My Lords, I am pleased to support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. The Bill is in my view somewhat weak in terms of accountability. This is surprising, given how much emphasis the Government put on strengthening accountability in other areas. Very recently, for example, in their response to the consultation on secondary school accountability, the Department for Education noted approvingly that:
“OECD evidence shows that a robust accountability framework is essential to improving pupils’ achievement”.
In the Government’s White Paper Open Public Services, it was stated that increased choice must be accompanied by a framework that ensures,
“providers meet basic quality requirements enforced by … inspectors”.
The White Paper went on to say that the Government would,
“ensure that providers of individual services who receive public money … are licensed or registered by the appropriate regulator”.
I am also rather concerned that local education authority SEN services are subject to so little scrutiny given the amount of government expenditure in this area. I understand that over £5,000 million is allocated to funding for children with high needs. Surely, there must be greater scrutiny of whether funding for local authority SEN provision is delivering value for money.
Separately, it can be argued that there is a particular case for inspections of services for children with low-incidence needs, such as sensory impairments. Local authorities and mainstream schools and teachers are far less likely to be familiar with the specific needs of children with sensory impairments. This lack of familiarity and expertise makes the role of local authority SEN provision much more important. The quality of this support is crucial, but apparently no one is checking the quality of this support. This is not really acceptable.
We should note, too, that this proposal has the support of professional bodies, including the National Sensory Impairment Partnership. Heads of services for children with sensory impairment have indicated that they would welcome greater scrutiny, because it allows them to demonstrate and emphasise the importance of their role.
I share the concerns raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, that the commitment made in Committee that Ofsted be asked to carry out a review is insufficient, particularly if Ministers have already, apparently, ruled out inspection of local authority SEN provision. We have already had a one-off thematic review of support for deaf children, with the findings published in the Ofsted report, Communication is the Key. It looked at provision in three local authorities; it did not tell us much about the other 149 local authorities and, even
in those three local authorities identified as having best practice, weaknesses were identified in their quality assurance and self-evaluation. For that reason, there is clearly real concern about what value or impact another broad, one-off thematic review will add. Instead, surely what is needed is the introduction of a robust inspection framework for all local authority SEN services.
I hope that the Minister, having listened to all this, has been persuaded by strong arguments in favour of the proposal.