Education Bill [HL]

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 11:00 am on 24 February 2005.

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Photo of Lord Filkin Lord Filkin Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare), Department for Education and Skills, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education and Skills) (Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare) (also Department for Work and Pensions) 11:00, 24 February 2005

My Lords, I would genuinely welcome a proper and full debate on special education needs at some stage in the Chamber, mainly because it is one of my day job responsibilities, which I am pleased to have, but also because that would be more appropriate than having it on a passing Education Bill which is essentially about the inspection system. I shall have difficulty in being brief, given the importance and complexity of these issues, but I shall do my best.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock. She is absolutely right when she says that the diversity of children's special needs means that it is not easy to have a simple set of solutions or procedures. It requires much more individuation than that. There are also a lot of myths about the Government's stance on special schools and what inclusion means.

The numbers of places in special schools have not changed much over recent years. The Government are clear that special schools play a key and important part of the overall provision available for children with special educational needs. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, many of them have done an outstanding job in nurturing the talent of the most disadvantaged children in our society.

We firmly believe that special schools have an important, ongoing role within the overarching frame of provision for children with special educational needs, both in terms of educating pupils with severe and complex learning needs in their own school and also providing outreach support to mainstream schools. That is exactly the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, was interested in. In other words, where a special school is a centre of expertise but is also a support in terms of specialist teaching to other schools and is also a place where, for part of the week or a day, a child might come from a mainstream school into the special school and vice versa. In this way there is much more sophisticated movement as well as the teaching support of the special school for the mainstream school.

That pattern happens in many authorities, but we are keen to promote it further. That is why we announced in December that we would be using the specialist school status and the funding that goes with it to validate very good special schools and support them in their outreach work and their relationship with mainstream schools. I hope that we will be able to take this forward in coming years so that we will have many more specialist schools working in partnership with mainstream schools.

Clearly, the needs of many children with SEN can be met in mainstream schools, but they will often need support from specialist schools. That is why it is necessary to see the relevance of special schools as part of the provision. We want to promote this by encouraging special schools to participate in federations, cluster and twinning arrangements. Capital grants can help in this process.

I do not pretend for a second that these issues are easy, or that all local authorities have got it right. Some local authorities have reorganised special schools in their area. It is an incredibly delicate issue. Parents feel passionately about their child, and for good reason. They are passionate because they fear that the system will not deliver for them and therefore they have to battle the system, because the system does not always deliver. Any move by a local authority to change the pattern of provision of special schools in an area is therefore fraught with intense difficulty.

That does not mean to say that the local authority should not do it and it certainly does not mean that it always gets it right. There are examples of local authorities around the country which have carried out complicated restructuring of their special school provision. They believe that they can give better learning to the children within and a better pattern of support between special and mainstream schools. They have done that with little parental objection. Other local authorities have done it and produced what looks like a small civil war in their area.

We in government are acutely interested in how we provide an appropriate policy framework and appropriate support and guidance to local authorities in grappling with those issues. We are also addressing the need for local authorities to look wider than their usually narrow area and to look at the pattern of provision in a sub-region. That issue was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. I give the House my undertaking that I shall explore that specifically in discussions with officials. It seems to me a right and proper issue. However, it seems to me foolish to believe that the right answer is to say that all these decisions should be taken by the Secretary of State.

Without going into our discussion on localism and centralism, which we have had throughout the morning—we seem to change ends of the tennis court on this—there is a local process. The system provides an objective balance between proposals put forward by the local authority and the needs of the local community. There must be consultation. Parents must have a full opportunity to give their views and, ultimately, the school organisations committee, not the local authority, makes the decision on whether the closure of a special school should take place.

The local authority can propose, but it cannot determine on this: the school organisations committee does so. If the committee is not agreed on the matter, it goes to the local adjudicator. Again, there is the possibility of a body, which is not the local authority, hearing the views of parents and others as to whether these decisions are right and to make a final decision.

It would be nice if one could think that the Secretary of State, remote from local reality, was best placed to make those decisions. However, we would be fooling ourselves if we thought that that was the right answer. Therefore, we are interested in how we encourage thoughtfulness by local authorities on good provision; better processes for involving parents and others in the discussions about why change is necessary rather than it being felt that it is forced; ensuring that there are systems for looking wider than the local authority's narrow patch; and that there is proper strategic planning with the involvement of parents in the locality.

I am not being flippant. This is a crucially important agenda and we are putting a lot of time into it. We hope to be making further announcements on it before the Summer Recess. If it were as simple as saying, "Let the Secretary of State make all these decisions", it would be wonderful, but it is not and it would not add much value. I am not being dismissive because I understand the motivation behind the amendment, but that is not the answer. Unfortunately, the answers are more complex. We are working on them and I look forward to discussing them with the House at a better opportunity than now.