Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Baroness Sharp of Guildford

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

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.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I apologise for speaking again here, but perhaps I may add something. I am the special educational needs governor of a primary school, and when the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, was talking about the time it takes to get a statement and so forth, I was thinking about the cost of supporting children with special educational needs. As noble Lords will know, a primary school receives about £4,000 a head, and the average cost of supporting those with special educational needs is about £8,000. It can vary from £4,000 to something like £16,000 or £17,000 if there has to be an extra teaching assistant because the child is disruptive. On average it takes a couple of years to get a statement for those who are at the extreme end and it will cost about £16,000. A small primary school finds it very difficult to cope in terms of resources because budgets are so tight at the moment.

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[The Earl of Listowel]

I suppose what flows from that is that the educational attainment of other children may not progress as fast as it might because the resources are focused on the most disadvantaged children. So, again, a primary school that is good at attracting children with special educational needs may appear to perform less well—indeed, it may actually be performing less well—academically, although it is doing a good job with children with special educational needs, because its resources are being spent on those children rather than on the wider population.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I remind the noble Earl that schools receive extra resources for those young people—especially now, with the pupil premium. However, there is an overlap between the two groups and, although we have to be careful to ensure that the pupil premium resources are not spent exclusively on those with special educational needs, there is a reason to use some of those resources for some of the activities.