Education Bill

My Lords, I strongly support the amendment introduced by my noble friend Lord Low. There is often a tendency to treat SEN as if it contains only one group of people. I have had many letters from parents who find that the school may think that anybody is an expert in their child’s particular special need as long as they are an expert in SEN. That is far from true. This is particularly noticeable in the case of autistic children where understanding the management of autism, as far as it can be managed particularly in the school context, is a very specialist subject. That is why so many autistic children are excluded from school. It is of enormous importance that the SEN expert, who must quite properly be on the panel, should be an expert in the relevant disability. It is also important that one should not think of SEN as completely contained in those children who have statements. As my noble friend said, at least 18 per cent of people with disabilities do not have a statement. Long ago, this 18 per cent without a statement came to be known as the ““Warnock children”” because I was particularly interested in them. They were often neglected because their disability was not serious enough or perhaps did not seem so. Therefore the local authority had no statutory duty to provide for them. Exclusions, which I am sure all noble Lords agree should be avoided as much as possible, need to be carefully scrutinised for any child who is on the lower grading of disability. This often involves children with behavioural and emotional difficulties, who are likely to behave badly at school and incur either temporary or ultimately permanent exclusion. I welcome the improvements that have been made and I think that things are going in the right direction. However, these questions about children who do not have statements and about the choice of relevant expertise on the panel are of the greatest importance.