Baroness Blower (Lab)

My Lords, I too congratulate all the Peers who have given their maiden speeches today. I would also like to endorse the speech of my noble friend Lady Bousted in all its particulars. There is a widespread agreement that the current SEND system is, as the NEU describes it, “adversarial, fragmented and under-resourced”. The current parlous state of provision has been worsening for more than a decade, with teachers and schools stretched to beyond capacity and families forced into exhausting battles to get support for their children. The daily challenges facing teachers is one of the reasons they leave the profession, and I know this from talking to them, including my own former primary teacher daughter. Against that background, the ambition of this Government to change the system to meet the needs of all children is indeed laudable. The cap on independent special school fees to address the flow of public money to private providers is exactly the right thing to do. Experts at Hand is also very welcome. As for Targeted and Targeted Plus, many of us who were teaching when we had School Action and School Action Plus will be delighted to see the return of this. The NEU has campaigned for it, as have I. As the CEO of Mencap has said: “Families must have their children’s needs identified early and for them to be given the right help straight away, backed by services fully funded to do the job”. I earnestly hope that all the resources will be found to meet the very big challenge of doing the right thing by all children and young people with SEND. As Nick Harrison, chief executive of The Sutton Trust, says: “Schools are in a financial crisis that’s more than a decade and a half in the making”. Little wonder, then, that not just the NEU but the NASUWT, the NAHT, ASCL, the Local Government Association and the Save Our Children’s Rights campaign all agree that if mainstream schools are to do much more on inclusion for every child, the right level of funding must be available. In conclusion, I will just say a few words about further and higher education. The deepening crisis in post-16 education and the consequences of treating education as a market rather than a public good are clearly out of step with the Government’s ambitions. When your Lordships’ House debated the value of modern foreign languages teaching and learning, we were as one in agreeing that the value of learning modern foreign languages is very high. Yet such courses are being cut and sometimes, even whole departments in universities are. The logic of competition between institutions has not improved student experience. What reassurances can my noble friend the Minister give to students worried about the financial stability of their universities, when four in 10 of them are facing budget deficits? We all want the best for all our children and young people, so we must will the means.