MPs highlight impact of Education Bill on children with autism

Yesterday, the Education Bill was debated for the first time in Parliament. The Bill will implement some sections of the education white paper, published in December.

We briefed MPs on the Bill, before it was debated and as a result, the impact of the Bill on children with autism was raised a number of times during the debate.

Exclusions

In particular, we had expressed concerns about the replacement of Independent Appeal Panels for exclusions with Review Panels, which would not have the power to reinstate children who had been permanently excluded.

A number of MPs highlighted the disproportionate number of children with autism who have been excluded. Conservative MP Richard Fuller said that the high number of exclusions of children with autism needed more attention.

Shadow Education Secretary Andy Burnham said, “Parents of children with disabilities and special needs already face a battle to get them a good education. With changes to admissions and exclusions, which will see schools become judge and jury, the Bill stacks the odds against those children even further”.

Education Minister Nick Gibb responded that parents would still have the right of appeal on exclusions.

Joined-up working

The NAS are also particularly concerned that the Bill removes the duty on schools to co-operate with other local agencies.

We also oppose the Government’s earlier decision to remove the duty on local authorities to develop a Children and Young People’s Plan.

Liberal Democrat MP Annette Brooke stressed the importance of these plans and of joined up working between education, health and social care, particularly for those with complex needs, such as autism.

We look forward to the imminent publication of the Special Educational Needs (SEN) Green Paper to determine further how the Government intends its educational reforms to impact on children with SEN.

Education Select Committee publishes report on Behaviour

The National Autistic Society has welcomed the report from the Education Select Committee on behaviour and discipline in schools.

Director of Education at the NAS Jane Vaughan gave evidence to the Committee to feed into the report. We also submitted written evidence to the Committee.

The NAS is particularly pleased that a number of key points that Jane made in her oral evidence were reflected in the report and its recommendations, including:

Ø       The importance of ensuring that all school staff have training in autism. The report recommends that all schools should ensure that their staff can identify special educational needs (SEN) and that teachers should receive SEN training as part of their initial teacher training.

The NAS believes that this is fundamental to improving provision for children with autism. We also believe that all schools should be able to receive support from autism specialist teachers who should be employed to work across clusters of schools.

Ø       The importance of ensuring that behaviour related to autism is not mistaken for bad behaviour. The report recommends that exclusion is used as a trigger for assessing the needs of a child.

This is something we have been calling for, for some years and we would urge the Government to adopt this policy.

Ø       The importance of focusing on engaging with a child’s learning and the support they need to learn rather than the behaviour itself. The report recommends that schools ensure that they are providing appropriate support to a child so that they can get the most out of their education.

We also welcome the following conclusions and recommendations from the report:

• Guidance on restraint needs to include advice on SEN and the current requirement to inform parents when their child has been restrained at school is important. 

• Independent Appeals Panels for exclusions should be retained

• The Government’s plans to introduce a phonics reading test at age 6 to identify learning problems should be expanded to look also at language comprehension

• The Inclusion Development Programme (IDP), which was a Government funded project which included the development of resources on autism for teachers, should be refreshed and disseminated

• Local authorities should retain responsibility for some local specialist services that provide support to schools around special educational needs. This may include educational psychology or autism outreach teams.

The National Autistic Society will be putting pressure on the Government to accept this findings and recommendations in the lead up to the publication of the Green Paper on SEN, expected later this month.

Click here to read the report

Education Bill gives teachers more powers to discipline

Yesterday the Government published its Education Bill.  The Bill will make the changes to law which are needed as a result of the Education White Paper, published before Christmas.

• The Bill gives greater powers to teachers in relation to discipline.  Teachers will have more legal powers to search pupils and can give pupils detention without having to give parents 24 hours' written notice. 
• Independent Appeals Panels, which hear appeals about school admissions and permanent exclusions, will be replaced with Review Panels. These will review head teachers' decisions, but will no longer be able to reinstate pupils if they feel that a decision was wrong.
• Some schools will become exempt from Ofsted inspections (which these schools are will be decided later).  Where inspections do happen there will be a focus on how the school is providing for children with SEN and disabilties.
• It also makes provision to refocus qualifications and inspections of educational attainment.
• It takes away several duties from school governing bodies.  They will no longer have to co-operate with the local authoirty or have regard to the Children and Young People's Plan or publish a school profile.
• Schools will no longer have to have a school improvement partner, or work with other schools on behaviour and attendance.
• The Bill makes some legal changes so that the Government can take forward its Academies programme.
• The Bill abolishes several school-related agencies, in line with the Government's aim of reducing the number of Government agencies, including the General Teaching Council for England and the Training and Development Agency for Schools, who oversee teacher training.
• The Bill also gives powers to the Welsh Assembly so that they have greater control over teaching standards in Wales.

The NAS is working with other charities and organisations as part of the Special Educational Consortium to influence the Bill  and make it better for children with special educational needs.  We are meeting soon with Government officials, and will also be talking to MPs and members of the House of Lords.

The Bill will be debated in Parliament at its Second Reading on 8th February.  You can read the Bill and see its progress on the Parliament website, here: http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/education.html

Please let us know what you think of these proposals.

New Education Bill

The new Education Bill is expected to be published on 20th January.

The Government has said that the Bill will:

• provide schools with the freedoms to deliver an excellent education in the way they see fit.
• reform Ofsted and other accountability frameworks to ensure that head teachers are held properly accountable for the core educational goals of attainment and closing the gap between rich and poor.
• introduce a slimmer curriculum giving more space for teachers to decide how to teach.
• introduce a reading test for 6 year olds to make sure that young children are learning and to identify problems early.
• give teachers and head teachers the powers to improve behaviour and tackle bullying.
• expect standards across the education sector to rise through the creation of more Academies and giving more freedom to head teachers and teachers. We will also ensure that money follows pupils, and introduce a ‘pupil premium’ so that more money follows the poorest pupils.

The National Autistic Society will be particularly looking at any sections of the Bill on behaviour and will be arguing that any changes to legislation or policy on behaviour needs to take into account the specific needs of children with autism.

We also believe that the reading test at age 6 needs to be reconsidered and a different test introduced so that special educational needs including autism can be identified at an earlier stage.

We will report on more details of the Bill when it is published.

Let us know in the box below what you think of the expected reforms.

Latest update on SEN Green Paper

The SEN Green Paper is now expected to be published in the New Year and most likely in February, we have been told.

The Government recently published a summary of the responses it received to it 'Call for Views' consultation, which will inform the Green Paper. Click here to read that summary. 

Almost 2,000 people responded to the 'Call for Views' and a large number of them were parents of children with Special Educational Needs (SEN).

Key themes identified in the responses include:

• The importance of early identification of needs
• Ensuring teachers are better trained in SEN as well as increasing access to specialists
• The importance of more joined up working between agencies
• The involvement of parents and children in choosing educational provision and plannning for transition

These issues chime well with the things that parents tell us about the challenges of the education system and the key things we highlighted in our response to the Call for Views.

We are currently carrying out some research on the SEN system and how it works for children with autism to help inform our response to the Green Paper when it is published. Keep checking back here for more information.

Also to help with this, please state in the comments section below what one thing you think would make the biggest difference for children with autism in the education system.

Pupil Premium

On Monday the Government confirmed details of its Pupil Premium, originally announced back in July.

The level of the pupil premium will be £430 per pupil and will be the same for every deprived pupil, no matter where they live. The total funding available for the pupil premium will be £625m in 2011-12, rising each year until 2014-15 when it will be worth £2.5bn.

In 2011-12, the pupil premium will be allocated to those pupils eligible for Free School Meals, and from 2012-13 it will be extended the reach of the premium to those who have previously been on free school meals too.

Looked-after children will also receive a premium of £430, which will rise in line with the premium for deprived pupils.

Children with autism will benefit from this measure as they are more likely to be eligible for free school meals (although interestingly less likely to be eligible than those with other Special Educational Needs). 18% of children with autism as their primary need, who are on school action plus and 22% of children with autism who have a statement are eligible for free school meals compared to 14.2% of children with no Special Educational Need.

Both mainstream schools and (in the case of local authority maintained special schools) local authorities will have discretion as to how they respectively spend and distribute the funding, in line with the current localism agenda.

Gaps in support for Scottish children with autism highlighted by inspectors.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) has produced a new report reviewing the impact the Additional Support for Learning (ASL) Act is having in Scottish schools.

Called ‘Adding Benefits for Learners’, the report concludes that on the whole, the majority of schools are effectively identifying children’s additional support needs, that good strategies built around multi-agency working are in place and that education and health professionals are working together to effectively identify and assess children’s needs.

This is good news for the ASL system in Scotland. However inspectors have also identified that progress has not been universal across all groups of children. They have especially highlighted significant gaps in meeting the more ‘hidden’ needs, such as autism.

One example used of this problem is awareness around the barriers to learning that can have a direct impact on children’s mental health, for example autism, ADHD, long-term medical conditions and being looked after.

Inspectors highlight significant problems with accessing Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) provision who can provide direct support to children and young people and advise teachers on appropriate interventions for learning.

The report also highlights issues around the accuracy of the data collected on pupils, the numbers of cases involving a pupil with an ASD who have to use the Tribunal service, gaps in pre-5 training and the consistency of the use of Co-ordinated Support Plans.

NAS Scotland has welcomed the report as it confirms our own concerns that children and young people with autism are often not getting the support the need in school.