UK Parliament / Open data

Education and Adoption Bill

My Lords, this amendment prompts a question in my mind, which the Minister might be able to write to me about. Some schools are better at catering for children with special educational needs, so they attract more of them; they get a reputation as being good at it. One would not wish those schools to be penalised because they happen to be good at working with children with special educational needs. In the metric that the Government are developing to judge progress and whether or not a school is coasting, I hope we can be assured that over the three-year period there is not a risk that we penalise a school because it is very good at working with children with special educational needs. The children may not make so much progress academically but they will have been given excellent support in other ways. I hope that makes sense.

I will say one other thing. I can see that the notion I expressed earlier about allowing children to fail, particularly children in care, is a difficult concept, which I should probably correct somewhat. What I was trying to say is: allow children to fail, fail and fail again until they are successful, and each time they fail allow them not to feel so badly about failing that they do not want to try again but allow them to keep on trying until they are successful. Obviously, ideally one wants to help them to be successful the first time round.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
765 c490GC 
Session
2015-16
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
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