Education Bill

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I should like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Northbourne for his absolutely indefatigable championing of early years provision, which is the context of the amendment. I also agree with my noble friend Lady Howe about the importance of assessment, and echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Eden, about communication. While I am commending, I also commend the Minister for the way that he has communicated with us all throughout this Bill, by writing to us, informing us and keeping us in the picture. That is very much appreciated. I have to say to the Minister that, in saying what I am going to say, I end up with a question, which is a question born out of disappointment, from over a number of years, in failing to achieve what I know many noble Lords in this House want. In coming to this particular description, I was interested in the report and summary of evidence released in July by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Education. I would like to quote certain passages from the all-party group’s reports, which I think are important, especially in connection with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. First, the all-party group states that all respondents to the inquiry, "““were of the opinion that early intervention is essential and that recommendations or statutory guidance should be provided to health authorities to prompt earlier intervention””." I say that because I will conclude with health. Of all the different interventions, I have always felt that one of the most important is that of speech and language therapists, who enable children to communicate with their teachers when they start school. Without that, the pupils cannot engage. When we are talking about education, we are also discussing why people cannot engage. This point has been made over and over again, without success. As has been said many times, "““It is vital that assessments and interventions are tailored to the specific needs of pupils””." The point about such interventions is that they should identify specific needs, including difficulties and disabilities such as problems with hearing, sight and so on. This interests me because I have tried to get this introduced before, after I carried out an experiment in young offender institutions with children aged 15 and upwards. That experiment proved that, had those children had that intervention earlier, they might not have arrived at the institution—by and large, their journey until then had been one of failure, not least failure in education. I saw this represented and repeated by children on intensive supervision orders in Leeds, which proved exactly the same thing. The report by Mr John Bercow, as he then was, into the whole question of learning difficulties and how they were not being tackled, highlighted the same problem. However, when I put up the suggestion that there should be speech and language therapists in every young offender institution to establish what was preventing people making progress, the whole issue ended up with money. The Ministry of Justice was unable to fund speech and language therapists because they came from the Department of Health. Similarly, when I put up exactly the same proposal in earlier education Bills, the same answer has come: it is the Department of Health's responsibility to provide these people. One of the all-party group’s important recommendations was that, if we are to get education right, it is desperately important that we have joined-up work between all the ministries involved. The report says that BIS needs to deal with home reading skills, the Ministry of Justice with offenders, the Department for Work and Pensions with benefits claimants, the DCLG with looked-after children and the Department of Health with educational psychologists and speech therapy. If we just go on raising this issue over and over again in Bills where an assessment is needed as part of early years or foundation years provision, we will get nowhere because there is never any likelihood that the Department for Education will be able to afford what is needed—and anyway, it will come out that people come from the Department of Health. Therefore, is it not right that that provision should be lifted out of this Bill and put into the Health and Social Care Bill, with a statutory requirement on the Department of Health to provide this in order to enable what we have been saying to happen? That is my question to the Minister.