My Lords, perhaps I may put a few more points. First, the size of the document was commented upon in another place. On going through the sections, they should of course be broken down to smaller units, for ease of use. I ask my noble friend, has he encouraged the various charitable bodies outside to print their own guides to the relevant bits for their user groups? I can see that they would be very good at making it understandable, because it is in their interests and those of their client base to ensure that it is done; and they have a better starting point from knowing exactly what language could be used. That is a general point.
Not for the first time, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, got to the nub of what I was going to say, first. That is, that we have come from a very confrontational system, as the noble Lord said, in which we knew what we had to do and where the points in the sand were that we had to get to. We knew that we had to achieve these and needed certain points to do so. It was incredibly confrontational and probably wasted huge amounts of effort. It probably was needed when it was first brought in, to get people to take the problem seriously. We should be capable of moving on from the graduated approach commenced in school action and school action plus, as the noble Lord described. However, if we had taken into account that the schools and the providers of support are also going to have to move away from a confrontational situation, what is that monitoring? What is that “must”, and how are they going to do it? Those are very valid
questions. If there is not the will to move forward, who ultimately will make sure that they do it? That is something we should know about. It is something that we should not have to do but almost certainly will do, if only in a certain number of cases. It is just the historical weight that we carry in this situation.
I have a couple of slightly more specific points. The biggest and bravest change in this was the fact of the duty to identify within the Act—not merely as a response to those who had been presented. However, I cannot help but ask: if we are putting a great deal of effort into the SEN codes here and the SEN codes are organised, has my noble friend given any more thought to improving at least a recognition course for the more commonly occurring disabilities or educational problems? He mentions in this document those with specific learning difficulties. Apparently dyslexics are out in front, closely followed by dyscalculics and dyspractics. I am not sure about the figures, but we reckon that it is roughly 10% in the British version for dyslexics. Just over 3% have dyscalculia; I have not seen the figure for dyspraxia. Probably up to 15% of our school population is covered in that group. We must make sure that we can identify the signs, or at least the danger of people falling into those groups, the specific learning patterns those people have, the support structures they will need and, indeed, getting them through not only for educational purposes and teaching them how to cope. It would be very helpful to know how to establish all that for individuals; how to bring in their parents and tell them how to cope.
I remember the discussions we had about the SEN codes. Let us face it, none of us is coming in on this cold. I think that the term used was “whole-school strategy”: making sure that work structures are in place throughout the school. In early recognition, having lots of eyes with a degree of knowledge will be better than having an expert who gives commands, because at least that way we will know to refer on to the expert. This is something that is not too much to expect, and it certainly has to be a better way forward in the earlier stages of the educational process. What steps are being taken towards this? If we do not put mandatory steps in now, how do we ensure that the SENCOs have enough scouts, troops and boots on the ground to ensure they do their job properly?
This is a change of approach and a bold step, but the transition is going to be difficult. Almost by guarantee there are going to be problems with transition to the new culture. Unless more people are brought in and provided it is not pushed off to one side, which tended to happen in the past in the worst cases, we are going to have extra problems. I look forward to my noble friend’s answers.