Schools and Special Educational Needs

Speech by Peter Black delivered to Plenary on Wed 18th Jun 2008

Peter Black: The Welsh Liberal Democrats will support both amendments. As Andrew R.T. Davies said, amendment 1 relates to a matter of fact. Our view on amendment 2 is that, although freedom is important, if you do not have the means, that is, the resources to carry out what needs to be done, you do not have the freedom to do so. That is why we will support amendment 2. That is quite an important point in this regard, because we often hear schools talk about what they would like to do on a whole range of issues, but they do not have the resources to carry it out. Therefore, if the Government wants to amend this motion to state that it wants to provide the means for schools to do this, then that is to be welcomed.

When we are looking at how we can reduce the number of children excluded from schools, which I am sure that we all agree on as an aim, we need to look primarily at the reasons why they are being excluded. After all, few children are born badly behaved. I am grateful to the Conservatives for highlighting the fact that 42 per cent of children who are permanently excluded have additional educational needs. That is a crucial statistic, which was highlighted on several occasions during the four years of the previous Assembly, when the Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills Committee carried out an extensive review into additional educational needs. We were concerned, as part of that review, about the number of children with additional needs who were being excluded. We felt that early identification, as Andrew rightly pointed out, was not being achieved in all cases and that the needs of those children were not being taken into account when the behavioural issues were being addressed. It is vital that, as part of the Government's agenda in dealing with exclusions, it addresses this specific issue. The report of the Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills Committee contains several recommendations, some of which have been implemented, others of which are in the process of being implemented, others that have yet to be implemented and some that require legislation. Those recommendations, in my view and that of my party, offer a way forward for the Assembly Government to ensure a fairer playing field for children with additional educational needs, which will hopefully lead to a reduction in the number of exclusions. It is crucial that the Assembly Government takes that on board.

The report covers many more issues around additional learning needs than just exclusions. In a way, I regret that exclusions have been singled out, when there is a whole range of other issues that need to be dealt with. I do not think that we should come away from this debate thinking that children with additional learning needs are synonymous with children who might be excluded and have bad behaviour. That is not so in the majority of cases, however, it is the case that they form a high proportion of children who are excluded.

The other concern that we have around the reasons for permanent exclusions is that recent reports about the amount of substance misuse, particularly among those aged under 16, note that 8.4 per cent of permanent exclusions are down to substance misuse-that is around 38 children every year. I suspect that nearly all of those will be under the age of 16, and there is clearly a stronger role for personal and social education to play in tackling this in our schools. The figures are deeply worrying. Substance misuse is damaging to children's health not only in the short term, but in the long term, and those who drink or take drugs face disciplinary problems. It is vital that we focus on that issue if we are to avoid these children being excluded in the future, and we must tackle the root causes.

The other issue-and this was also highlighted by Andrew-is bullying and its effect on the educational process. We have discussed the disciplinary problems that arise in schools, and I suspect that much of it is to do with bullying. In fact, a considerable number of exclusions, particularly fixed-term exclusions, are caused by bullying. Exclusions fall into the following categories: 3.9 per cent are down to bullying; 17.1 per cent are down to assault or violence against pupils; just over 1 per cent are because of racial or sexual harassment; 17 per cent are because of verbal abuse; and 9 per cent are because of threatening or dangerous behaviour. Clearly, schools need to take action in the most serious of cases. The problem of bullying is particularly serious, and I hope that the Minster will review it to ensure that schools have the appropriate policies in place to deal with it.