Education (Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2009

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for contributing to this short but very important debate. We are all agreed that SEN teachers play an incredibly important role, as well as often being main classroom teachers. I still feel very concerned because, reading the SI and the committee’s report, my opinion is that when this is rolled out, those teachers will be expected to have that qualification, even though they have been SENCOs for a very long time. I have listened carefully to the Minister, and I shall read Hansard carefully. I hope that she is assuring us properly that only new people coming in will need that qualification—ruling out completely those who have been SENCOs for a long time—and evaluating them only on what may be their weak areas. Otherwise, I fear that we will lose a whole group of teachers.