New Clause 4 — Education of children with special educational needs in mainstream schools
Orders of the Day
1:00 pm
Roberta Blackman-Woods (PPS (Rt Hon Hilary Armstrong, Minister of State (Cabinet)), Cabinet Office; City of Durham, Labour)
I want to speak against the hon. Gentleman's new clause. As he has been addressing the House, I have become increasingly concerned by his repeatedly saying that the most important thing is structures, whether special schools or mainstream schools. Last week, the Education Committee went to Darlington to see a truly excellent example of an establishment that brought together a secondary school, a primary school and a special school, and where the education was entirely centred on the children's needs. The whole educational debate is moving on to be child-centred, so that we look after the educational needs of all children and stop having this obsession with structures.