Contribution
My Lords, we have heard some thoughtful speeches on the issues facing pupils with special educational needs and disabilities in general and neurodivergence in particular. There is no doubt that this is a pressing issue for parents, pupils, staff and of course local authorities, whose budgets are being severely impacted by the costs associated with education, health and care plans, or EHCPs. As all noble Lords are aware, the Government have committed to publishing a new White Paper on SEND and have been working with an expert group ably led by Tom Rees, the CEO of Ormiston Academies Trust. That is an incredibly important task, and we on these Benches hope very much that the Government can show a positive way forward that addresses some of the problems that beset the current system. I think the plans for that report mean that Amendment 498 is not needed.
I understand the criticism of the Children and Families Act 2014, which introduced the current system. However, all who were involved with that legislation, including some noble Lords who have been in the House today, had the best interests of children with special educational needs and disabilities at the forefront of their minds. Whatever the Government propose, I hope that they will take the time to pilot it and avoid the problems of implementation and the unintended consequences that the current approach has found.
I hope also that we can move away from blanket terms such as “SEND” or “neurodivergent”, as they cover such an incredibly wide spectrum. With that in mind, I am cautious about some of the amendments in this group, including Amendment 491 in the name of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, which would include mentors for all children with SEND, and the implications of Amendment 502S.
Given my earlier amendments on exclusions, it will not surprise the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that I do not agree with subsection (2) in his Amendment 502Q, which would make a presumption against permanent exclusion or fixed-term exclusion, for the reasons that I set out earlier. Similarly, I disagree with Amendment 502T in the noble Lord’s name, which would put a duty on schools to support reintegration for pupils who had been in custody without any balancing consideration about the impact on the other pupils in the classroom.
Again, I am not convinced that Amendment 502R, in the name of the noble Lord Carlile, or Amendment 502U, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, are needed. There is already extensive content in the early years and core initial teacher training curricula following updates undertaken by the previous Government in relation to these issues. When I talk to experts on inclusive teaching, they are clear that for pupils who are able to attend mainstream school, the same approaches of very high-quality teaching apply to them too. I agree absolutely with my noble friend Lady Spielman when she says that the core way that we all learn is much bigger than many of us appreciate.
The SEND review of 2022 put it very clearly that:
“High-quality teaching, differentiated for individual pupils, is the first step in responding to children who have or may have SEN”.
I think there is a big gap in our understanding of the impact of different interventions. Some commentators have called for the creation of something a bit like NICE, which we have for pharmaceuticals, for SEND interventions. I have been sent examples of the kinds of requirements that are put on schools for children with education, health and care plans. Those I saw ranged between nine and 44 separate requirements, many of them not based on any academic evidence of their effectiveness, but all of them creating a great workload for schools. That is something that I hope the Government are going to grip in this review and address.
I have a lot of sympathy for Amendment 502V, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, as I spent a lot of time trying to understand the flows of funding for EHCPs, as have many much more august organisations such as the IFS and the National Audit Office. It remains very difficult to get clarity on how the system works from a financial point of view. Given the sums of money involved, it surely would make sense to be able to do this.
Amendment 502W in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, builds on Amendment 502V and aims for cross-sector reporting. I hope that with the new single unique identifier some of that will become much more possible. It will certainly reveal some valuable data. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on these amendments.