Monday 4th March 2019

(5 years ago)

Westminster Hall
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David Drew Portrait Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
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I shall keep my remarks brief because there are Members who still want to speak.

As the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson)—a friend in this respect— said, we spent Saturday morning being assailed by governors and headteachers in Gloucestershire. It was a salutary experience, if not a harrowing one, because the message, which we have heard loud and clear from everyone here, is that it is very difficult out there at the moment. Most Members, if not all, would agree that it is more difficult than it was previously.

We had our own debate about Gloucestershire on 30 January, which the Minister responded to. I will not rehearse the same arguments now, but I will give him some specific ideas that came from Saturday’s meeting, which the Government could do fairly quickly. It was unanimously agreed that two things would help special needs across the board, at both mainstream and special schools. First, the additional needs budget should be ring-fenced, because schools feel that too often it does not reach the areas that it should. It is important that it reaches the schools that need it.

Secondly, there is the issue with the £6,000 for the education, health and care plan. That is a perverse incentive. As is happening in Gloucestershire, it means that there is a huge rise in the number of children being taken out of school to be home educated, as well as in the number of exclusions. Sadly, in the south-west we are now top of the tree, which is unusual as we have usually been in the average range.

I contend that those two issues have arisen because we are not getting quick enough diagnoses, which would make parents confident that their children were getting the support that they needed. Can the Minister make some noises? Clearly, this is about talking to the Treasury, but it is a specific funding request—not just about more money in education. It could be targeted in the way that we were led to believe would make a dramatic overnight difference to schools in Gloucestershire. A lot of their deficits have begun to arise from that.

I hope the Minister will respond to that, think about it, and go out and try to allay some of the fears of those schools. Schools do not believe that there is an understanding of how bad things have become. All schools —even grammar schools, dare I say it—stand to gain if there is clarity over how the SEN funding mechanism could be targeted at children who need it, and quickly. Then we could deal with some of the other, wider problems.