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Education and Skills Bill

I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 186 and 187. Amendment No. 186 mirrors exactly Amendment No. 189, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. I seek clarification from the Minister, because I understand that the guidance being drafted by his department incorporates a change from the existing arrangements, which will ensure that young people with or without a statement who the local authority believes have learning difficulties and who choose to pursue learning in a post-16 environment during years 10 and 11 will receive an assessment of their learning needs at this early stage. That explains our amendment, which includes young people who participate in school action or school action plus. Only 3 per cent of young people have statements of special educational needs, whereas 15 per cent of young people are regarded as having special educational needs. That is a large number, and it is important that those who by the age of 15 remain under school action or school action plus, who do not want to pursue an academic route and who need help as they want to move into the world of work, have an assessment of what they can and cannot achieve and of the sort of guidance that they need. Along with that change, there will need to be a duty on local authorities to have regard to the assessments, since they will be responsible for funding provision for those young people in the post-16 world. It is important also to separate the duties of the local authority to provide an independent assessment of the young person’s needs from that of providing appropriate learning, once those duties are devolved to local authorities from the LSC. Since local authorities are required to meet these learning provisions from their funds, there is an inherent conflict of interest where an assessment may indicate a level of need which the local authority may consider to be too expensive. One constantly sees similar inherent conflicts of interests as regards statements of special educational needs, which is why many local authorities drag their feet and spin out the period before they have to issue statements. In addition, staff carrying out the assessment should be competent to carry out the task. They will require a detailed knowledge of local and national opportunities for learning, in addition to the skills appropriate to working with this client group, their families and support networks. Equally, emphasis should be placed on the need to ensure that post-16 providers are aware of assessments and take account of their contents in planning and developing learning programmes for young people with learning difficulties. That explains our Amendment No. 187, which adds at the end of new subsection (2), which specifies that the assessment must be carried out, that the local authority should also, "““have regard to this assessment in the subsequent provision of education and training””."