Special Educational Needs: Investment

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether the £3 billion investment in additional places for children with special educational needs will involve the construction of new settings, or adaptations of existing educational establishments.

My Lords, the £3 billion in high needs capital announced last week is intended to support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities and those who require alternative provision by creating facilities within mainstream schools that can deliver more flexible support adapted to suit people’s needs. It can also be used to adapt mainstream schools to be more accessible and create special school places for pupils with the most complex needs through expanding existing settings or stand-alone schools where this is necessary.

I thank the Minister for that reply. However, can the Government give us some idea of how this will work for those who have less complicated needs and probably are more frequent in number? What will this do to support those who might just get by with a little bit of help, as opposed to those with very complicated needs who will have less of their education in the mainstream classroom?

The noble Lord makes a very important point. This funding is an opportunity to support those pupils to remain in schools close to home and enable them to learn and thrive alongside their friends, in environments that support their learning, by developing safe and quiet spaces and improving the accessibility of mainstream schools. That is a large part of what we expect this additional funding to support, precisely so that children can learn and thrive alongside their friends in mainstream schools and be identified earlier in order to do that.

My Lords, I fully support the strategy to increase the number of SEND pupils in mainstream schools, subject to adequate funding to provide relevant support and teaching staff. However, there remains a small proportion of pupils with very special needs who will need further help that cannot be provided in such schools. Can the Minister explain how these young people’s needs will be met in future?

The noble Baroness is absolutely right: there will be a small number of children for whom the excellent special schools that we already have—or, in some cases, additional spaces in special schools—will be the most appropriate way to support them. That is why the approach that we are taking with respect to the special school pipeline of free schools is to enable local authorities, which have responsibility for providing those places, to determine whether the funding is best used in mainstream schools or whether they need additional special schools to meet those exceptional circumstances that the noble Baroness talked about.

My Lords, this announcement was part of a bigger announcement that cancelled many long-awaited new special schools. I would like to ask the Minister: what assessment has been made of parents’ views on whether their children’s needs are likely to be as well served in mainstream schools? What assessment has been made of the kinds of SEN provision and interventions that have real value to young people beyond just comfort and reassurance? What assessment has been made of the many types of SEN provision to determine what represents real value from a stretched public purse?

Actually, what happened in the special schools pipeline, as I said, was not the cancellation but a choice that was offered to local authorities over how to proceed with special and AP free schools. In making that decision, local authorities will want to ensure that the needs of parents are met. These are too often not being met in the SEND system up to this point, and that is precisely the reason why parents are so concerned since they have been struggling to get the provision that they need for their children under the previous system. In fact, 18 of the 77 projects in this pipeline were cancelled because no trust had been appointed for them and it would have taken, frankly, too long at a point at which we need more places with the specialist provision, either in mainstream or in special schools, for those pupils. We will be making quicker progress through supporting mainstream schools to provide those places so that there are more places more quickly for those children.

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister knows that there is at least a problem, if not a crisis, in teacher recruitment and retention. Is she able to say anything positive about what the Government will do to seek more teachers who will be trained and qualified to ensure that they can work with children with special educational needs and disabilities in all settings in order to meet their needs appropriately?

My noble friend is right, of course, that every teacher needs to be a teacher for children who have special needs. That is why, as part of this Government’s commitment to recruiting 6,500 new teachers, we have already seen over 2,300 new teachers for our secondary and special schools. It is why we are seeing a reduction in the turnover rate of those teachers; in other words, more are being retained in our classrooms. It is also why we are revising initial teacher training in order to provide more support and information for all teachers in how to respond to special educational needs in the classroom.

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, has raised an incredibly important point. Special educational needs pupils need new buildings, but they also need new teachers. So why has there been a decrease in the number of primary school teachers since the Government came into power? Will the Minister commit to more teachers for early years special educational needs children to give them the best start in life?

As the noble Earl knows, or should know, primary numbers have been falling since 2019, which is why our additional investment—the 10% pay award for teachers, which applies across primary and secondary schools and which will bring in additional teachers—has, as I have already identified, increased the numbers of teachers in secondary and special schools, which is where they are particularly needed. It is already being effective, as is this Government’s commitment to keeping teachers in the classroom, not just attracting them in the first place.

My Lords, given that one of the big challenges for local authorities has been school transport for SEND children, what assessment has been done on how quickly these school places will be delivered? More importantly, has any work been done on the potential savings for local authorities, because this is one budget that is really challenging for local councils up and down the country?

The 50,000 additional places that will be funded through the £3 billion that we announced last week are on top of the 10,000 new specialist places in mainstream and special schools, supported by the £740 million that we invested this year. That goes back to the point I made earlier: this is not about saving money, but it is about saying that, for many children, they will be best served in local schools with specialist provision to care for them and help them to thrive alongside their friends. A side benefit of that is that we will no longer need to be transporting children long distances at great cost for education that they could more effectively receive closer to home.

My Lords, it is me again, and I am still a teacher. We can agree that the SEN system could do better. School action plus was a really good halfway house to an EHCP, where a lot of students could have their needs met without having to go through the EHCP. It was abolished 15 years ago, but there are rumours going around that the Government are considering bringing that back. Could the Minister comment on that?

I am very pleased that the noble Lord is one of the over 2,000 teachers that we have been able to retain in the classroom, despite his busyness in this House as well—I am very glad that the pupils of Mossbourne get the benefit of his teaching. The Opposition’s previous Secretary of State for Education described the special educational needs system as a “lose, lose, lose” system, and I agree with her about that. That is why this Government are taking by the horns the requirement to reform the system. It is why my honourable friend Georgia Gould, the Minister, is at this very moment engaging in widespread conversation with parents, teachers and children about how we can reform the system so that it identifies children earlier and provides the support they need. Where necessary, it should provide that really specialist support for those with complex needs, and it should help parents and children feel more confident their needs are being met. We will have more to say about that in the White Paper that we will publish next year.