Free School Meals: Children with SEND

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Dyke (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) for securing this debate.

Mainstream and special schools across Somerset are stretched beyond sense and practicality. Local education practitioners and local authorities are at the top of their class in delivering tailored care, but 13 years of Tory government have left them without the pens and paper they need to get on with the job.

We need to start with clear Government guidance. The free school meals guidance from February 2023 does not even include the term “SEND”. It has no specific guidance for SEND children and pretends that children on free school meals have a homogeneous identity, devoid of nuance or feeling. It is unfit for purpose. This speaks to a wider failing in Government guidance that sees disability as an optional add-on to legislation, not an integral part of it. We need to envelop children with special needs and disabilities, throughout all educational guidance.

I receive frequent representations from neurodivergent constituents who, after contact with Government services, have felt stigmatised and patronised. Often there is not a deliberate bias, but I ask that the Government consider providing education and training resources, delivered digitally and at low cost and based on the very latest clinical information.

The Liberal Democrats have already called for continuous, high-quality professional development for all teachers. It would be delivered in schools by mental health practitioners with ringfenced funding, and would prioritise early intervention and effective communication. Unfortunately, my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) is unwell and is not able to speak today, but I urge hon. Members to fully support her Bill on the issue.

SEND children are much more likely to be suspended or excluded. The suspension rate for England’s 2022-23 autumn term was four times higher for SEND pupils with an EHCP. The permanent exclusion rate was six times higher for SEND pupils without an EHCP. Parents and special guardians are left without the food support to which they are legally entitled. Food parcels rarely meet the minimum standard required, so special schools such as Critchill School in Frome need help to bridge the SEND funding gap. I have many more constituents who would thrive in these schools, where they would be understood and supported, but who cannot get in because there are simply no places.

We need to see nutritional needs included as standard on every EHCP. That includes sensory issues with certain foods; possible nutrition issues due to selective eating behaviours; and refusal to eat, or to eat in public. At the moment, schools cannot opt out and they cannot suck it up. As eating disorders campaigner Sophie Maclean told me, “Tough love just doesn’t work.”

Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

As somebody who grew up in Liverpool, I have had many a fabulous holiday in north Wales. In terms of the education department, unfortunately Wales suffers from a poor Administration.

Let us move on to schools. Nowhere is the difference between Labour and the Conservatives clearer to see than in our school system. When we came into office, Labour had overseen a decade of decline in our schools. Fortunately, thanks to the tireless work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) and, notably, that of the Minister for Schools, we have reversed that trajectory. Today, 88% of our schools are “good” or “outstanding”—up from just 68% under Labour.

By the end of the Labour era, we had plummeted down the international league tables: our children were ranked 25th for reading and 27th for maths. Now, we are up 10 places in both. Better still, the progress in international reading literacy study shows that when it comes to reading, English primary school children are the best in the west, coming fourth in the world—an amazing, phenomenal achievement, for which I thank our teachers, parents and children.

How have we done this? We have reformed the school system, putting teachers and experts—not politicians—in charge of schools. Through our free schools and academies programmes, we have empowered heads and focused on academic excellence, improving discipline and ensuring that schools are calmer, happier places to learn. We have built on the evidence, not the ideology, over the past decade.

The Education Endowment Foundation has carried out over 200 evaluations to understand which approaches are the most effective in closing the attainment gap. It has engaged 23,000 nurseries, schools and colleges and, as a result, teachers are better trained in the things that make a difference, and children are taught in ways that we can prove work, such as phonics and maths mastery. We have made our exams more rigorous and reliable; and we have changed how we teach for the better. And at every turn we were met with a barrage of opposition from the opportunists on the Labour Benches.

In 2011, the Opposition said that our literacy drive was “dull”. In 2012, they said that phonics would “not improve reading”. In 2013, they called free schools “dangerous”. All three accusations have been categorically proven wrong. Our results simply speak for themselves, and we are not stopping there. Our new advanced British standard will remove the artificial divide between academic and technical education, and place the two on an equal footing, bringing together the very best of A-levels and T-levels to form a single overarching qualification. Right on cue, what did Labour call this? A “gimmick”. Given Labour’s track record, that condemnation is a very good sign that we are on the right track.

The advanced British standard will ensure that every child studies a form of maths and English until they are 18, and equip our children with the skills they need for the future. They will be entering a very different workplace—one where artificial intelligence, and quantum and digital systems, are a big part of every working day—and they will be competing for the top jobs internationally, so we will be increasing the time spent in the classroom, bringing us more in line with other countries, including Denmark, Norway, France and the US.

[Sarah Dyke (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

The Government’s disregard for school pupils with special educational needs has never been clearer. The silent assassination of any new mental health Act has let down my constituents, who are struggling to get a diagnosis and to get continuous support in schools. Does the Secretary of State therefore agree that pupils and schools urgently need new legislation?

[Gillian Keegan]

We published our special educational needs and alternative provision improvement plan in March 2023—the hon. Lady may have missed that as she was not yet in her place—and we have backed the plan with investment of £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025. That will fund new and alternative provision places, and it is also a significant investment in the high-needs budget. We know that we need to invest in improving the special educational needs and alternative provision system, and I am happy to go through that plan with her.

Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Sarah Dyke for her maiden question.

[Sarah Dyke (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

Children in Somerset have gone back to school and are going back to school this week in buildings that may collapse at any moment. At least three schools in Somerton and Frome may have this weak concrete. Will the Education Secretary apologise for all the stress that this Government have caused families because they have slashed repair bills and sat on their hands for months?

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her maiden question. It is a little ill-informed. If the schools in Somerton and Frome are identified, she will have a “Dear colleague” letter; I will just check that has happened, because I know she is new to the House. If the schools are suspected, as long as her local authorities or multi-academy trusts have responded, we will be coming to do the surveys as soon as possible and then we will have mitigation actions in place to make sure that there is minimum disruption to children in Somerton and Frome.