Education and Skills Bill

The inclusion development programme is voluntary. However, we are introducing new units into initial teacher training in respect of the undergraduate course followed by a large proportion of primary teachers. Of course, it is at the primary level particularly that early identification is needed. Those units within the undergraduate teacher training course have been piloted successfully. A few weeks ago I attended a launch event with all undergraduate providers of teacher training courses to make those units available to them and strongly to urge that all providers include them within their undergraduate courses. I did so alongside Sir Jackie Stewart, a tireless champion of improvements in teacher training in this area. He made an impassioned case for all providers to ensure that they embed these units within their courses. I have not made them mandatory because, again, I am anxious not to over-prescribe, in this case, what university education departments should do. However, we could not have done more to urge upon the undergraduate providers of teacher training courses the importance of the new units and the great difference that they can make to the ability of primary school teachers to meet the special educational needs of their pupils. The pilots were successful and the universities that were engaged in them have strongly urged other university departments to take up these new units. I shall keep the noble Lord informed about progress in the take-up. But, as I said, we have not gone to the final stage of making them mandatory because I am conscious of the balance that we need to keep between urging good practice on local authorities, schools and university departments, and making effective provision available to them, but not seeking overly to prescribe precisely what they should do in respect of their own provision. However, we have gone that stage further in mandatory training for special educational needs co-ordinators in schools, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, referred. Every school must have a special educational needs co-ordinator. We reviewed the position of SENCOs long and hard and we decided two years ago that we would make their training mandatory and accredited nationally. We are in the process of introducing that training and discussing with the teacher associations how we can do so in a way that meets the needs of SENCOs and leads to a significant improvement in the competence with which they carry out their functions. We are prepared to consider mandatory measures where we believe they are critical to improvements in schools. No one is more important to the overall provision of special educational needs services in a school than a SENCO. It is essential that there is one senior teacher who has a thorough grasp of the school’s responsibilities in this area, and that is why we have taken the step of requiring mandatory training for SENCOs. The Children’s Plan, which we published last December, announced funding of £18 million further to improve school workforce knowledge, skills and understanding of special educational needs through initial teacher training and continuing professional development. That £18 million is funding, among others, the developments that I outlined to the Committee a moment ago. Furthermore, in May this year, the Government asked Jim Rose, who conducted the 2005 review of the teaching of reading in primary schools, to make further recommendations on the identification and teaching of children with dyslexia. We expect to receive Sir Jim’s recommendations early next year. He will look in particular at the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, as to the provision of more specialist teachers able to carry out functions, including assessments. He will take account of developments since 2005, including the Every Child a Reader programme referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, which we introduced in conjunction with KPMG. It is a great example of the Government working in partnership with charitable and other agencies to bring about change. Latest evaluations show that over 86 per cent of children who received reading recovery in year 1 went on to meet national expectations in reading at the end of key stage 1 in comparison to 84 per cent nationally. This is very welcome news. Reading recovery is an intervention programme targeted at five and six year-olds who are experiencing difficulty with learning to read; we are significantly expanding it over the next three years. Sir Jim Rose played a crucial part in our decision to allocate substantial government funding to the Every Child a Reader programme, which is taking forward reading recovery. For all the reasons set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, we believe that every penny of this is well spent in promoting the capacity of children to engage properly in learning at a later stage and avoiding all the dangers of young children falling into patterns of unproductive behaviour, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, set out. We are doing a great deal in this area, and I believe it is leading to a sustained improvement in provision for children with special educational needs, but I fully accept that there is always more to be done.