9. What action is the Welsh Government taking to improve the educational outcomes for young people with additional learning needs? OAQ(5)0053(EDU)

We’ll be publishing the additional learning needs Bill before Christmas.

Minister, one of my constituents with additional learning needs has been waiting over seven months for an appointment with the child and adolescent mental health services, and in the interim has been receiving just a few hours of schooling each week. How can we expect young people like my constituent to reach their full potential if we are denying them a full and rich education? Minister, what steps are you taking to ensure that children and young people, like this six-year-old child, with additional learning needs get the full-time education they’re entitled to?

If the Member has individual cases, then clearly she can write to me and we’ll take those up with the appropriate authorities. But let me say this in terms of the overall vision: the additional learning needs Bill will be published before Christmas, and I’m looking forward to the debate and the conversation that we will have in this place and in committee, and the wider debate across Wales, during the parliamentary process of that Bill. I will be publishing the code of conduct, the statutory guidance, to deliver that Bill at the beginning of February, so Members will be able to review, study and scrutinise, not only the primary legislation but the secondary implementing legislation as well. But both these pieces of legislation form part of a much wider transformational programme that I launched some weeks ago with a written statement, pledging that we will ensure that all deliverers of additional learning needs have sufficient support and the training necessary. We will also be ensuring that resources are provided to enable local authorities and others to deliver the transformational programme as we envisage.

Hello. [Laughter.] Right. [Laughter.] We are all very much looking forward to the publication of this Bill. I am very grateful to you for meeting with me last week with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and Diabetes UK and for listening to the concerns about the need to include a duty to meet the medical needs of children in school in this Bill. Can you update us on what your current thinking is on that?

It was more of a surprise to me than it was to other people. [Laughter.]

I’m grateful to Lynne Neagle for both the time last week in conversation on these matters, but also the work she’s been doing as Chair of this committee in preparing the committee to ensure that we have the widest possible scrutiny of this legislation. At the end of the day, I want to have a good Act rather than a fast Bill and I think it’s important that the committee plays an important role in that. In terms of the conversation that we had last week with Diabetes UK Cymru and with the royal college, I was very impressed with what they had to say. I thought they made a very strong and effective case for significant changes in the way that we bring forward this legislation and the way the transformation programme will work, and all of those points were noted and you will see them referred to as we proceed with the legislation.

Deaf people have a right to access education. I’ve had concerns brought to me by constituents that this isn’t really happening as it should and there are staff at only level 1 or level 2 signing. So, Cabinet Secretary, would you please engage with British Sign Language students who have passed level 6 to work in the education sector, so that we can try and improve matters of access?

I’ve already met on many occasions with deaf students, families, organisations and practitioners working with those people in order to ensure that this legislation reaches out to all parts of the educational community and that all parts of our community receive the education that they need and deserve. Deaf people will be an integral part of that and as part of the wider transformational programme—not simply the legislation, but the wider programme—we will ensure that education is delivered by people who have the appropriate training in all languages whether it’s BSL, English or Welsh.

Claiming that it will

‘Transform the education support for children and young people’ with autistic spectrum conditions, the ‘Refreshed Autistic Spectrum DisorderStrategic Action Plan’, published today, then only really refers to the Bill you’ve already referred to, the additional learning needs and education tribunal (Wales) Bill. How will you provide assurance to parents such as myself, who had to fight to get a statement for their children because it was being used as a rationing process, a certificate of entitlement, recognising, for example, that exclusions of children who didn’t get statemented, who went to school action and school action plus categories, short-term exclusions doubled when they reduced for children in the general population unstatemented children? Is it not a real concern that the individual development plans proposed will enable providers to ration provision in the way, in practice, parents have seen for too long in Wales and beyond?

I fully accept that, for too long, parents have had to struggle and have been through very difficult and emotional times struggling to get the educational provision that they require for their children, and a part of that is not simply statementing but diagnosis as well. There has been a wide number of issues there that refer to the journey of the child, in this instance through health and social services, sometimes educational institutions and organisations and structures. I accept that there have been significant difficulties and sometimes failures there in that system. The introduction of the individual development plan, of course, is a way of moving away from that. It does deliver, we hope and we anticipate, and this will be a matter for Members to test, of course, during the parliamentary process. We will introduce flexibility for each individual learner so that we have the capacity within the code of conduct to have an individual development plan that reflects the needs of that individual and not simply the needs of the people delivering the service. So, we will be focusing in on that individual, but also delivering portability of that individual development plan, so that they can access services and it will be recognised by professionals both in different services and in different areas. So we will, I hope, be striking the balance so that people do not have to struggle, fight and campaign, sometimes, for the services and the education that they fully deserve and should have without any of that struggle. But we will also be ensuring that we do this in a way that is tailored for the individual.

I thank the Minister.