Children's minister Margaret Hodge has admitted she is "shocked" by some local authorities' policies on children with special educational needs and has promised to investigate.

In a debate on children with Down's syndrome in the House of Commons last week, Hodge admitted she was worried by assertions that some local education authorities were designating some mainstream schools as not appropriate for children with moderate learning difficulties. She promised to examine the situation, saying this was certainly not the intention of ministers.

Jim Dobbin, Labour MP for Heywood and Middleton, said: "Even when schools are willing to accept the children, the local authority can override that and make provision in another area where it has designated provision. Often, that designation is based purely on cost."

He called on local education authorities to be more open about what they were doing with their special educational needs budgets.

Hodge also revealed she is battling with her local health authority, Barking & Dagenham PCT, to persuade it to bring back funding for speech and language therapy in schools that it recently withdrew.

She admitted there was a problem in getting speech and language therapy for children. This is despite the fact that early intervention could make all the difference to a child's educational attainment and independence.

Hilary Ayerst, chief executive of Barking and Dagenham Primary Care Trust, said: "Due to a combination of unfilled posts for speech and language therapists and the PCT being unable to invest additional funds in speech and language therapy, most services in mainstream schools have been withdrawn.

"Resources freed up have been targeted at pre-school children. Services in mainstream schools are limited to initial assessments and the production of programmes of activity to be undertaken by schools and parents/carers for those children."

The problems many parents faced when trying to get a statement was recognised by Hodge, who said the last thing parents needed was a battle with professionals in the local education authority. "They need support at just this point, which is why we are trying to do more work around such issues," she added.

Carol Boys, chief executive of the Down's Syndrome Association, said all children with Down's syndrome should be able to go to their local school but that there were still families having "dreadful battles" to achieve this. With the right training and resources it was not that difficult to include children with Down's syndrome, she added.

Although access to speech and language therapy from a very early age was "absolutely vital", there was very little availability in schools, said Boys.

"There aren't enough speech and language therapists to go round and there's certainly not enough who understand the issues children with Down's syndrome have."

- www.downs-syndrome.org.uk.