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Introduction - Martin Littler
I would like to thank the many members of the House of Lords and the Members of Parliament who are attending this debate today.
Sitting alongside you are over ninety special educators and people with assistive technology expertise, quite a few with more than twenty years experience in this field. They were in at the very beginning, when teachers and government first realised the huge potential of new technology to help learners with severe and complex special needs to communicate, learn, and live independently.
Twenty years ago, when I started as Director of Manchester SEMERC, practically every LEA had an expert SEN/IT Advisory Teacher. These were supported by four regional resource centres like mine, and a National Special Needs Software Unit to develop the software they needed. None of this exists now.
In addition, children without speech and with other communication handicaps had the two ACE Centres offering specialist support too. This structure was set up by far-sighted officials at the Department of Education.
This era, twenty years ago, gave rise to much of the expertise we have in this room today. And most of the resources we have to hand.
This era carried us forward to today. It gave many of us our start. One by one the initiatives were withdrawn but we have coasted on. Today it seems to me the brakes have been applied and we are about to go into reverse.
Expertise in this field has disappeared from QCA, then from the DfES and, last year, we even looked like losing the Inclusion Team at Becta. A team we looked to for leadership and our voice in Government.
In the last few years Special Education seems to have been systematically omitted from every Government education initiative that involves ICT.
In the latest evaluation of Curriculum Online, for instance, Secondary Schools are mentioned 173 times, Primary Schools 168 times, and Special Schools not once.
The New Opportunities Fund provided ICT training for every teacher, but the needs of Special School teachers were initially omitted entirely.
And by March 2008, we are told, every child must have access to a Learning Platform. As nothing currently available has any relevance to children with Severe and Complex special needs, what will be available for them? I have asked this question of both the DfES and Becta. Neither was able to tell me. “Every child” just does not include these learners.
Nowhere is the lack of priority more damaging than in the help we provide to children with communication difficulties.
Having no speech is one of the biggest barriers a child can face; barring their path to learning, making independent choices, or living life to the full.
The early progress made in this field was spectacular. Children could be given a voice and the ability to write and communicate - even though, as is often the case, they have additional crippling physical and sensory handicaps.
When reporting on SEN last year, the Parliamentary Education and Skills Committee said that children were being failed by a system “not fit for purpose” they may have had these learners in mind.
The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists now speak of the “devastating de-prioritisation of speech and language therapy services” with 78% of speech therapists having their budgets cut last year and 80% of newly qualified speech therapists failing to find a job.
These children are losing the therapy they need and the Communication Devices too. I have an advanced draft of a devastating report from Scope, which concludes:
“It is of great concern that the government has no plans … to provide communication equipment to children … who need it to be able to express their needs, wishes and views... This position seems contrary to much of government’s rhetoric about inclusion, reducing disadvantage, and enabling ‘choice and voice’.
Over the top? Well last year the Government finally withdrew funding from the two ACE Centres who advise on the communication aids children need. This saved a measly £340,000.
At the same time they axed the CAP programme, costing just £5 million a year, which provided communication aids on permanent loan to children. Nothing replaced the programme.
A House of Lords ruling has meant that local authorities can now take resource implications into account when considering their duty to provide speech aids. So if a local authority is short of funds then a child will literally not get a voice.
It is clear to me that children with Severe and Complex Special Needs, including children without speech, have just disappeared from the Government’s agenda.
I would like to see them back on that agenda.