All Wales Federation of Special Schools Annual Conference 5Th May 2005

NDA Conference on Childhood & Disability

22 November 2005 – Dublin

Speech

Thank you very much for your warm welcome. I was delighted to accept your invitation to speak here today. I am always pleased to be asked to attend events such as this, not only to promote what we are doing in Wales but to share my thoughts and vision, and those of the Welsh Assembly Government, for the future of education in Wales.

I recognise that events such as these also provide an opportunity to meet with colleagues not only from across Wales, but from across the whole of the UK, to share our thoughts and ideas, and debate important issues in educational practice for some of our most vulnerable children and young people.

I am sure I speak for us all in saying that it is our passionate belief that education and learning must fully promote and support the social inclusion of people with disabilities – allowing everyone to participate in shared activities. There is no doubt that access to high quality education and learning will enable disabled people to discover and realise their true potential.

Certainly it is the case that legislation, regulation, policy and practice promoting learning for disabled people has improved the situation dramatically in recent years. The 1995 Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) made it unlawful to discriminate against disabled people in the areas of goods and services, but at that time the Act did not apply to education.

Since then, as we all know, the Special Education Needs and Disability Act 2001 amended the DDA to include school and post 16 education from September 2002. The Welsh Assembly Government welcomed the extension to the Act, although as I am sure you will appreciate, disability issues are not devolved to the National Assembly.

Part IV of the DDA imposes a duty on LEAs and schools to plan to increase progressively the accessibility of schools for disabled pupils. This came into force in October 2003 in Wales and Local Education Authorities accessibility strategies and schools’ accessibility plans should have been in place by 1st April 2004.

I recognise, of course, that improving the accessibility of schools is not just about removing physical barriers, it is about increasing access in the widest sense. That is why the planning duty embraces three distinct strands:

-Increasing the extent to which disabled pupils can participate in the school curriculum;

-Improving the physical environment of the schools;

-Improving the delivery to disabled pupils of information which is provided in writing to pupils who are not disabled.

The Assembly has provided full guidance to LEAs and schools on meeting their responsibilities under the planning duties.

To complete the Governments reforms of civil rights legislation, the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 extends the DDA 1995 to cover the functions of public bodies to eliminate discrimination and harrassment and to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people.

We welcome this extension and are working with the Disability Rights Commission and voluntary organisations in Wales such as SNAP Cymru and Chilren in Wales, on how best to support local authorities and schools in the delivery of their duties.

The Assembly has made a clear commitment in “The Learning Country”, our paving document for education for the next ten years, to address and overcome barriers to learning, to support diversity and inclusion and to narrow the gap in inequalities of achievement between advantaged and disadvantaged areas, groups and individuals. The Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning has made a commitment in the Learning Country to ensure the principles of Inclusive Education are met.

There is no doubt that inclusive schools help to develop communities where all people are valued equally and have the same opportunities to participate. Inclusion is certainly not just about where a child receives their education.

Following a recent report from Estyn, the Inspectorate Service for Wales, relating specifically to the Statutory Assessment and Statementing framework and jointly commissioned research between the Association of Directors of Education in Wales and the National Assembly we have identified a number of key themes that need to be addressed, these include:

The need to develop an inclusive education policy for all learners;
The need for a consistent approach to funding additional learning needs;
The need to ensure our workforce is fully equipped to meet a diverse range of needs;
The need to ensure that the current statutory assessment framework is fit for purpose; and,
That we improve the way in which we monitor progress of pupils with additional learning needs across all schools.

We took on board the findings of these reports and to this end the Welsh Assembly Government is embarking on our most challenging agenda yet – the development of an Inclusion Policy and Performance Framework for Wales that considers the needs of all children and young people with additional learning needs and those at risk of disaffection.

During the summer we consulted on Inclusion and Pupil Support which addresses many of these issues. We are currently reviewing the responses to this document, which will ultimately provide overarching guidance on Inclusion in Wales.

We have also established task and finish groups with key stakeholders in Wales (which include public, private and voluntary organisation) to review all the processes involved with additional learning needs in the context of inclusion eg the statutory assessment process, outcomes for learners and funding.

It is hoped that the recommendations from these groups will feed into the inclusion policy and performance framework to enable all children, including those with additional learning needs, to release their full potential. This will be achieved by improving access to education, raising standards of teaching and learning and improving information to parents and carers consistently throughout Wales.

The SEN agenda in Wales is moving on at pace. Special Educational Needs is at the forefront of our educational agenda. In parallel to the work I have just mentioned , the Education and Lifelong Learning Committee embarked on its review of services for children and young people with SEN. The review will be undertaken in three parts.

The first part, which was reported on last December, concentrated on early identification and intervention. All children have a right to the best possible start in life. Where children and young people have special educational needs and disabilities, it is important that these are identified at an early stage and that identification leads directly to effective early intervention and support for families and children and young people.

The committee are in the middle of the second phase of that review, which centres around the statutory assessment framework for SEN. The final and subsequent stage of this review will focus on another important issue for us all and relates to transition across phases of education

Special schools continue to play an important role for those children and young people requiring very specialist and specific support. The Assembly’s document, “Shaping the Future for Special Education,” suggests that there is a need for all special schools to be confident outward-looking centres of excellence as part of their evolving role.

We recognise that there is much to celebrate in Wales in education, provision and support that our children and young people with additional learning needs receive but there is still much to be done.

Specifically in relation to Speech and Language Services, The Minister for HeaIth and Social Services, the Minister for Children and the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning are fully aware that there has been a steady growth in demand for services to children and young people with speech, language and communication difficulties and an inability by the relevant statutory services to meet that demand.

Our latest Basic Skills campaign, and the Foundation Phase, recognises the importance that speech and language development plays in forming a sound basis for future success in reading, writing and accessing the curriculum so that all children reach their full potential.

In this context, The Welsh Assembly Government has allocated £3m over the next 3 years to the development of pilot projects to establish joint commissioning and pooled resources arrangements for the delivery of speech and language services to children and young people across health and education. We are also developing further training routes for speech and language therapists to meet the increase in demand for therapy provision and in particular through the medium of Welsh.

We are also working very closely with colleagues across health and social care to develop “The Autistic Spectrum Disorders Strategy for Wales” which is currently being drafted and will go out to public consultation during the spring of 2006. A number of stakeholders have been involved in the development of the draft strategy and research already undertaken has been considered.

The First Minister launched the Welsh Assembly Government’s National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services – more commonly known as the NSF - on 30 September 2005. The NSF contains 21 standards and 203 key actions, of which 84 are flagged for delivery by 31 March 2006.

The standards contained within the NSF aim to ensure that children and their families are placed at the heart of all service planning, with services delivered to meet their needs. That should be the aspiration of all organisations. These standards strive to ensure that this aspiration becomes a reality.

The standards in the NSF relate to specific issues, in particular, the standards for disabled children seek to ensure equality of opportunity and equity in service for disabled children and their families. Specific standards for disabled children and young people set out the Assembly’s vision for an integrated approach to services in health, education, social care, housing etc to support disabled children and maximise their inclusion in society and all its policies and programme are underpinned by the social model of disability. The NSF is a 10 year programme with 3 yearly reviews planned to ensure that the standards are still relevant.

The standards outlined in the NSF compliment our policies outlined in “Making the Connections: Delivering Better Services for Wales”. Also, the Children’s Act (2004), which strengthens this position and encourages the use of joint commissioning and pooled budget arrangements across services to ensure needs are met in a coherent way.

Support to disabled children and young people is also a key priority of the Assembly Children First and CYMORTH programmes where funding for 2005/06 is £20m. Supporting families and carers of disabled children is equally important as is preparing disabled young people for independent living and from October 2004 younger disables people 16/17 years old, and parents/carers of disabled children are entitled to direct payments. The Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act 2004 further strengthen rights for carers and requires agencies when undertaking an assessment of disabled children and their families to take into account the parent/carers wishes work. The Act will be implemented in Wales from 1st April 2006.

There are inconsistencies across Wales in the delivery of services and levels of funding available to meet the needs of learners with additional learning needs. Local democracy is designed to support needs at a local level and we are committed to this approach but we are also committed to ensuring that there is equity in the delivery of educational services across Wales.
That is one of the reasons why the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning took Wales only clauses in the Education Act 2002 for the development of regional provision of goods and services for children with SEN. The clauses were taken to ensure an adequate supply of appropriate provision, particularly for children and young people with low incidence complex needs. Colleagues have raised concerns that, following local government re-organisation, some services and provision for this group of children have become fragmented and not easy to sustain within any one local authority. The clauses in the Act actively encourages local authorities to work together on a collaborative basis to meet needs and join up services to address these concerns.

We have invested approximately £3.5m in the development of regional services to date.

We are currently in discussion with a number of local authorities to facilitate collaborative arrangements for the delivery of goods and services for children and young people with special educational needs in other areas of Wales.

We recognise that there are shortages in some specialist areas of teaching, such as teachers who hold mandatory qualifications to teach children and young people with sensory impairments. We are in discussion with all higher education providers across Wales to consider flexible training opportunities such as e-learning and other innovative approaches to encourage teachers to specialise and develop their skills in working with children with special educational needs.

The Welsh Assembly Government also wish to ensure that all teaching staff are equipped on entering the classroom to identify and support the individual needs of learners and that they continue to receive support through targeted continuous professional development in this area. Special Schools can have a distinct role in supporting mainstream schools in this area by developing arrangements for outreach and support across schools and in utilising each others knowledge and skills in ensuring children access a range of educational opportunities within the context of the national curriculum.

To help teachers with their ever increasing workload the Welsh Assembly Government have allocated an additional £25m to LEAs through the RSG in 2005-06 to enable schools to restructure their workforce to meet the contractual obligations of the teachers’ workload agreement, with a further £37m in each of the next two years.

This is on top of the £33m already made available in 2004-05 – making a total of £58m in 2005-06, rising to £70m by 2007-08. That represents (on average) some £35,000 for every school in Wales (although smaller schools will get less and larger schools more).

This funding will enable schools to employ more support staff who can relieve teachers of tasks that they need not be doing, reducing their workload and giving them more time to plan and prepare.

It is a major investment in schools and in the future of the teaching profession and demonstrates our commitment to the education of the children and young people in Wales.

This will not only reduce teachers’ workload, it will allow teachers to use their time more effectively. We are already seeing steady improvements in the quality of teaching and this funding will enable that to continue.

Further, we need to ensure that we have the necessary systems in place to monitor individual pupil’s progress over time and that appropriate interventions and support strategies are readily available to overcome these barriers to learning. Much of this work is currently underway and some schools have developed sophisticated approaches to monitoring pupil progress. We are working with ACCAC and Estyn, who are members of our inclusion task groups, in developing specific guidance for schools and LEAs on monitoring the progress of pupils with additional learning needs.

I believe we have demonstrated in Wales that we are committed to an alternative curriculum, learning pathways and an assessment framework that measures what we value and not only values what we can measure! That is not to say we should not have high expectations for all our pupils but that this should be set in the context of individual abilities and their own specific achievements.

As an Assembly Government we have put social inclusion at the heart of all our policies. For me, ensuring we deliver the best possible services for some of our most vulnerable children and young people is, and will continue to be, a key priority in the future delivery of education services across Wales.

Once again I would like to thank you for inviting me here today and for the opportunity to tell you what we are doing in Wales.

Thank you