Teachers want an equitable education system with a wide range of appropriate provision for meeting the needs of pupils with special educational needs (SEN). Such provision must be fully and adequately resourced and include a range of settings sufficient to meet the full range of need.
Introduction
Special schools provide an invaluable contribution to the education of young people with SEN and disability within the wider continuum of provision. In the NUT’s view, the issue under debate should not be their closure but the way to develop co-ordinated provision where young people are educated in the right place with the right resources.
Government SEN Strategy 2004
The NUT welcomed the Government’s SEN strategy published in 2004. It gave special schools a clear role and pointed out that mainstream and special schools should work together to support inclusion. The NUT believes that only by such joint working will parents/carers be confident that local mainstream schools can effectively support their children’s needs.
‘’Removing Barriers to Achievement’’[1] said:
‘’Some special schools have felt threatened by the inclusion agenda and unsure about what role they should play in future. We believe that special schools have an important role to play within the overall spectrum of provision for children with SEN- educating some children directly and sharing their expertise with mainstream schools to support greater inclusion.
Schools that are working hard to include all children will attest to the benefits for all children of working in the way that they do. The NUT also recognises the genuine challenges in developing appropriate mainstream provision and welcomes the significant government commitments, set out in Removing Barriers to Achievement to improve opportunities for disabled children and children with special educational needs.
There are particular issues for rural authorities who face barriers to providing young people with access to a range of appropriate provision due to the geography of the authority. The costs of out of county provision are high
OUT OF AUTHORITY PLACEMENT REPORTIn July 2005 the SEN Regional Partnerships carried out an analysis of Out of Authority placements. The research found that there was a downward trend in the mean number of Out of Authority placements but this was coupled with a rising trend in the proportion of high cost placements, over £100,000.
It was found that boys outnumbered girls for all categories of special need with regard to Out of Authority placements with a ratio of 3:5:1. Over half of the boys in the research data fell into the categories of ASD and BESD, while the girls were spread across the range of categories.
Most of the Out of Authority placements were in the Secondary phase of education (80% of the numbers and 84% of the costs).
Ofsted[2] reports that there has been progress in the overall numbers of pupils included into mainstream schools over the last four to five years. Equally, whilst a number of special schools have closed, there has been no overall reduction in the proportion of the school population placed outside the mainstream.
DfES advice to local authorities
It is important that the NUT at a local level presses Local Authorities to ensure that they are not implementing unquestioningly DfES guidance. LEAs need to distinguish between DfES statutory guidance and that which is non-statutory.
In particular, some LEAs seem to have adopted the position that the Government’s “Removing Barriers to Achievement Strategy” tells them to close special schools. This is not the case.
The NUT is concerned that there are alarming contradictions in the Government’s White Paper, which advocates greater autonomy for individual schools, greater diversity among schools, and a weaker role for local authorities as well as the increasing number of City Academies while at the same time pressing for coordinated child centred services. The NUT believes that it is essential that all schools are able to work together to ensure that the whole system meets the needs of children and young people with SEN.
Co-ordinated services and the Every Child Matters agenda
The Every Child Matters reforms and the Children Act 2004 signal a step towards greater multi-agency co-ordination.
The Union advocates the establishment of co-ordinated services that link together mainstream schools, units and special schools. Such links include the sharing of teaching expertise by mainstream and special school teachers. This should be a two-way process, as both sectors are increasingly engaging in outreach work with each other.
The Union has long called for greater multi-agency co-ordination as a key to supporting the needs of pupils in an inclusive manner. In particular, the co-ordination of services for looked-after children, should be considered a priority when reviewing LEA SEN and behaviour support plans.
Baroness Warnock’s paper
In 2005, Baroness Warnock published a paper on inclusion, Special Educational Needs: a new look. Baroness Warnock’s analysis of the background to the current situation highlights the consequences of repeated cuts through the 1980s. The position which Baroness Warnock appears to adopt is that the nature of special educational need should determine placement of children and young people.
The NUT believes that inclusion is not about placing all disabled children and children with special educational needs in either mainstream schools or special schools, ignoring difference and ‘treating all pupils the same’. It is about appropriate provision to meet each pupil’s needs with the most appropriate provision and reasonable adjustments made to enable each pupil to access fully education and the life of his or her school or college. The provision and the adjustments may be different for each pupil. Inclusion is a process focussed on fulfilling each child’s entitlement to high quality education. This is the essence of inclusion.
Statements for Pupils with SEN
The NUT shares Baroness Warnock’s concern about the confrontation surrounding statements. Such confrontation would be minimised if high-quality provision was made available by local authorities without the need for parents/carers to request a statement.
The message from central Government to local authorities currently is that the number of statements should be reduced because the statementing process can cost between £6000- £8000. Teachers and SENCOs do not report a visible impact arising from the delegation of SEN funding direct to schools and this funding is not monitored. This can lead to a lottery of provision. Once funding for low incidence SEN is delegated, schools can feel unsure how to cope with the needs of specific pupils and teachers feel that they need to advocate with the Local Authority for each pupil.
Forthcoming duty on schools to promote disability equality –Disability Discrimination Act 2005
Schools already have existing duties under the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001. Governors are required to ensure that their schools do not treat disabled students less favourably, without justification, for a reason that relates to their disability, and must make reasonable adjustments to ensure that disabled students are not put at a substantial disadvantage.
Schools are already required to produce an ‘accessibility plan’ which will complement their local authority’s accessibility strategy to increase access by disabled students over time: the first three-year plans and strategies run from April 2003 to March 2006.
The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 requires local authorities and schools under a new general duty to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people. Under Section 3 of the 2005 Act, schools and local authorities must have due regard to the need to:
- eliminate unlawful discrimination and harassment against disabled people;
- promote equality of opportunity for disabled people; and
- promote positive attitudes towards disabled people.
Local authorities and schools will also have a specific duty to produce annual plans and deliver progress reports on how they are addressing disability discrimination. An annual report is likely to be required.
Local authorities and schools in England will be covered by the DDA 2005 from 4 December 2006. Schools in Wales will be subject to the new duty from 1 April 2007 and English primary schools will be covered from 3 December 2007.
NUT Conference policy
Recent Annual Conference resolutions have affirmed the Union’s position on special educational needs. The Union has argued consistently that a range of provision should be in place for pupils to ensure that their needs are met. The NUT supports the inclusion of disabled children and children with special educational needs in the most appropriate setting for meeting each pupil’s needs.
The underlying theme of Annual Conference Motions on SEN and inclusion has been that inclusion is a process that cannot be imposed. This range of provision should be developed based upon a social model of disability. Such provision should be integral to national and local development of educational policy and practice.
The resolution on SEN at Annual Conference 2005 celebrated teachers’ hard work to ensure that every child has the chance to fulfil his or her potential. The resolution noted that in order for this work to be more effective and to recognise the drive to reduce teacher workload, teachers must have access to high quality resources, sufficient non contact time, appropriate PPA time and well resourced support services to provide improved educational opportunities and support for all their pupils.
Joint Statement on Inclusion by Teacher Unions
The NUT has agreed a joint statement on inclusion with the six teachers associations. The statement reads
‘this Association supports the view of inclusion set out in the Government’s SEN Strategy, “Removing Barriers to Achievement.” This Association agrees with the Strategy that inclusion should not be defined as all pupils being included in mainstream education, but as all schools working together as part of an inclusive education service to meet pupils’ needs in the most appropriate setting.
The NUT believes that, where required, special school provision should be maintained and should be co-ordinated and linked with mainstream provision, particularly those schools and units catering for children with EBD. Links between special schools and mainstream schools are important, as is developing special schools as resource bases, which mainstream schools can access.
The NUT believes that all mainstream and special schools should operate as a community of schools, with a reciprocal duty to support each other.
Case Study – Broomfield Specialist Inclusive Learning Centre (SILC)Specialist Inclusive Learning Centres have been created in each of the 5 geographical areas of Leeds and BroomfieldSchool became the South SILC from January 1st 2005.
How do the partnerships work?
Broomfield SILC has 132 pupils on roll students with a wide range of special educational needs, aged 2 to 19. Some of these pupils may have emotional and behavioural difficulties, but this would not be their primary special educational need. Many pupils have complex needs, including physical and medical needs, and autism.
The partnership model means that pupils remain on the roll of the SILC, while placed full-time at their mainstream partnership school. The SILC then provides the staff team to support those pupils, who are included with mainstream pupils for as much time as is appropriate for their educational needs. Each partnership school provides a room or rooms, as a ‘base’. Each school is fully accessible, usually with some additional facilities, such as a hygiene suite.
This model provides opportunities for phased access to mainstream rather than full-time for SILC pupils who are not, as yet, ready for full-time inclusion.
The SILC already provides a range of work placement opportunities for its older pupils, in local businesses, supervised by staff as required. Obviously SILC staff are very skilled at providing alternative curriculum pathways for students with learning difficulties.
The SILC also offers work placements for local high school pupils, some of whom may be disaffected, but respond positively to the work opportunity
Use of learning support assistants, teaching assistants and learning mentors
The Union believes that pupils with special educational needs are entitled to be taught by a qualified teacher. Sometimes pupils with SEN, particularly those with the most complex needs, are taught by teaching assistants. The Union believes all pupils should be taught by a qualified teacher, appropriately supported by a teaching assistant or learning support assistant.
In a NUT survey of SENCOs in 2003, ninety six per cent of SENCOs reported that the most significant benefit to them of teaching assistants was in providing support in the classroom for individual or small groups of pupils. Only four per cent of SENCOs said that the use of teaching assistants reduced their workload.
Respondents comments about the work of teaching assistants in the NUT SENCO Survey, 2003‘Current pay policy provides no initiative for staff to increase their knowledge. I continue to be amazed by their dedication. I’d like to use TAs in different ways but am embarrassed/outraged at the low level of pay offered for undertaking great responsibility’
‘It would be wonderful if every teacher had a full time TA. This would make planning simpler and improve the learning environment in many ways e.g. marking, displays, photocopying, group work, supervision when called out of class etc’
Ofsted have found that although teaching assistants sometimes have had little specific training, they often received helpful supervision from the class or subject teacher. This, together with good joint planning, generally results in a successful working relationship between teacher, teaching assistant and pupil. Where teaching assistants are less well supervised or supported, and basically left on their own to work as effectively as they could, pupils’ progress can be noticeably worse. The expectations of teaching assistants by teachers should not be that teaching assistants undertake all the necessary differentiation of tasks.
The pupils’ perception of the teaching assistant’s role is intrinsic to the relationship. Some secondary pupils resent the attention given to them by a teaching assistant. Where a relationship is working well, however, a teaching assistant will be sensitive to this problem and provide support as and when required. Pupils with a sensory impairment often rely upon teaching assistants to make the necessary adaptations to curriculum materials, to facilitate communication and to manage sensory aids.
Finding the opportunity for planning and debriefing is a common problem in secondary schools. Some secondary schools adopt an approach which involves teaching assistants working with subject departments rather than always accompanying individual pupils to different lessons. This has advantages, especially when teaching assistants were fully part of the department’s information flow and training.
Additional support from teaching assistants, provided in a variety of ways, is often important to the successful placement of pupils with SEN and to successful assessment of pupil progress. Flexibility in its use and the quality of the supervision of teaching assistants is among the keys to success. Apart from time in lessons from teaching assistants, some school provided adult help for certain pupils elsewhere in the school day – for example on arrival at school or during breaks.
A wide range of provision
In responding to local authority reviews of SEN and behaviour provision, the Union has advised that each LEA should maintain a range of provision, including support services, Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) and special schools. It is important that teachers in PRUs and special schools are given the same professional development opportunities as those in mainstream schools, in particular, the opportunity to visit other schools.
Outreach work between mainstream and special schools is demonstrably effective. Opportunities for training for all staff engaged in outreach work are required in order to ensure that staff are confident in how to effectively share their expertise and engage colleagues in other settings. Some new special schools are being built as part of a cluster near to mainstream schools. This can be less feasible, however, with regard to rural schools and settings. One aspect of visiting other schools should be the opportunity to follow through pupils who have transferred to mainstream schools.
It is essential to maintain provision that is working and meets the needs of pupils. Special provision should be specific to need and not perceived as a ‘dumping ground’. Local Authority (LA) reviews of SEN provision should ensure that in the development of inclusive provision is included a range of suitable settings for pupils for whom mainstream schooling is not appropriate at a particular time. Research has demonstrated, for example, that special schools and units often function well for pupils with sensory impairments. Learning support units are increasingly used to provide additional support for individual pupils. In addition, there should be a range of provision for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD), including special and residential school provision for pupils with EBD whose needs could not be addressed successfully in mainstream schools. There are also a range of complex needs where provision outside the mainstream may be appropriate.