless it would be,
“unsuitable for the age, ability, aptitude or special educational needs of the child or young person … or … incompatible with provision of efficient education for others”,
or incompatible with the efficient use of resources. Furthermore, I emphasise that nothing in this Bill overrides or replaces the duties schools and colleges have under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments to avoid putting disabled children and young people at a substantial disadvantage because of their disability.
Clause 33 relates to the second of these principles and applies in cases where it is not be possible for a parent’s or young person’s requested school or college to be named in their plan or they have not requested a particular institution. As noble Lords have pointed out, it requires local authorities, schools and post-16 institutions to consider reasonable steps. That is solely to show that there are no reasonable steps that could be taken to prevent a child or young person’s placement in a mainstream setting from being incompatible with the efficient education of others. Amendment 157B would apply the reasonable steps provision to all the exceptions in Clause 39 and I am not convinced that this would be appropriate. I will be happy to discuss the issues further with the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, outside the Room but in the light of what I have said I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Finally, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Wilkins, and the noble Lord, Lord Low, for tabling Amendment 219. This would enable regulations to be made setting out in detail how local authorities and NHS bodies should go about providing inclusive and accessible education, health and social care services. While the Government agree that such services should be accessible and, as far as possible, inclusive, we believe that the best approach is not to set out clear but broad expectations in legislation but to leave local areas and providers to work out how best to meet those expectations.
Expectations for accessibility and inclusiveness are clear. Local authorities, health commissioning bodies and providers must all pay proper regard to and comply with the provisions of the Equality Act 2010, including when carrying out their new joint commissioning functions. This Bill goes even further, setting expectations on education providers to make their provision inclusive, by using their “best endeavours”—a very strong obligation—to meet the SEN of all their pupils. Health commissioners are similarly under a very clear duty in the NHS Act 2006 to reduce inequalities in access to services between people and inequalities in the outcomes derived from those services. These provisions will be supported by the statutory SEN code of practice, which sets out more detail on practice in terms of commissioning and delivering services. We believe that this is the right approach.
On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about presumption, the presumption of mainstream education already puts the principle of inclusion in the Bill. The code of practice subsumes the currently separate inclusive schooling guidance, and I am of course happy to liaise with noble Lords on the wording of the code.