My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 80 to 85 and Amendments 88A and 88B.
Amendments 80 to 85 seek to ensure that the virtual school head and the designated teacher for looked-after and previously looked-after children are trained in awareness of speech, language and communication needs. I am grateful to noble Lords for these amendments. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, we discussed the importance of speech, language and communication skills to children’s development in our previous session.
Children who are looked after or who were previously looked after are particularly vulnerable to having poor speech and language as they often will not have had parents who helped maximise their communication skills and development. Early identification is essential so that the right support is in place as soon as possible. Our vision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, including those with speech, language and communication needs, is the same as it is for all children and young people. We want them to achieve well in their early years, at school and in further education, to find employment, to lead happy and fulfilled lives and to experience choice and control. That is why we introduced a new early years progress check in 2012 for children at the age of two as part of the reformed early years foundation stage. This is helping to pick up potential difficulties early to ensure that support plans are put in place for tackling them.
As I explained when discussing Amendment 30, the Children and Families Act 2014 introduced a requirement for local authorities to publish a local offer of services across education, health and social care for children and young people with special educational needs or disabilities. We expect these offers to include details of services to meet speech, language and communication needs, and details of how they can be accessed.
While I fully sympathise with the noble Lord’s intentions, we are not convinced that we need to prescribe in legislation that every virtual school head and designated teacher must have training on this issue. Designated teachers, like all teachers, will have covered identifying and responding to all children’s needs, including speech, language and communication needs, as part of their initial teacher training. The National College for Teaching and Leadership has also produced a series of online training materials for teachers with a focus on the most prevalent forms of SEN. That includes a module on speech, language and communication needs.
As I explained during our previous session, we are also funding the Communication Trust, a consortium of more than 40 voluntary and community-sector organisations working in the field of speech, language and communication to build on existing resources and programmes to ensure that practitioners working with children and young people up to the age of 25 are supported and helped to meet their needs and, as the noble Lord said, to ensure consistency of practice.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned the figure I referred to in the previous session relating to this element. We have increased funding for SEN support as the population has increased. We announced an additional £92.5 million in December 2015 for the high-needs element of the dedicated school grant for SEN provision. The £650,000 that I mentioned was only part of the £130 million that we have allocated between 2014-15 and 2016-17 for SEN implementation.
Most virtual school heads are also former teachers, and will have access to training provided by their local authority to ensure that they can effectively do their job and meet the needs of local children. Their role will not be to work directly with children but to work closely with those who will, such as the school’s designated teacher and SEN co-ordinator. Together, they will identify and support children with special educational needs, including those with speech, language and communication needs. However, in light of the discussions we had on our previous Committee day, we will go further and discuss with the National Association of Virtual School Heads whether we need to do more to make sure that their members and the designated teachers with whom they work have the necessary training in speech, language and communication need to ensure greater consistency of practice. I hope that in light of that, noble Lords are reassured and that the amendments will not be pressed.
On Amendments 88A and 88B, everyone who wants to and who has the ability to go to university, including, of course, care leavers and those who were previously looked-after children, should have the opportunity and be encouraged to do so. The rationale behind the amendments is about making sure that universities
support those two groups of young people by publishing a range of data as well as prioritising their applications and supporting them financially and emotionally while they are studying. We know that the figures nationally for the number of care leavers going into higher education are lower than the average. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, pointed out, 7% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 are in higher education, compared to around 30% for the same age group as a whole. While we entirely understand the aim of the amendments, we are not convinced that it is the best way to achieve that aim. I shall talk about the steps that we are taking in a number of ways.
Universities are independent and autonomous bodies, and are best placed to make their own decisions about how best to support their students. Many are supporting more vulnerable children to go to university than ever before. The independent Director of Fair Access has agreed 183 access arrangements for 2016-17, which include plans for universities to spend more than £745 million on measures to improve access and support the success of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is up significantly from the £404 million in 2009, and care leavers are a specific target group for access arrangements. Support for care leavers in access arrangements has grown considerably over the years, with around 80% of access agreements including specific action to support care leavers. There is a particular focus on supporting care leavers during the admissions process. Access activities referred to by institutions concerning care leavers in their agreements include subject-specific activities, pre-entry visits to institutions, taster sessions, summer schools and pre-entry attainment raising. One-third of institutions refer to undertaking long-term outreach activity with care leavers and looked-after children.
In addition, the Government have funded a National Network for the Education of Care Leavers, which provides HE activities and resources for care leavers, children in care and the people who support them. The Government are absolutely committed to widening access to higher education for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the HE sector takes its responsibilities in this area very seriously. That is why the Children Act 1989 places a duty on local authorities to promote the educational achievement of the children they look after, which is backed up by a requirement that every local authority must appoint a virtual school head. Statutory guidance on promoting the educational achievement of looked-after children makes it clear that their aspirations to go to university must be encouraged, nurtured and supported. Local authorities as corporate parents must provide financial assistance to the extent that the young person’s educational needs require it, including support for accommodation outside university term time. They must also provide a £2,000 higher education bursary.
Supporting previously looked-after children is important, too. We are extending the role of the personal adviser so that those key people have a role in providing information and advice in relation to previously looked-after children. Of course, the situation is different for young people who were looked after but who leave care through, for example, an adoption or special
guardianship order. Those young people have parents and carers who will be there to support and encourage them as they consider and undertake higher education, in much the same way as young people who have never been in care. But we recognise that some of those young people may have ongoing issues stemming from the trauma of their early life experiences. That is why in April of this year we extended the upper age limit for access to therapeutic support funded by the adoption support fund from 18 to 21.
We are in a better place than we were a few years ago. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, mentioned, since Buttle UK developed its quality mark for care leaver-friendly universities, their awareness of the needs of care leavers has increased and the Who Cares? Trust website, as the noble Baroness mentioned, is a hugely valuable resource for care leavers on the help available to them in individual institutions. Care leavers can succeed in university. In Hertfordshire, the virtual school head has confirmed that numbers going to university are growing, with 61 currently at university and a further 24 planning to go in the autumn, each of whom is the first in their families to go to university. She also confirms that four of their care leavers have won first-class honours degrees and expects notification of a fifth.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, the noble and learned Baroness Butler-Sloss, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about the importance of data. We have increased the age range of care leavers on whom we collect data from 19 to 20 and 21 year-olds and will be doing this in future for 18 year-olds, so that we know their destinations in relation to education and training. As part of our higher education reforms, the Government also are increasing the amount of data that universities will need to publish as part of the new teaching excellence framework, so that we can better see the progress of students and measure the quality of teaching. We also, of course, have set a challenging ambition to increase the number of disadvantaged young people going to university, which again will need to be monitored by clear data. I do not have the full datasets, but perhaps it would be helpful if I wrote to noble Lords to set out some of the new data that will be published and collected. I do not have the details here. On that basis and given that, hopefully, I have shown the seriousness with which we take this issue, I hope that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendments.