Special Educational Needs: Dyscalculia

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, when I saw a debate about special educational needs and dyscalculia, I thought, “Wow, what a wonderful combination here”. The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who introduced the debate today was kind enough to recognise the desires of my right honourable friend Rishi Sunak when he introduced the Multiply scheme. Unfortunately, the funding has ended for that. It was a genuine attempt to recognise that numeracy is not all about getting A-levels in maths and was really important to help people prosper in this country in their own lives and in aspects of productivity that have been referred to.

I have not heard of this before, but it has long been recognised that people, to some extent, reach a certain level in their capabilities on maths. As has already been eloquently said, we do not just assume that because people do not grasp instincts straightaway you do not try to help in that regard, such as how you work out whether something is a square or not.

It has to be said that sometimes it feels that in parts of our education, looking for differentiation by child, quite rightly, trying to recognise that there are seven different ways of learning can be quite a struggle when putting together a lesson plan, but it is important that teachers do that. I value not only what happened in my childhood but what I see in schools in different parts of the country.

It is good to see the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, in her place. Having been a council leader, she had not only the statutory duty for children but considerable knowledge of how to be practical in how we help children reach their full potential and recognise some of the challenges of special educational needs being mainstreamed, but also how wonderfully it can be addressed. I am delighted also to see my noble friend Lady Barran, because she and I discussed a particular matter which I will be raising regarding the future of a special needs school in Suffolk.

Going back to these challenges about numeracy, I was also struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said about non-specialist teachers, in effect, and teaching CDT, I think he said. I must admit that I found numbers very easy when I was a child, but when I got to A-level it started getting a bit complicated. It was only when I went to university and I had an engineer as a tutor that I actually got the whole concept of mechanics. I wish I had had that, in a way, rather than the specialist maths teacher, with whom, however they tried in my sixth form, I just could not quite grab the concept on some of the points. There is an element to what he suggests—using practical solutions or examples is a good way to engage people who do not necessarily follow the traditional way of learning.

I was also struck by what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said about, I think, her fourth attempt to pass her O-level—I assume it would be, although I do not wish to be ungracious to her. I think there is something here about what we do in setting qualifications. One of the challenges when I was at the DWP—we went through this in quite a lot of detail with employers when we were trying to get people back into work, particularly after Covid—is that when we were engaging with employers, routine job descriptions would normally include two things. Everybody had to have a driving licence, and everybody had to have GCSE English and maths. Quite regularly, we would say, “Why? That job does not need you to drive, and you may need to be numerate and do other things, but does it really require you to have a specific qualification?” The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, referred to qualifications. I think there has been developed a practical qualification that is equivalent to a GCSE, and that is a good thing and something we should continue to stress.

I am conscious that there has been a significant increase in awareness of children with special educational needs, and we have been through a variety of phases of what has happened about so-called mainstream schools—they are just schools, as far as I am concerned, for a neighbourhood; ideally, equipped to teach every child in that community—and how we try to accommodate those children who do not fit the norms, as has already been adequately said.

The vast majority of people in this country really struggle with anything to do with maths beyond the basic GCSE. That is why we should be reconsidering how we continue to support the strengthening of teaching that is available—particularly, I would say, in primary school, not just in secondary school—thinking about how we build those foundations and why I hope that the Government will reconsider aspects of something like the Multiply programme in recognising the opportunities that will bring for prosperity for all.

I turn finally to the situation in Suffolk. I respect that the current Government have to assess programmes, but in the town where I live, a school that had acquired a specialist interest in special educational needs was also a free school, and it ended up that it just was not viable in quite the way that it had been. My noble friend Lady Barran agreed, after careful consideration working with officials, that a particular site—the site of Saxmundham Free School—should become a special educational needs school for provision for the east of Suffolk. There is another one in Felixstowe run by the same trust.

It is my huge disappointment that, although that school closed in the summer of last year, there was quite a lot of deliberation about whether a new school needed to be built on a site that was there. The clear intention was that there would be a school ready to open this coming September. I am sad to say that there is no such school. I posed a Written Question to the Department for Education on this and it is still saying, “We’re still considering this”. There are a lot of children who desperately need some specialist support, as well as children in neighbourhood schools. I would really encourage the Minister to take back from this debate my real concern about the children in east Suffolk; I hope that that Saxmundham school site can be opened as quickly as possible to provide special educational support for those children who desperately need it.