Children with Special Educational Needs

House of Commons

The Minister has come under something of an attack. I was surprised by that because over the years the subject of special educational needs has been a matter of consensus rather than combat. SEN policies have been criticised before. I shall remind the Minister of a speech in which it was said:

"Let me tell the Minister that we need more help in the country now. We need more residential educational facilities, and more respite for parents; we also need to provide more day provision for autistic adults. The Government must begin by reviewing the needs of the forgotten children." — [Official Report, 17 May 1995; Vol. 260, c.310.]

That is the sort of speech that the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) might have made, but in fact those were the words of the then Member for Finchley.

Special educational needs are important. They involve a vulnerable group of people, and the House needs to be cautious when it chooses to use such people as the subject of an Opposition day debate. It is easy to make criticisms that turn vulnerable people into political footballs without providing adequate ideas about how we should deal with the problem.

Indeed, we have been dealing with the problem for a long time. The solutions evolve as we learn more about the problems of children with SEN and children with autism. The shadow Leader of the House, when he was an Education Minister in 1992, said:

"We hope to establish a consensus and to achieve the greatest possible agreement in order to identify the best ways to serve, help and support the children who deserve every support and help." — [Official Report, 3 July 1992; Vol. 210, c. 1134.]

Again, I caution the hon. Member for Epping Forest about the dangers of turning the debate into a combat rather than a matter of consensus.

The problem of a shortfall of specialist teachers is not new either. Back in 1994, it was said:

"There is a shortfall of available specialist teachers. The number completing courses in teaching pupils with severe learning difficulties fell from 200"

— just 200 —

"in 1989 to 80 in 1993. The number of teachers of hearing-impaired children qualifying has fallen from 150 to 110. The British Association of Teachers of the Deaf reports an average age of more than 40 for new trainees and a serious fall-off in younger teachers. Special schools and support services are having difficulty in filling appointments with qualified people." — [Official Report, 9 May 1994; Vol. 243, c. 38.]

We need to be careful of ignoring the fact that the problems are not new. They are continuing and will remain with us for as long as the problem remains with us.

Mrs. Laing: Strange as it may seem, I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. This is not a matter for party political banter — as I said. He is right to say that the problems have always been with us and are still with us now. We must not look back at statistics, but forwards at what can be done. If a consensus that allows us all to work together can be achieved, let us achieve it.

Mr. Woodward: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for saying that. However, she needs to achieve greater consensus within her party, which faces the eternal problem of how to fund policies. She talks about the importance of greater resources and more provision, but if a party is committed to reducing Government spending to 35 per cent. of GDP, it raises the fundamental question of where it is going to make the cuts. Knowing her as I do, I am sure that the hon. Lady would want to ring-fence this area. Clearly, we would wish to give her the opportunity to say so this evening.

I shall remind the hon. Lady again of the words of the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) a couple of years ago:

"The ambition to develop special schools as centres of expertise to collaborate with and support mainstream schools is a correct aspiration".

He was absolutely right. The head teachers of special schools in my county, however, say that they have heard such ideas before. They are absolutely right — they have heard them before. They are all too well aware of the funding implications. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire continued:

"The issue is how that is to be afforded." — [Official Report, 5 December 1997; Vol. 302, c. 628.]

The hon. Lady therefore needs to consult her colleagues on this issue. She also needs to bear in mind, when she puts forward this combative motion, the words of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner), among others of her hon. Friends, who recently said:

"What goes on in the classroom and the school is only a small part of the education that the child needs. Especially in the case of a child who suffers from . . . autism". — [Official Report, Westminster Hall, 9 January 2002; Vol. 377, c. 238WH.]

We must therefore see the issue in its real context.

The real criticism relates to how the problem was dealt with before 1991. The hon. Lady is right to draw attention to the problem of statistics. The fact is that before 1991 we did not even count the numbers. There is real criticism to be made of those lost years, for the sake of those forgotten children — today's adults — who suffered so much. The statistics are important, and she is right to remind Ministers of the importance of continuing to collate them.

The hon. Lady referred earlier to all those tragedies, but we must also be careful to avoid talking only about tragedies. As a result of the changes in our thinking, on which the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) and others have commented, we — including the hon. Lady's party, when in office — have achieved notable success. We must therefore be careful to avoid pointing only to what is going wrong, not to what is going right. The number of pupils with statements has increased each year since 1991, but the reason for that, of course, is that we are diagnosing those children. There are not suddenly more of them than there were before, but now we know where they are and who they are.

How are we to respond to the problem? Again, it is to the credit of the Conservative Government that the Education Act 1996 sought to give effect to the principle that pupils with special educational needs should normally be educated in mainstream schools. We must not lose sight of the importance of that decision, and the real progress that was achieved when that Government made it. As a principle of provision, the present Government have continued that policy since the election in 1997. That is right, and there have been some fantastic successes. In 1991, 165,875 children were identified as pupils with statements. That figure was up by nearly 100,000 in 1997, and today it is 269,000.

Crucially, those children have gone into mainstream education wherever possible. Let us celebrate that success. In 1991, 42 per cent. were in maintained mainstream schools; today that figure is 61 per cent. That is a good thing. In 1991, 54 per cent. were in special schools and pupil referral units; by 2000 that figure was down to 36 per cent. That is a cause for real celebration. That inclusion was achieved by the hon. Lady's party when in government, and was continued by the Labour party in government. Consensus across the House has been important in achieving that. I note the importance of caution with regard to turning the issue of children with special educational needs into an area of political combat. We have done well to keep it away from that, and we now need to be cautious about moving it into the arena as a political football.

In opposition the Labour party produced the document "Every Child is Special", which rightly drew attention to the fact that

"too high a proportion of the resources devoted to special educational needs was being spent on bureaucratic procedures",

and that too much time was spent on

"confrontational relationships between parents and local authorities."

The Government were right to tackle some of that. They were also right to increase the funding in special schools, despite the fall in the overall balance by 20 per cent. We should acknowledge that that funding has gone in. We should also acknowledge the Government's success in making it possible for children in mainstream schools to have access to such funding. That is not a criticism of the previous Government, but an observation of where our priorities as a society were.

In 1996–97 the extra budget made available to help to make the mainstream accessible to disabled pupils was £10 million. In 2001 it was £50 million, and over the next three years there is a commitment to spend £220 million under the schools access initiative. That is a good record, but we can do more.

The motion draws on the document "Autism in schools: crisis or challenge?" produced by the National Autistic Society. I am proud to be involved with that organisation, and I have enjoyed helping it with fund raising. We owe the society a great debt for the work that it has done. However, let us be fair about the figures.

Even the society's current report says that it is surprised by the numbers of children with autism. It points out that only 90 per cent. of all teachers are trained in the specific problems of children with autism, but it realises that catch-up inevitably has to follow diagnosis. Training of teachers will follow recognition of the problem.

Part of the Conservative party's criticism of the Government's approach to education is that it is too centralised. However, the hon. Member for Epping Forest should look more closely at the report from the National Autistic Society that is cited in the Opposition's motion. The society wants local education authorities to receive a strong lead from the centre so that they can deal with the problem. It wants central Government to tell LEAs to direct their resources to tackling autism and to concentrate them on providing teachers with more specialist training in dealing with the problems of children with autism. That is not a question of one size fits all; those at the sharp end of dealing with autism say that a lead from the centre will bring about fundamental changes.

We have heard much talk about what has been achieved in hon. Members' constituencies, and it gives me great pleasure to refer to my constituency in St. Helens. Luckily, we have just succeeded with a bid for a new school in St. Helens for children with special educational needs. Through the work of my LEA and its successful leader, Susan Richardson, we received the top award of £5 million. The LEA is providing the extra £1.5 million, and in two years the school will open in one of the most deprived parts of my constituency. It will take 170 children, with specialist teachers and specialist training. That must be a step forward, and I am grateful to the Government for providing the money.

However, no matter what we do, the solution for some children with autism will not be found in mainstream education. As the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) said, early intervention is crucial. If we meet the children when they are two or two and a half and intervene intensively on a one-to-one basis, there is a chance that, with special help, they can be integrated into mainstream education when they are five or six. I am sure that all Members would want that.

I recently came across the case of a young boy called Toby. He was three when he was diagnosed with autism in 1996. He lives in Camden with his mother, who went to the local authority and said that she needed special help for her boy. Camden had a school for children with special educational needs, but no special provision for children with autism. The boy's mother, who is an enterprising and energetic woman and works in the theatre, got the resources together to create a project called the Treehouse school. Five or six years later, that school has 30 children of primary school age.

I have been carefully complimentary about the Government's policies, so I shall direct my next remarks to my hon. Friend the Minister. The Treehouse school wants to expand its facilities so that it can take 80 children. There is no other such facility in Camden, and all but two of its 30 pupils are paid for by LEAs.

The school is running an appeal to raise nearly £11 million for its expansion, but £2.5 million of that is for VAT, which will find its way to the Chancellor. I am sure that he will find excellent ways to redistribute that money round the country, but I ask the Minister whether it is sensible to expect the school to raise those extra funds before it can build facilities for children whose places will be paid for by an LEA. After all, we are trying to tackle the problems of children with autism and we are encouraging the charitable sector to come up with creative solutions. The school in Camden is an excellent solution, and it fulfils a need that was not previously being met. Treehouse is an excellent model. It is doing pioneering American work that is changing the treatment of autism among young people and children of primary and secondary school age. If we mean what we say, and if we are a reforming Government in every area, we may need to consider reforming VAT to help special schools to do their work.

In their motion the Conservatives call for the Government

"to set out clearly its plans for this sector".

The hon. Member for Epping Forest spoke about vision, and I have to say that not only have the Government displayed vision since their time in opposition, when they published a paper on the subject, but there has been action, in my constituency and throughout the country.

Today I asked charities, such as the one cited in the motion, what they thought of Government policy. First, they are delighted with the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001. Secondly, they feel that the legislation is better than ever before in enshrining the rights of every child with special educational needs. Thirdly, they commend the national autism good practice working group and the national initiative for autism screening and assessment. The people at the coal face think that the Government are doing well.

Mrs. Laing: The theory that the hon. Gentleman puts forward is right, but does he not agree that there are thousands of parents who have to fight to get what is due to their children? A statement of need is issued and parents are told that the child has certain rights, but the local authority, the health authority and social services are unable to honour those rights because the necessary infrastructure does not exist.

Mr. Woodward: The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and she is making a wonderful case for championing the most vulnerable children. I only wonder, in light of what she said, why special educational needs was not a central part of the speech made by the leader of her party earlier today, in which he said that he would champion children. I have just read the press release of that speech, and I cannot find a word about children with special educational needs or autism.

I know that last week, which was national autism week, the Conservative party carried out a survey, and surveys are important in raising awareness. In the same week the party published its first important document on education — 10,000 words of it, after eight months of intensive work. It is all about how we might begin to modernise education, but in 10,000 words there was not one word about autism and only half a line about special educational needs. There was not a policy or a proposal.

This is an important subject, but if there is to be anything more than combat, and if the leader of the Conservative party means to champion children, he must take the most vulnerable, those who need to be championed, and include them in his speech. Of course the hon. Lady's speech in the House this evening was important, but is she saying that it was more important than that of her party's leader? Last week was national autism week, so why did the Conservative leader not refer to autism if it is important enough to dominate the party's parliamentary time? It is important to match the rhetoric with action.

In the report on education that the Conservative party produced last week, there was nothing about autism but a great deal about Gladstone. When I was at school I learned about Gladstone in the context of the 19th century being a period of reaction and reform. Gladstone was indeed a radical reformer; the problem with the motion is that it is all reaction and no reform.