I want to follow Pat’s excellent talk with an acknowledgement of her own key role, first as a curriculum leader in the world of post compulsory education at the Further Education Unit, and then her contribution to the report Inclusive Learning, the report of the Tomlinson Committee in 1996. I cannot remember a time when she was not an active contributor to thinking and quality in the field, and so it remains. In fact, ‘What does Pat think about this?’ became a common phrase in our three years of work on the Committee. It has always been a privilege to work with her.

I want also to acknowledge the impact John Baillie has had on many of us in the field. To me his perspective was always thoughtful and worth hearing, whether at the Skill meetings or elsewhere. His natural interest in what we thought gave confidence to younger colleagues. He also taught many of us how to influence policy and that it could be done, however bleak it might look. It was always encouraging to meet John Baillie and to feel that, in trying to secure better provision for adults and young people with disabilities, we were not alone.

And so to a third acknowledgement this evening: to John Tomlinson who chaired the committee of inquiry into provision for adults and young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities for the Further Education Funding Council. The report Inclusive Learning was published ten years ago this Autumn. On 19 September NIACE will be running a major conference on the topic and (in partnership with Skill) a John Tomlinson memorial lecture on September 12th.

But in many ways the report was the result of a whole team’s hard work: Elisabeth Maddison’s excellent management and impeccable style of writing; Merillie Vaughan Huxley’s imagination and energy; Pat Hood’s rigorous approach and her enormous knowledge of the field. My first meeting with John Tomlinson was not brilliant; we had an argument in the middle of my interview about the nature of social policy, but he had a charm all his own and my fondness for him grew. Later, it was to John we all turned to for advice when the Learning and Skills Council set up a new committee on disability. First meetings are not always the best way of judging a future relationship.

Rogers’ biography of A J Ayer, tells the story of an interesting first meeting. At a party in 1987 held by fashion designer Fernando Sanchez, Ayer, then 77, confronted Mike Tyson who was harassing Naomi Campbell. When Ayer demanded that Tyson stop, the boxer said, "Do you know who the **** I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world," to which Ayer replied: "And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest that we talk about this like rational men". Ayer and Tyson then began to talk, while Naomi Campbell slipped out (Rogers 1999:344).

In my response I want to return to one or two points which Pat has made. The first is about the importance of good quality educational opportunities for adults and young people with mental health difficulties. The second is about current policies and their impact. Both are about invisibility.

Working with Merillie and Pat taught me that everything ought to be supported by evidence so I will start with some. (I have discovered since that sometimes you can have more effect without any evidence at all. This is an exciting but puzzling discovery).

Some 25 percent of drugs prescribed by the NHS are for mental health problems; GPs spend a third of their time on mental health issues; and one in four of the population will experience mental ill health at some point in their lives. There’s one suicide every 90 minutes; three quarters of attempted suicides are young men under 35 and two thirds of these are unemployed. One in five admissions to psychiatric units are for depression and 65 percent of these are women. There are huge differences in the way people are treated from black and ethnic minorities.

Only a quarter (24%) of people with long term or recurring mental illness are in employment. This is the lowest employment rate for any of the main groups of disabled people. People with mental health problems are twice as likely to risk losing their jobs as those without mental health problems. According to the Social Exclusion Unit, ‘Stigma and discrimination can affect people with mental health problems long after the symptoms have been resolved. Discrimination can lead to people becoming ill again or to making their existing symptoms worse’. The majority of sentenced prisoners (72%male; 70%female) have two or more mental health disorders. The prevalence of psychotic disorders is particularly high in women prisoners. Between 20002 and 2003, 37 percent of women prisoners attempted suicide. And so it goes on; we have a big problem of visibility, an elephant in the corner of the room.

For a very long time we have known that educational opportunities can make a huge difference to adults with mental health difficulties: it appears strongly in Images of Possibility (NIACE, 1997), in Inclusive Learning (HMSO, 1996) and in many articles. But although mental ill health touches all of us, says Thompson,

Education can help in this process of discovery. In her introduction to One in Four Thompson notes,

And being heard is central to that process.

Here’s a piece of writing, from One in Four. This is one of our many publications capturing the myriad colours of learners’ voices; it touches I think on the issue of invisibility:

This piece of writing metaphorically illustrates some of the issues about invisibility which are central to this evening’s discussion. First, that disability is almost invisible in policy making. Even though we have the Disability Discrimination Act, the Disability Rights Commission, the Acts providing disabled learners with an entitlement to post compulsory education, the mention of disability in recent education White Papers is only there through happenstance. Second, mental health issues rarely appear in educational policy, are often not mentioned as a major concern of education providers, or appear in the education press. Third, the feelings of powerlessness in Mrs Thomas Vanishes is shared by many activists, learners, relatives, and teachers. It is a truism that where the learners are marginalised or invisible so too are the teachers and their work. It is up to all of us to make the issues, the work and the learners visible, by whatever means – and learners’ voices are a powerful source.

Turning to my second point, on current policies and their impact, Pat has referred to the way in which the White Paper, Further Education: Raising Skills, Improving Life Chances (Cm 6768 HMSO 2006), and current policies have resulted in a narrowing of the agenda for adults and young people with disabilities. This is true without doubt. NIACE believes the current policies are missing opportunities. One of the groups not offered very much by the FE White Paper are those on Incapacity Benefits – nearly 40 percent of whom have mental health difficulties as their main disability, though a further 10 percent have poor mental health as a secondary factor. Richard Layard argues that mental ill health is a greater problem than unemployment, in his paper Mental Health: Britain’s Biggest Social Problem? (December 2004), which followed the Social Exclusion Unit’s important report, Mental Health and Social Exclusion (SEU, ODPM, June 2004).

Layard suggests mental ill health is costing the country £10billion every year - in lost output, carers’ time, cost of public services and individual benefits - let alone the human cost touching one in three families. How is current educational policy addressing this huge concern? The FE White Paper intends better support for learners with learning difficulties or disabilities’; a national strategy for these learners; and higher standards of provision, and this is a good sign. It is assumed that Peter Little’s important review, Through Inclusion to Excellence (LSC, 2005) will be the focus of change. Nevertheless, the attention in the FE White Paper is greater on the 3,038 young adults in specialist residential colleges than it is on the 579,000 students with disabilities in the rest of the system.

On mental health specifically, the Learning and Skills Council has responded to the call for action by the SEU, by drafting out a plan to be launched in draft on June 26 in Nottingham. They are funding a small two-year national and regional development programme on mental health and this is welcome. But it is insufficient.

Research evidence from Joseph Rowntree shows clearly the high correlation between poverty and disability. Although the numbers living in income poverty continue to fall, this is only among families with children, and pensioners. Almost a third of working-age disabled adults live in income poverty. This is higher than a decade ago. Disabled people are both much more likely to lack work or be in low-paid work.

So if we are going to make a difference we need to find ways to enable disabled people to gain new skills, to re-engage in the workplace and to have the confidence and support to move from incapacity benefits to earnings. The education sector has a major role to play. But it cannot play if funding policies endlessly favour the young rather than older people; accredited rather than all provision; and treats learning opportunities that do not meet an education target as a kind of ‘leisure’ arrangement, such as learning Bridge for the affluent middle classes. We need more attention to equity and diversity: ‘’So distribution should undo excess, and each man have enough’ as Gloucester says to Edgar in King Lear.

A more subtle and flexible funding system could support providers in responding to individuals needing part-time provision to regain confidence and skills. If the balance is wrong, and it is wrong at the moment; if much part-time and non-certificated provision is removed, there are less opportunities for people with disabilities to join in. Ultimately, this makes the DWP’s target to reduce the numbers on incapacity benefit more difficult to achieve, but more importantly it will mean that far fewer adults with disabilities will make a contribution to the workplace. This in turn will continue to cost enormous sums both fiscally and personally. We have to be more joined up across government and to do this we need to make the invisible visible.

I’d like to finish with a comment from a great poet Billy Collins, in which he looks back on his life. It’s called On Turning Ten and there is invisibility in it too but this time it’s a force for good, and it’s about looking back – as Pat eloquently said of John Tomlinson, memory is an important thing to have:

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