Children with Special Educational Needs

Dan Rogerson Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

I did not plan to speak in the debate. Many hon. Members take a strong interest in this subject, but there are undoubtedly other meetings and Committees sitting this morning that have prevented them from attending the debate. I anticipated contributions from some of those hon. Members to whom I have often listened when they spoke about this subject. Since I have the opportunity to speak, however, I would like to raise one or two issues.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing the debate. It is an interesting time for such a debate due to the publication of the Green Paper and the consultation. If we return to the subject in a few months, I suspect that we will have heard more from our constituents who are beginning to engage with the process and to look at the issues set out by my hon. Friend the Minister in the Green Paper.

If we look back at educational experiences over the generations, it is clear that there is now—thankfully—more recognition of the needs of pupils. Rather than seeking to exclude or blame pupils for the challenges they face, usually with huge courage and fortitude, there is now more recognition of those problems. Strategies have been developed to support pupils who face those various challenges and experiences.

Of course there is an issue of resources, and the challenge set out in the Green Paper to bring different agencies together and to come forward collectively with solutions is crucial for a number of reasons. As hon. Members have pointed out, families going through such problems often have to pursue multiple challenges with different agencies working alongside each other. Given how the system is currently configured, they have not only to fight with the local authority or even the school, if things have reached that stage, but to take on the local health trust to receive the provision that they need.

During my time representing the larger constituency of North Cornwall, as it was then constituted, I was involved in a fantastic campaign run by a wonderful woman called Sandy Lawrence. Sadly, the boundary has changed so I no longer have the benefit of her experience as a constituent, but she continues to work across Cornwall for children with Down’s syndrome. She brought to my attention the ludicrous provision in place for providing mobility aids for children who are perhaps slow to develop with walking, and pointed out the rather strange rules put in place by the primary care trusts that are split up across Cornwall.

A contract was provided by a neighbouring health trust to supply those pieces of equipment, but the commissioning was simply not up to the job or robust enough. When I, together with Sandy whose campaign it is, began to probe that situation, no one was able to say how much of a service and how many pieces of equipment had been provided for the money handed over by the local PCT, and over what period that had happened and for what purpose. The management information was dreadful. Sandy was going through that experience on behalf of a child who was approaching school age, and that equipment was crucial for engagement and moving into school. That fight was completely separate from anything to do with education, but it is crucial to bring those things together so that collaborative approaches can be drawn up.

Such an approach would also make it harder for different agencies to hide from each other. As we know, when resources are at stake, there is a tendency to say that it is someone else’s problem. If there is any opportunity to pass things on to someone else’s budget, people will grasp that opportunity. That is done not out of a sense of malice, but because people are under pressure. If we could develop a more collaborative approach, we will come up with solutions that will work better for families and children. That would be the case in the sort of situation I have outlined, which has improved drastically.

We know that child and adolescent mental health services are patchy across the country, and in a rural area such as my constituency it is challenging to provide support. The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) described the support network of parents in a more urban setting. Such things exist in rural areas, but for all the reasons outlined, there are challenges in getting together because of difficulties with transport that can be acute. The determination to bring health providers to the table for debates and discussions is crucial, and I pay tribute to the Minister for the work that she has done in securing that initial collaboration with the Department of Health. I look forward to working with other hon. Members to ensure that that collaboration is delivered and becomes the reality.

I want to pick up on the point about providers of education that offer an inclusive model. That has been a subject of much debate, and it is right to ensure that special schools exist for those families for whom that is the right solution. At times, however, we do not give enough recognition to those schools that have determined to offer an inclusive programme of education. I recently met with Mr Ewan Murray, the head teacher of Robartes junior school in Bodmin. He spoke about some of the pupils in the school who were let down by other educational environments but who are now thriving. They travel past several other schools in order to get to his school because it specialises in ensuring that everybody works together and provides support.

I sit on the Committee that is considering the Education Bill currently going through the House. The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan mentioned the approach taken to exclusion, but the other side of the coin is to ensure that we have confidence in early intervention so that exclusion is a last resort. Head teachers get frustrated if the situation reaches a point at which they need a permanent exclusion but know that an appeal could overturn that and put the child back in the school. There may have been earlier failures, and the Green Paper needs to look at that to identify those problems and to ensure that the situation is dealt with at an early stage.

Under the current system, which is due to change if the Bill is enacted in its current form, if the current appeals panel puts someone back in a school, the relationship with that school has often broken down and can be difficult to rebuild. The measures in the Bill concerning schools retaining an involvement and a responsibility for that pupil, and the provision they receive elsewhere, is a useful model. I welcome the work that will be done on that through pilot schemes and so on. Crucially, we must deal with problems early on so that the situation never gets near exclusion.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan on securing this debate and raising this issue at the time of the consultation. I suspect that we will return to the debate as other hon. Members get more involved and wish to contribute to the process. The determination set out by the Minister in the Green Paper to bring agencies together, particularly those in the health sector, is crucial, and I hope that it comes to fruition. It can make a huge difference for families and children who have been let down in the past.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Rogerson]

That point is crucial, and it could represent a huge step forward. We are obviously focusing on younger people, and my experience as a constituency MP is that direct payment with personal budgeting has worked for social care; there is often an element of health care as well, but at the moment that cannot be provided through primary care trusts with a direct payment model. That is incredibly frustrating, and it is a barrier to getting a package that works for families. I have had that experience with families who are caring for older people, and I believe that lessons can be learned right the way across.

[Sarah Teather]

Absolutely. We intend rolling that out as a legal entitlement, and that will bite on local services. Local authorities are going to have to budget, rather than agreeing to put something in a plan and then dodging the responsibility for paying for it. If parents are legally entitled to request provision—local services will not know which parents will request it—local services will have to budget for that. We expect that services will be provided on the ground, but we need to test the system with pilots to ensure that there is a bite on all services. We want to ensure that all families get the services that they have been promised, and do not find themselves in the same position as before, where something would be written in section 3 or 5 of a statement but not be provided by local health services.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) has spoken on a number of occasions about the frustration of teachers. He said that it is not only parents who are frustrated; teachers often feel inadequately prepared to work with children with a range of additional specialist needs. However, the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West told us that one inspirational teacher made the difference for her child. That is the point. We hear many fantastic examples of professionals who lead practice, but even one professional who believes in a child and who takes responsibility can make such a difference. They can be teachers or other professionals with whom the family come into contact. That kind of practice needs to be much more common, which is why we propose improving initial teacher training. We will use both special and mainstream schools for teaching purposes to ensure that professionals learn from the good practice of others. We will also focus on continuing professional development, using both online specialist material, some of which was launched last week, and scholarship funds to ensure that teachers and teaching assistants have access to funds to gain a greater specialism.

The point about teaching assistants is new; we have a new way of thinking about their role. As many families know, teaching assistants often have more experience than the classroom teacher of working with children with additional needs. By giving them an opportunity to develop their career, we may well bring to the teaching profession many more individuals who have a real background, interest and focus on this subject.

Let me touch on the issue of choice, to which the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West and my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall referred. The point about trying to reverse the bias is exactly about choice. If there is currently a bias in one direction or another, that is not about choice. The focus of our Green Paper is on improving choice for families, so that they can make decisions about what is best for their child. Too often, however, it ends up being Hobson’s choice, because they feel that the mainstream school does not have the capability to support their child. That is why we want a focus on teacher training and the Achievement for All pilot.

I want to focus on Achievement for All and to pick up the point about over-diagnosis raised by the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea). Achievement for All is a pilot programme that ran in 10 local authorities and 450 schools. Schools and parents found that it substantially increased the attainment of children in schools. That was true in special schools, in which children might have highly complex needs and a statement, and in mainstream schools, in which children might be on school action or school action plus. The improvement in attainment stemmed from the quality of the interaction between the school and parents, and between teachers and the child.

Under the pilot, there is a greater focus on setting goals, on monitoring the attainment of those goals and on sharing information with families and making sure that they are involved in their child’s attainment. Head teachers said that when they used the programme it changed their mindset; it was about not money, but attitude. That attitude affected not just the children with whom teachers were working on the SEN register, but all the children in the school who had additional needs.

Some Members implied that we were arbitrarily taking children off the SEN register. Though the powers of Government are great, they are not great enough to mandate the press to report what we say accurately. Unfortunately, the press like to write about numbers. They multiplied our figures and came up with a large number that may or may not be our target. I was very clear with them at the press briefing, as I have been clear with them since, that the Government do not have a target for the number of children they want off the SEN register. What we want is schools to work with children to ensure they fulfil their potential.

When Achievement for All was rolled out in some schools, it was found that the increase in attainment was so great that children no longer needed to be on the SEN register. Surely that should be welcomed by everybody. This is not about arbitrarily reducing numbers.