Clive Jones

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for securing this debate. I was born in Kent and attended St Paul’s infant school in Maidstone in the 1960s. As the hon. and learned Gentleman said, SEND education is clearly an issue in Kent. Many families in Wokingham tell me about similar serious difficulties in getting appropriate SEND provision for their children, with mainstream schools declaring that they are unable to meet their needs. One constituent wrote to me that increasing specialist school places is essential, but schools are reporting that they cannot offer SEND places because of workforce shortages, not just because of a lack of building space. The issue needs to be tackled in Kent, as it needs to be tackled in Wokingham. That is why my constituent is calling on the Government to build specialist workforce capacity, including educational psychologists, therapists and specialist teachers, alongside new places for children with SEND. In areas where there are severe shortages, the Government need to introduce fast-tracked training pathways to tackle the backlog. They also need to implement guaranteed minimum SEND training for all teaching staff, as well as incentives to retain specialist staff, many of whom have high caseload pressures. Surely the Minister agrees that the Government need to listen to families such as the residents of my constituency and Folkestone and Hythe, who have had such negative experiences of the SEND system and know what needs to be done to fix it.