My Lords, I shall endeavour to be quicker on this issue, which concerns the training of those who deal with pupils with disabilities, or hidden disabilities, such as dyslexia. I apologise to the Committee for having rather overdone the “misspelling mafia” scenario in the past few minutes. Unless a teacher is trained to deal with pupils with very different learning patterns, he or she will not be able to teach them well. That is the underlying philosophy running through these two amendments.
A great deal of work has been done. Indeed, under the previous Government, a lot of the foundation stones for this approach were put down, and we had Rose and Lamb looking at this issue. If teachers do not know how to spot why somebody is failing to learn, or is learning in a different and slower way, they cannot give the appropriate assistance. Why is dyslexia mentioned here? It is the most frequently occurring condition. It may not be the biggest educational problem, but—the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is not in the Room—with certain aspects of speech and language, I will bet that there is a high degree of comorbidity.
If we are dealing with something this important, then we have got to make sure that a degree of training is instilled in those people who have got to deal with it on a day-to-day basis. The people who will start to notice that somebody is working differently will also be able to go to that person and say, “This is why you are not learning quickly”. One of the most standard conversations in dyslexia is this: a parent comes in and
says, “My child needs help” and it is then discovered that the parent is also dyslexic but has manfully struggled through without assistance. We have got to try to get the identification going properly. One, help the child; two, enable them to open up and access assistance so that the coping strategies that we have just discussed can be put in place.
When it comes to making sure SENCOs get better training, it is a no-brainer. If the administrative structure of a SENCO is fine and everybody teaching is fine, they should also know what they are talking about. Dyslexia is the most common but there are other conditions out there. I am merely saying that this is where we are coming from but that we are not the whole story. Please will the Government give me an idea about what they are going to do to make sure that there is better training and awareness among teaching staff so that those with these needs can get into the school population and open themselves up to receive the help that is there? We end up doing it slowly, later on and then encountering problems, as we indicated just a few minutes ago. I hope that my noble friend has something positive to say on this. This is very much a probing amendment, so how are the Government thinking about getting better awareness and training about this particular problem, and special educational needs generally, into the teaching profession and particularly, those in charge of it? I beg to move.