Bullying
Oral Answers to Questions — Children, Schools and Families
2:30 pm

Lynne Featherstone (Youth and Equality Spokesperson, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Hornsey and Wood Green, Liberal Democrat)

What steps his Department is taking to reduce the incidence of bullying of children with disabilities and special educational needs.

Kevin Brennan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Children, Schools and Families; Cardiff West, Labour)

In May, we produced new guidance that provides schools with comprehensive advice on how to prevent and tackle the bullying of children with special educational needs and disabilities. The guidance outlines statutory duties for heads and governors to prevent the bullying of those children. We are funding the Anti-Bullying Alliance and national strategies to provide support and challenge for local authorities and schools to ensure that the guidance is implemented effectively on the ground.

Lynne Featherstone (Youth and Equality Spokesperson, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Hornsey and Wood Green, Liberal Democrat)

I thank the Minister for his answer. The recent Government guidance is a welcome step towards tackling such bullying, but it has not been given any serious promotion, so it is unlikely that many teachers or parents will even be aware of its existence. What specific measures does he plan to ensure that the guidance is given sufficient publicity to be effective in its aims?

Michael Martin (Speaker)

Order. I did not want to stop the hon. Lady when she was speaking, but I would prefer the supplementary question not to be read from a note. It is a response to the reply given by the Minister.

Kevin Brennan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Children, Schools and Families; Cardiff West, Labour)

I disagree with the hon. Lady that the guidance has not been given any publicity. It was launched by the Secretary of State and gained considerable publicity from that. Although, for obvious reasons, the Department does not send documents to every school in the country, we notify local authorities and schools through regular updates that guidance documents are available. As I said, we are funding the Anti-Bullying Alliance and the national strategies to provide the support and challenge for local authorities and schools to ensure that the guidance is implemented effectively on the ground.

Lynda Waltho (PPS (Rt Hon David Hanson, Minister of State), Ministry of Justice; Stourbridge, Labour)

Does my hon. Friend agree that proposals to abolish independent appeals panels for excluded children would remove an important safeguard and possibly lead to further inappropriate exclusions for children with special needs?

Kevin Brennan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Children, Schools and Families; Cardiff West, Labour)

Yes, I do. It is all very well hon. Members coming to the House and occasionally asking us to do more for pupils with special educational needs, but the Special Education Consortium says that it is concerned that such a move would increase the vulnerability of children with special educational needs to exclusion. Children with SEN are already disproportionately represented in the exclusion statistics and that change would remove one of the few checks and balances operating in the country. John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, the head teachers union, has said:

"Ending the right of parents to appeal to an independent panel against exclusion would, as I have said consistently in the past, lead to more parents going to the courts in an attempt to overturn their child's exclusion."

John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative)

As the bullying of children with special educational needs and disabilities by other children is still, sadly, a relatively widespread phenomenon, I warmly welcome the guidance and some of the initiatives that are unfolding. Will the Minister accept, however, that sometimes, in the form of inadvertent unkindnesses and unawareness of the duty to deliver to disabled children, there can be cases of bullying committed by teachers and other work force professionals? In that context, would he like to say something about the special educational needs units within initial teacher training, which are, I think, to be rolled out later in the year, and could yield some benefits?

Kevin Brennan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Children, Schools and Families; Cardiff West, Labour)

Yes, and as the hon. Gentleman knows we want to strengthen those units within teacher training. We had quite a discussion about that on the Floor of the House during consideration of a recent private Member's Bill. He is absolutely right that on occasion, things can be said and actions taken that might constitute inadvertent bullying. It is clear that the most important thing is for all of us to see pupils with disabilities and special educational needs principally as pupils and human beings, not as people with a disability or a special educational need.

Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley, Conservative)

To follow on from that, clearly there cannot be any excuse for bullying, whether it is inadvertent or otherwise, but one group of people who may find themselves victims are those who are seen to be slow learners, and indeed specifically those with dyslexia. Will the Minister therefore give some hope that the Government will ensure that there are specialist dyslexia teachers in each school to make sure that the untapped potential of youngsters is unlocked for the rest of their lives?

Kevin Brennan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Children, Schools and Families; Cardiff West, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that Jim Rose's review is looking at the issue of dyslexia and dyslexia teaching in schools, and he is quite right that pupils with dyslexia might find themselves subject to bullying of that kind. It is fair to say that this Government have done more on bullying than any Government ever. We are spending £3.7 million this year on anti-bullying programmes. I think it is also fair to say that there used to be a culture in schools of "Bullying does not happen in our school." I am glad to say that that is no longer acceptable.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)

I visited a special school in the midlands a while ago. It was facing closure, although children with special educational needs had flourished there after failing previously in mainstream schools where they had been bullied. They now face the prospect of being returned to those self-same schools.

Given Mencap's estimate that eight out of 10 children with a learning disability have been bullied and six out of 10 of them physically hurt, together with Baroness Warnock's findings that enforced inclusion makes children with disabilities and SEN likely to encounter bullying, is not the only way, or one way, to reduce this problem for the Minister to announce an immediate moratorium on the closure of special schools?

Kevin Brennan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Children, Schools and Families; Cardiff West, Labour)

Children should go to special schools because such schools are right for them and their special educational needs. The idea that a child in mainstream education who has a special educational need should be sent to a specialist school because he or she is being bullied is a fundamental misconception.

The rate at which special schools have been closing has slowed in recent years, and the percentage of pupils attending them went up last year.