Covid-19 Summer Food Fund
Lord Addington Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge [V]
My Lords, the voucher system is now operating effectively. In addition to this system, holiday clubs have been run for the last two years. We are building on that with another £9 million. Those clubs take place in disadvantaged areas and, of course, provide healthy meals in addition to educational activities.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister not agree that, when considerable criticism of the Government’s current policy and encouragement to change are ignored from their own Benches over a long period of time, something has gone wrong? A Premiership footballer should be allowed to concentrate on his own sport and career and should not be required to come in and bail out the Government.
Baroness Berridge [V]
My Lords, the Government always keep decisions under review and have listened; that is, as I have outlined, part of a mature democracy. The participation of people such as Marcus Rashford is welcome in the public space and a tribute to the free and fair democracy that we all enjoy.
Education Settings: Wider Opening
Lord Addington Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge
My Lords, the Government have been acting on this matter. We are working with the Education Endowment Foundation to make sure that the interventions we put in place to help these children to catch up are based on evidence. I can assure the noble Baroness that we are seriously considering a package of measures in relation to the catch-up provision. However, I will take back her comments about using space in other premises.
Lord Addington (LD) [V]
My Lords, do the Government have a clear picture of what has and has not worked when it comes to the underlying issues around learning and teaching? Many reports are coming out on how some children are missing out, while others are getting quite a good deal. Unless we have a good idea about what is actually happening, we cannot plan for how we will support and correct any problems later on.
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, the changes which this virus crisis has brought about to how children learn are unprecedented. The move to remote learning and to the use of technology will change some teaching practices for ever. We are of course gathering evidence about what is and is not effective in remote learning. As I have said, the Oak National Academy and BBC Bitesize will be part of the effort to analyse what effect this has had on children’s learning going forward.
Higher Education
Lord Addington Excerpts(3 years, 12 months ago)
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The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
I call the noble Baroness, Lady Blower. No? Then I call the noble Lord, Lord Addington. We will come back to the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, if we have time.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that certain practices will have to change in lockdown? One of them is that anybody who needs an assessment of a disability can do that online as opposed to doing it the traditional way, face to face. I remind the House of my declared interests.
Baroness Berridge
The noble Lord is correct; where an assessment is needed for disability support allowance, it needs to be done remotely. We are seeing that in these difficult circumstances there are situations where the use of remote technology has proved to be advantageous, and it might end up being a change or an option in any current system.
BAME Students: Pupil Referral Units
Lord Addington Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Berridge
The noble Baroness raises an interesting issue. Children in AP settings will often have been placed there by the local authority, which has various safeguarding duties. If a student in its care cannot be educated due to health reasons, I would expect it to take the appropriate course of action.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that certain hidden or non-obvious conditions, such as dyslexia, tend to be even slower to be picked up among the BME community than in others, usually due to things such as it being more commonly working-class, and that many of these conditions are seen to be white, middle-class problems which are identified by the parents and then fought through the education system? When are we going to get better provision in schools to sort this? Having more working-class and black teachers would help.
Baroness Berridge
I am grateful to the noble Lord. On the recruitment of teachers, a £2 million project with the diversity hubs is aimed specifically at increasing the diversity of the workforce, which is an important factor. On non-diagnosis, for every child who is not meeting the requisite attainment standards, graduated action on their attainment gap should be taken by teachers and SEN co-ordinators, regardless of a diagnosis. We are aware that 81% of the children in alternative provision also have special educational needs and disabilities, so we need to intervene earlier. That will be part of the SEN review, to avoid this correlation.
Educational Settings
Lord Addington Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. We support the decision to close schools, which was clearly made on safety grounds. I have a list of questions for the Minister, and I ask her to write to me on any that she feels unable to answer today.
What steps are the Government taking to facilitate co-operation between nurseries, schools and childcare providers and local communities? In particular, can she offer clarification on childminders, who are not mentioned in the Statement but play a significant role in out-of-school care? Does the Minister anticipate that education providers will need to pool resources, including staff and premises, in order to care for vulnerable children and the children of key workers? This raises safeguarding considerations because usually DBS checks apply to specific schools and premises, and it may not be possible for people simply to transfer to another establishment. What planning have the Government done in that regard?
What provision will be available for what would have been the Easter holiday period? The Minister will be aware that working parents usually rely on recreational groups, clubs and camps, which will of course not be operating, as well as on grandparents and relatives, contact with whom is being discouraged. The Statement mentions that schools will have the flexibility to provide meals or vouchers to children eligible for free school meals, but as noble Lords will be aware free school meals are a passport to benefits. Given that more children are likely to become eligible for them in coming weeks as the economic impact of this pandemic claims jobs and wages, can the Minister give an assurance that these newly eligible children will also be entitled to the voucher system? I am sure she will acknowledge that we cannot afford a lead-in time for such changes.
We understand that the list of key workers will be issued tomorrow. The Statement mentioned NHS staff, but that term encompasses not merely doctors, nurses and paramedics. Hospitals need countless other categories of staff to function effectively, so I hope the Minister will confirm that they will be regarded as key because that is precisely what they are. There must surely be an absolute guarantee that we can look after the children of parents needed to carry out essential work at this time, including food distribution workers, police, fire and rescue staff and those who are working to produce medical equipment, not least those in industries that have been repurposed to produce essential ventilators. Although she will not want to list the categories of staff at this point, can she clarify whether the childcare being provided in schools will apply to children where only one parent is a key worker, or will it require both to be so categorised?
A major concern to thousands of students and their parents is the abandonment of GCSE and A-level exams. The Statement says that the DfE will work with the sector and Ofqual to ensure that children get the qualifications they need. On Radio 4 this morning, the Secretary of State provided little elaboration on those words, although he seemed to suggest that grades would be awarded based on classwork, but will that be all? I have to say that Education Ministers over the past decade have demonstrated something of an aversion to teacher assessments, which suggests that there might well be an additional measurement, perhaps some form of online assessment. I hope that the Minister will rule that out, as it would impact disproportionately on disadvantaged students, whose home environment, not least the availability of suitable IT, could leave them in some difficulty. Awarding grades may be suitable for those who are doing well, but what about those on the margins? The difference between a 4 and a 5 grade at GCSE can be crucial, and of course all sorts of options are closed to young people who do not have passes in English and maths. What comfort can the Minister offer to those students and their families?
Predicted grades may be sufficient to enable young people to go up to university later this year, but what of those who are already there who will be unable to sit their finals? Most of the restrictions announced in the Statement do not apply to universities, but I hope that the government are not willing to leave all aspects of entry to and graduation from universities in these unprecedented times in the hands of individual institutions. That would produce a patchwork system, not a level playing field, which surely must be avoided.
Never before, not even in time of war, have all schools been closed. These are extraordinary times, and naturally, parents and carers are very concerned. I put on record our thanks to and support for all those working in our education and children’s services through the crisis. They, along with parents and learners of all ages, now seek both reassurance and guidance from the Government.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I associate myself with the last few comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson. This is an unprecedented time and an unprecedented challenge. However, we still need a bit more clarification. If we are going to hear later on today about who are the key workers and the categories, can the Minister give us more of a hint about which groups they will go into? Delivery drivers would probably not have been regarded as key workers before this occasion. Where exactly will this go? If a little more guidance could be provided today on the categories of people, if not the exact job descriptions, that would help the situation.
Then we come on to the list of those who will be going to school. I and the Minister have had, shall we say, a bit of cut and thrust already on education, health and care plans, although she has not been in post that long. This is probably an occasion where, to be perfectly honest, the health and care part of that plan is probably more important. Are all people with the plans to be treated in exactly the same way? When I listened to the Commons yesterday, people in special schools was a particularly popular topic of discussion. Will all special schools with a residential capacity automatically be gathered in? Is there any categorisation within them, and so on? The plan seems nice and comprehensive, but it covers a great deal of things. For once, I do not think that dyslexics are a special case here. My group is not the highest priority. Can we make sure that we look at this so that we get practical solutions? It might be a little bit too soon to do this, but then again it has to start functioning by Monday. What will happen there?
The Government seem to have gone to the BBC, saying “Give us a hand”. Have not times changed a wee bit? However, it has a huge resource available to it via iPlayer to enable large numbers of students to continue their courses and study. Will the Government work with the BBC to get particular packages together to help people? For instance, I think you can probably do it at the moment off the top of your head with history programmes for history and English language, and there will be other subjects which I do not bother looking at, so I do not know about them. What are the Government doing there? Also, surely the other public service broadcasters should take this up as well. Is there a co-ordinated approach coming so you have this available? A large amount of support is actually almost at our fingertips here. How are we going to use it? That would be valuable to know.
On free school meals, once again, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, how will this work? The voucher system, again, has to be functioning by Monday. What is happening there, and when will the general public know what is happening? They have to know. It is no good us finding out and then finding out in a week or two. They have to find out what is going on by Monday. Could we have a bit more guidance on that?
Nobody wanted to do this, but if the Government feel that this is the correct thing and they have the advice, we can only go with them. However, we need to know how it will work. Clichés come to mind, but the one about the road to hell being paved with good intentions is nagging at the back of my head here.
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, I am grateful for the support from both the noble Lords. This action has been taken primarily to protect the public from the spread of this disease. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for accepting that some of his questions I will have to answer by letter. Registered childminders are covered by our request, and during the Easter holidays, school leaders—including those from independent schools —and local authorities will work collaboratively on the ground to deliver this. That is not just an expectation; we know it will happen. We expect that during the holidays they will be pooling so that staff can get a break as well, because the provision for key workers and this vulnerable group of children is significantly less than for a normal pupil cohort.
Eligibility for free school meals was dealt with directly by the Secretary of State yesterday afternoon, and included those who have or will become eligible for free school meals. I had to read out yesterday’s Statement verbatim, but the voucher system is sorted out and schools will be reimbursed. Certain schools have already been purchasing supermarket vouchers and will be reimbursed for those costs, while others are continuing to provide food. We are leaving to the discretion of head teachers which they choose to do.
Today, the Cabinet Office will issue a list of what are key workers in relation to school attendance. Regarding disadvantage to students, I say that the system for awarding examination grades will be fair to all. A proper and fair qualification will be awarded. We will know tomorrow what it will look like, as a lot of consultation and engagement was needed with Ofqual, universities and head teachers, about how to handle fairly and justly a situation that is unprecedented, trying to honour, respect and award properly the work that these students and young people have been putting in. It is taking some time to work out.
Every child with an EHCP is covered in the definition of a vulnerable child. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, referred to this. There will be guidance regarding atypical settings, including the special schools that are residential. There are issues around keeping children in those environments, and around what household isolation means when you are in a boarding school, because we are aware that there will still be young people in those boarding houses, particularly looked-after children within that education system. The guidance will, I hope, be the practical solution that the noble Lord was talking about, and will think through all the detailed implications of the decisions.
This is a time of national unity. Everyone is being engaged, including of course the BBC, which, along with other providers, will use its iPlayer system to broadcast educational material, enabling children to still learn while they are at home. Guidance will be going out to teachers about remote teaching. Some have a lot of experience of this and some do not. We are trying to give them the best help that we can. At a time when we are prioritising the curtailment of this disease—trying to stop its spread—it is important that we all work together. We are seeing that on the ground between different schools and with local authority staff, particularly in adult and child social care, who are working above and beyond the call of duty at the moment.
Children: Special Educational Needs
Lord Addington Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Berridge
I am grateful to my noble friend. Under the 2009 Act, the Government are required to review the autism strategy every three years. This is the first time that the strategy will include children and young people; my noble friend is correct that one of the areas we will also address within that review is the misdiagnosis, and what we are convinced is an underdiagnosis, of girls with autism, who often present later and are better at camouflaging it. They often present very differently to boys with autism.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, do the Government accept that there are huge numbers of people who have moderate problems, which are being left for a long time and then have to be dealt with in the high-needs category? This is because we are not investing in classroom support. Could this be a key part of any review and new strategy? At the moment, all it does is to make people’s lives worse and costs us more money.
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, I will take the specific question for the review about moderate needs becoming high needs. As the noble Lord will be aware, most young people who have special educational needs and disabilities—the SEND population—are accommodated within mainstream schools and without an EHCP, which was in the 2014 reforms. We are providing through dyslexia organisations and the Autism Education Trust, as he will be aware, further teaching qualifications and support for those in the classroom.
Educational Opportunities: Working Classes
Lord Addington Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness. I do not know if I agree with everything she said, but I agree with a lot of it. I volunteered to speak in this debate because it follows one yesterday—I remind the House of my declared interests—in which I talked special educational needs. I did not have a chance to raise how the parents have to take on a huge responsibility for this group, because the school system seems to be failing them. Teachers are not trained to deal with most of the commonly occurring special educational needs—I have already referred to my interest in dyslexia—and parents traditionally have to step in. They normally step in to get the diagnosis in the first place. They have to notice that the child is underachieving or not achieving in certain ways. That means they need to know what the norm and the expectation are. If you do not have a background in education, you are less likely to know that. Then, once you have done that, you have to take on the system, to an extent. You need to start putting pressure on the teacher and the structures around you to say, “Why are you not doing it?” This means writing letters. Good literacy helps. Knowing how to access forms and look things up are all part of it. The tiger parent gets results.
Then look at straightforward cash. It costs £500, maybe £600, to get, privately, a diagnosis for these hidden disabilities. Other situations may vary. That is a big chunk. It is more than you would get from one week on the national minimum wage. Then, it is reckoned to cost about £1,000 a year to keep the pressure on and make sure you get the support for that child and the things they are missing at school. The people I have been speaking to reckon that, if you have to go to appeal, it costs over £6,000. At least 15% of the population have special educational needs according to the Government, and virtually everybody agrees that that is an underdiagnosis. It is reckoned that 80% of those with dyslexia are undiagnosed through the school system.
There is another, small element that goes into the bigger cocktail the noble Baroness has identified, and which may ensure that your chances of success are that bit lower. Everything is on a downward multiplier. You are being pressured to do things that you just cannot do if you do not have the resources or understand the education system that well. I do not know how many times I have had a conversation with a parent who said, “I have a dyslexic child and, by the way, I think I am dyslexic as well.” The same is true of dyspraxia and autism. With that sort of pressure, we will not get out of this until we start to have better education for teachers and make the system slightly friendlier to enable them to implement those changes. All these small changes will help but unless we keep an eye on them and how they fit together, we will miss out. Please can we hear how the Government are going to make sure that parents with lower educational attainment know how to access the help that the middle- classes are clearly getting?
Schoolchildren: Dyslexia and Neurodiverse Conditions
Lord Addington Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Addington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the problems of and possible solutions for children in the school system with dyslexia and other neurodiverse conditions.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I thank everybody who has put their name down to speak in this debate. I should probably declare my interests, which I am afraid are slightly legion in this case: I am dyslexic; I am president of the British Dyslexia Association; and I am chairman of Microlink PC, which is an assistive technology company—there are probably a couple of other things, but I think we have the gist of it.
Why did I table this debate? It is because, at the moment, special educational needs are in trouble. It is a very good concept; many Governments have said over a long period of time that we will stop allowing X percentage—say 20% or 25%—of our pupils to be written off, which historically had happened. But we are now saying they shall be educated—great—and we have a legislative structure that says they shall be provided with help, and we have got ourselves into a position that is probably a classic case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions, where we are letting down people who are trying to fulfil all this.
Before we go any further on this, I apologise for starting with dyslexia; I realise it ain’t the only show in town. Autism, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, ADHD are all there, but dyslexia is the one I know best, the one I had the best briefing on, and the one I am least likely to make a mistake on.
The British Dyslexia Association reckons that 80% of those on the spectrum—and it is a spectrum—are unidentified by the time they leave school. We are only touching the edges. Most of those with most of the problems are probably not the most severe—those with the Belisha beacon that says, “There is a problem here, so come to it”; it is those at the edges, the people who are just underachieving, just failing. This is probably the group where we should put much more attention, because these people often do not get spotted, do not get assistance and either fail or, more likely, very much underachieve.
We have had descriptions of the issue, and as always the Library’s briefing captures it when it quotes a House of Commons Education Committee report, published last year, describing the system as,
“‘badly hampered by poor administration’ and a ‘challenging funding environment’ … The Local Government Association has stated that the current system is at a ‘tipping point’, as demand for SEN services has risen much faster than funding has been made available.”
We have real problems here. Why do we have problems? The fact is that somebody who is dyslexic, dyspraxic or whatever it is gets placed in a classroom that is designed for the other groups. If you are dyslexic, you are usually taught most of your subjects via a whiteboard or with somebody repeating dictation. You are expected to acquire the language quickly enough to be able to process it in that way. If you are dyspraxic, you are not writing it down quickly enough. If you have an attention deficit disorder, you cannot concentrate for that period of time. If you have autism, there may be a fundamental gap between what is being asked of you and how you understand it. Every one of these processes means that that challenging classroom situation becomes, for you, something that is either much more difficult to overcome or actually impossible.
What is the natural reaction to this of any pupil in that place? It is survival, is it not? To take dyslexia again, the classic reaction is either to disappear in the middle of the class—become invisible as much as you can—or disrupt it. Both are perfectly natural reactions. You have got rid of the pressure on you; you are fine. The fact that you are not being taught is something that will catch up with you in later life, but at the time, if you are eight or nine years old, you cannot deal with what is going on so you will take a survival method.
What happens to the teacher? The teacher does not know what to do, because they are not trained; it is as simple that. They are not trained to spot or to give support. If we cannot train everybody to be an expert in all these subjects, we can certainly make them slightly better at spotting problems. What we must do is quite simply bring the expertise into the school system. It will cost about £4,000 to get a level 7 qualified dyslexia teacher trained up, and it will be roughly similar, I am told, for the other major disability groups—and these are disabilities, I feel. You are supposed to get £6,000 spent on you by a school when you start. The first £6,000 comes out. Whatever happens, it is not expensive to get some structure in there. If we put extra units and extra response capacity into initial teacher training, we will probably save time and money in the long term and probably in the medium term.
Let us not forget that, the last time I looked, more than £80 million is spent on appeals to get an education, health and care plan. It has become a solution for some 3% of the school system. It was never designed to be that. The response I got, rather manfully, from the Government Front Bench in the past was, “Oh, but the Government do not lose all these cases.” No: it is only about 87%. Autism is greatly overrepresented in this process. Something is wrong here. Unless we get more support into the classroom and stop having to go back to local authorities, which are under budgetary pressure, again we have a problem. The school has a problem here. We need another approach.
The Government have said they will spend £500 million, I think—I forget the exact figure—on high-needs cases. What is a high-needs case? Is it the people who are already spotted, or is it those people who have had a moderate problem that could have been dealt with but has become worse? In the case of dyslexia, they say, “We will not come in and help you unless you have been failing for three years.” Let us take a moderate problem and make it that much worse, that much more difficult to deal with.
Let us also remember that, with a whole-school approach, we can look wider than the classroom. I have met people who have said, “Did you know you can get autistic people to do games?” Apparently, a lot of autistic people like cricket: nice function, nice individual team game. Apparently, they are good strikers in football, better than midfield generals. It is possibly understandable. These things go on. A PE teacher might be better at understanding dyspraxia. It was a great revelation to me—I should have known this, but I did not—that many people with dyspraxia have terrible trouble getting fit and staying fit. When you think about muscle memory, it probably becomes slightly more understandable. So let us look outside the classroom as well, because for some groups PE or playtime will become a response; a place to hide and get some relief. For others, it becomes worse.
Finally, one thing that hits all these groups, and probably hits dyslexics worst, is the marking of spelling, punctuation and grammar. You can lose 5% in English language, history, geography and religious studies, I think it is. That may not sound that big a thing, but I put it like this: at the top end of the problem, you are not going to get a 9 in a 1 to 9 grading if you lose 5% if you use dictation or computer-operated systems. I use computer-operated systems all the time. For English, you can lose 20%. It is said that if you spell out every word, you will not lose it for spelling. If you are dyslexic and using a computer-operated system, you cannot; it is almost impossible. The fact that the fine-detail memory or short-term memory of someone within the dyslexia spectrum is not good means that they are not going to take on the arbitrary rules of grammar and punctuation—and they are fairly arbitrary —and they will be marked down. And English, where you can lose 20%, is a gateway subject. If you do not get English, you cannot do X or Y afterwards. Noble Lords who think that that is bad should look at the functional skills problems in further education.
There are many problems here. I finish with a final anecdote, which the Minister’s office has certainly seen. There are skills that you could mark when you are using assistive technology. For instance, when the Minister’s office wrote to me asking what I was going to be talking about, I sent back a message. I meant to say, “The principal thrust of what I am going to say”, but apparently what came through was, “The printable thrust of what I am going to say.” Possibly that is a skill for not reading backwards. You could remark and put them down, but that is one you should get right. Will the Government give us their ideas about this? They are talking about increasing use of the technology going through the process—it is in one of the responses I have with me, I think it is from Michelle Donelan. You have something you can mark that people can achieve. Please, can we look at this and become slightly more realistic about the support that can be given?
Children and Families: Early Years Interventions
Lord Addington Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this is one of those debates in which there has been an incredible amount of agreement. There has been a slight tonal difference, but the agreement has been overwhelming. The right reverend Prelate—I thought of this, so I have to use it—is a prelate who displayed some punch today. She started the whole thing by saying that if you get the basis right, somebody’s life gets a little easier; it is easier for them to have a pleasant experience and for society to benefit. I am paraphrasing, but that is roughly what was said, and everybody has agreed.
The difference becomes clear when you look at what it means. It means start at the beginning: government has to work together. I do not know how many people have spent how many hours, in this Chamber, saying, “Get two departments of government to work together to a commonly agreed goal.” There are many ex-Ministers in this place who have battle scars and tears on their bodies from trying to drag another department to work with them. I have seen it happen. I have seen stress lines appear on a face almost in front of me. We have touched on housing, the DWP, education and health today, all of which have a key part to play here.
The briefing from the Library lists 12 different projects over two pages—and it said it was not in any way an exhaustive list. These are the structures and organisations involved in trying to support people. The number of problems here is mind-blowing, because of the number of things that do not work and create problems. A parent may not have the facility, financially, intellectually or educationally, to deliver this, usually because they did not get support themselves.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester brought in language development. If a child cannot talk properly, there may be many reasons why—for instance, dyspraxia, mental development, language facilities or autism, down to simply not being talked to and stuck in front of a screen or being shouted at and told not to speak. If that is coming through and that person cannot talk, they are stuffed when it comes to dealing with the rest of society. If their capacity to communicate is fundamentally limited, what will they do? How are you to explain that you even have a problem if you cannot talk coherently? You might need help at school but be unable to talk or interact. This can be caused by a variety of things, and it is just one small example of how you cannot get by.
With regard to my own background—I remind the House of my interests, predominantly in special educational needs—dyslexia is not normally easily identified at an early age because it is not really ingrained in education. However, the principle is the same: if you get in early, you will get help. The noble Lords, Lord Astor and Lord Touhig, pointed out that autism is possibly the classic example of early recognition being needed to get the right help. In this area, too, you need to identify early, but if there are lots of people around who for other reasons are not communicating or developing normally, it gets much more difficult.
You have to start developing because if you have a hugely clouded field of vision, with the best will in the world, you cannot deliver the help you want to. How can you do this? What happens normally is that the parent comes in and supports the child, who gets the help. That process involves 12 different bodies, and people try to find their way through. If you have not come from that background yourself, how do you do it? My noble friend Lady Tyler put her finger right on this issue; indeed, I have not forgiven her for taking away the biggest point in my speech. The parents who come from that background are the best equipped to get the best out of the system. That has become accepted practice. We have a series of debates coming up next week that point that out.
How are the Government going to help people to identify the problems just for people with special educational needs? Let us take that group to get them out of the way; if they are dealt with then that clears the field for everyone else. We will do that only if we have very well-trained staff, access to them and support for them, but this is not an area awash with very well-paid jobs. There is SENCO support when you get in early, but do the staff know even when to call in the help? The answer is no, they do not have the training. These characteristics are found throughout the education system later on, but here I feel that they are even more difficult to identify.
You have to get the staff trained well enough to know when to call in help and say, “This is it”, particularly when you have parents who are not equipped to do the heavy lifting themselves. Those are the groups most difficult to reach. The question, “When are you going to come in and do this?” is very important. The rest of the organisations, such as those dealing with autism and dyspraxia, are run by parents who are taking on this job themselves. It is less likely to happen early on, but if it does it is better because you do not have the structure or the experience. Problems that manifest themselves at the beginning are less likely to be spotted. If you want to save yourself money later, start training staff properly. Of course, we know that that does not really work because no one looks beyond their own department and their own budget, so the Government have to co-ordinate. We have to make sure that these people are better trained and that the people who support them are numerous and well-trained enough to intervene. We should start to make a difference in that cohort.
The rest of this is a huge task that society may never get right but it can certainly improve on. Bad housing and bad accommodation, where people are not working together, will add to all these problems. We have to try to become a little clearer about where to apply leadership. I put my bid in there, but others will have other points to make.
The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, commented that we do not need another study or another survey. I quite appreciate what he feels because, many times in various fields that I have been involved in, I have heard people say, “Yes, they’re saying exactly what they said last time. They have said it slightly differently but it is essentially the same thing.” They still do not talk to someone else who may have carried out the same survey somewhere else. If you want to have a moratorium to ask, “What’s the best thing that we have discovered over the last five years?” you might save yourself some money and time and get yourself to a more coherent position.
Lastly, what is the Government’s position on centralising this issue? The briefing suggests that the local authority should do it, but there is no real doubt that local authorities are in no shape to do that. It does not really matter how we got there; it is where we are now. Are the Government going to co-ordinate this? How will they bring the departments together, even if in this field it is just health and education? What are we going to do and what is the timeframe? We have established very clearly that we need central direction and action. We have identified the problem; let us start identifying at least some solutions. Let us see if we can make some progress.