Join the conversation on our blog
Nasen is passionate about improving the quality of special needs provision in the UK. Let's work together to help everyone achieve.
Nasen is passionate about improving the quality of special needs provision in the UK. Let's work together to help everyone achieve.
SEN Policy Options Group, involves a range of key figures interested in promoting positive policy for SEND, from the world of universities, central government agencies, professional associations, local authorities, voluntary organisations and schools. Nasen maintains strong links with the group and continues to inform and be informed by their thinking.
In this blog article, Peter Gray and Brahm Norwich, who co-convene the Group, report on a recent seminar, which brought together a range of participants to discuss the Green Paper and hear individual papers from Brian Lamb, Debbie Orton (LA officer) and Kate Frood (mainstream primary school Head teacher).
The Government’s Green Paper, ‘Support and Aspiration’, has heralded a radical new policy approach to special educational needs and disability. Since it was issued, there have been several opportunities for consultation and comment and nasen has been involved in this process. However, it is clear already that there are some ‘fixed points’ in the Government’s agenda, which are led by broader Coalition policies and beliefs, in particular:
(i) focusing individual statutory entitlements on a smaller number of children and young people with complex and significant needs/disabilities, with more coherent and long-term multi-agency planning
(ii) a commitment to greater choice and empowerment for individual parents/ carers as consumers of services and provision, including the development of personalised budgets
(iii) developing greater ‘independence’ in the statutory assessment process, through more substantial involvement of the voluntary sector
(iv) removing the ‘bias towards inclusion’ and strengthening the role and contribution of special schools and specialist providers
(v) creating a more diverse ‘market’ of providers, through the enhancement of the non-maintained (academy and free school) sector
In response to these policy directions, presenters identified a continuing lack of clarity in the definition of ‘SEND’. All agreed that definitions had become too broad (with an associated risk of under-expectation). However, the meaning of the term, ‘complex and significant needs’, is not always commonly understood by Local Authorities, parents and schools. Moreover, the Green Paper takes insufficient account of the relative definitions involved in the broader group of needs that are likely to fall within the new ‘single school-based SEN’ category. There was a general view that perverse incentives for over-identification were likely to continue unless there was a much clearer indication of the quality and standards of service and provision that all schools should be expected to deliver.
The move towards more coherent multi-agency plans for children with complex and significant disabilities was welcomed. However, it was difficult to see how exactly these might link to existing statutory assessment processes, or what impact the plans would have without a stronger emphasis on shared accountability across all relevant agencies.
While the benefits of parental empowerment were recognised, there was concern that the ‘individual consumer’ model and greater use of markets for services and provision were being seen as the only way by which this could be achieved. Participants identified the need for some degree of regulation within any future system. Otherwise, what would be the limits to ‘choice and diversity’ ? How can we avoid a system that favours those who ‘shout loudest’ and ensure equitability for all children with similar needs ? Who will play the role of ‘honest broker’ if there is diminishing capacity at Local Authority level ?
The greater involvement of the voluntary sector was again welcomed. However, participants and presenters from both the statutory and voluntary sector pointed to the lack of clarity in relative roles. How will quality assessment be assured ? What does ‘independence’ really mean (and what are the limits to this) ?
Presenters and participants pointed to the limited meaning of the term ‘inclusion’ used within the party political debate. In seeking to ‘remove the bias’ towards it, the Green Paper offers no vision with regard to the broader aspirations of inclusive practice (differentiated but collective school systems; inclusive curriculum and assessment approaches). In highlighting the skills and expertise available in the special school sector, the Paper was in danger of devaluing the progress made and knowledge gained by teachers and staff in mainstream schools. Again, presenters agreed that the Government needed to be much clearer about the level and quality of the SEND ‘offer’ that should be available in all schools.
There were concerns about the Government’s market oriented approach. Within a finite and potentially reducing budget for education, valuable resources could be diverted to new providers (free special schools and academies) away from the maintained sector. More special school places (if this is what parents/carers wanted) would not be cost-free. A more diverse market might also make it more difficult to plan for specialist services that needed a national infrastructure (specialist training/ quality standards etc). While reference continues to be made to the Local Authority ‘commissioning’ role, the nature of this is unclear, along with the level of influence that can be achieved from an increasingly residual centre.
In his paper, Brian Lamb pointed to the difference between the Green Paper’s ‘radical intent’ and its more progressive/piecemeal proposals for implementation. Since the seminar, the DfE has announced its SEND Pathfinder programme, which will ‘test’ a number of policy developments (personalised budgets; multi-agency plans; banded funding systems) in practice. The tone of the Pathfinders indicates a strong and ongoing Government commitment to achieving its key policy objectives. However, we are yet to see how some of the critical issues raised in our recent seminar will be addressed. In adopting a ‘radical approach’, the Government may have missed the opportunity to really engage in some of these issues and draw on the kinds of thinking that have been built up over time through forums such as the Policy Options Group, which draw together a wide range of perspectives and experience.
Peter Gray and Brahm Norwich
SEN Policy Options Group co-coordinators
To read the SEN policy paper go to the nasen web-page and download the Policy paper
Assistive technology provider, Texthelp (www.texthelp.com) will be hosting two free interactive seminars for teachers and parents of dyslexic children in Birmingham and London later this month.
The events will enable visitors to:
Birmingham Events:
Time: 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Location: Radisson Blu Hotel, Birmingham
London Events:
Time: 2:00-4:00pm
Location: Regus, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, Victoria, London. SW1W 0SR
Attendance is free, however spaces are limited. Secure your place at this event by registering online at www.texthelp.com/UK/register, e-mailing r.adams@texthelp.com or calling 028 9442 8105 with your full contact details and any accessibility requirements.
TUESDAY 31 January 2012 RT HON Michael Gove MP
This session though light on specifics offered some interesting pointers on current and future Government policy. The entire transcript is well worth perusing and is available to view here:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmeduc/uc1786-i/uc178601.htm
For colleagues using the half term break to catch up on ‘busy work’ we have selected some of the highlights below.
Local Authorities
Q48 Neil Carmichael: There is a general trend developing here. Michael, you have said that local authorities have an indispensable role to play as champions of children and parents, and that is certainly welcome, but if we have a lot more academies, what kind of role is that going to be? What sort of tools are those local authorities going to have?
Michael Gove: …. I do not ask myself what is the right role for local authorities but what do we need to do to ensure that our education system is performing to the best of all our collective abilities? Within that there will be certain roles that will naturally settle on local authorities. This is my attempt to answer a question, which I think should not be taken as a final answer. By definition, there needs to be a broader conversation involving local authorities, teachers, elected politicians at every level-everyone. But my first attempt to answer it is to say that local authorities have a role in making sure that admissions are fair-co-ordinating them and making sure that you do not have any gaming of the admissions system.
Q49 Neil Carmichael: It is a complicated question.
Michael Gove: I will try to answer. Local authorities have a role in: admissions; support for high-need pupils, particularly in terms of SEN; issues like transport; and, if you move to a local authority area where the majority of schools, or indeed all schools, have become academies, I think they can take on a different role as commissioner of services. That is something that we need to explore.
(Taken from Q50 )I think the local authority’s role is explicitly to ensure that, when you come to co-ordinate admissions, you do not have any attempt to use some of the dodges that may have existed in the past. I believe that the changes we have made to the admissions code help empower anyone who is concerned about problems that exist.
Q51 Neil Carmichael: If we continue having more and more schools turning into academies, the local authority will be effectively further diminished in its capacity to intervene. What kind of solution would you have for the remaining schools that perhaps might need intervention or assistance from local authorities?
Michael Gove: I do not think the local authority need necessarily be diminished. The prospect of a school becoming an academy can often raise the performance of a local authority, because previously, when it came to everything from school improvement to the provision of SEN services, it was, “Take it or leave it. You have got to rely on us.”
Now you move to a situation where a school can become an academy and decide to buy into the services from its own council or from another local authority. It is striking that local authorities that I think are doing a good job, like Manchester, are moving towards a traded approach towards school improvement services. We are moving towards a situation where local authorities, if they are enterprising and imaginative, have new opportunities. Local authorities say that they can provide services more effectively because of economies of scale and inbuilt expertise. Well, now there is an opportunity for the best local authorities to paint on a broader canvas.
School Governors
Q55 Neil Carmichael: I will move on to the question of school governance, because that is quite a thing with an autonomous school. I believe that it is important that we think in terms of the skills and responsibilities governors have. There is the question of whether or not they are stakeholder representatives and so forth. How far is the Department going to move in a way that might actually free up schools to think more about the kind of governing body that they might want?
Michael Gove: It is a very good point. Sometimes clichés embody truths, and one cliché that embodies a big truth is that governors are the unsung heroes and heroines of the school education system. Indeed, they embody what Conservatives and Liberal Democrats mean by the Big Society. We believe that we should provide more support for chairs of governing bodies, and the National College is there to help provide them with the support and training that they need to do their job even better. Some schools have too many governors, and some governing body meetings are too long and spend too much time dealing with marginal issues rather than core issues.
We should encourage schools to have a tighter group of governing bodies. Governors should be chosen on the basis of their skills rather than the organisation or interest that they represent, and we can learn a lot from shining a light on the practice of the best schools. I have been really encouraged by the response of the business community, who are trying to encourage more and more people with a background in business to use some of their skills to enhance what governing bodies provide. But, as ever, I am interested in those schools that feel they have cracked this, have got it right, and would like to use the Department for Education as a platform for explaining to other schools how they can benefit from the progress they have made.
Pupil Premium
Q74 Alex Cunningham: You have referred to monitoring the success of children who attract the Pupil Premium.Can you tell us how that will work and how you ensure that cash is targeted at the individuals and not just swallowed up in the overall budget? I recollect times when additional money was going in for the kids who were looked after and nobody could actually tell me what was happening to that money. So how do we make sure that the individuals who attract the Pupil Premium are targeted with that cash?
Michael Gove: It is a fair point. The problem has often arisen with children who have special educational needs and have attracted specific funding as well. You can choose, from the centre or from anywhere, to micromanage how every penny is spent in the school, or you can trust professionals, give them autonomy and then hold them accountable. That is what I believe is right. We give significant sums and they will rise and they will become even more significant sums, because we have only seen a quarter of what will eventually be the entire Pupil Premium going to schools. As more money goes in, I expect that we will see real gains in the measures of the performance of children who received the Pupil Premium.
Q75 Alex Cunningham: But we have seen the additional support grants from local authorities have been cut to support the Pupil Premium: do you still hold with the additional funding thing? If the local authorities are not putting the money in and you are putting it in instead, is that just an even-stevens figure and they are not actually seeing extra cash?
Michael Gove: I had a look at some of the statistics on local authority spending between 2010 and 2011.
Q76 Alex Cunningham: Could you publish them for us?
Michael Gove: They were published last week. I saw that in many areas local authorities’ spending in a variety of things, like child protection and other areas, had increased. There is a view, a widespread one, sedulously promoted by critics of this Government, that spending in many of these areas has been crudely slashed. Not at all. Spending in a variety of areas for children at local authority level in 2010 and 2011 increased.
Teachers CPD
Q92 Damian Hinds: In our current Inquiry on attracting, developing and retaining the best teachers, we have focused a great deal also on continuing professional development and performance management. There is a constant complaint that you can go into teaching and effectively be there for decades without any effective personal development, and there also seems to be something of a lack of a culture of performance management, in that people leave who ultimately, after all the development they can have, are not perhaps suited to teaching. What more can be done in terms of development and performance management?
Michael Gove: A huge amount. I have said before, and I am happy to underline, that I think we have got the best generation of young people coming into teaching ever, and that is driving up the standard overall, but I think there are some people who went into teaching with high ideals who may have become stuck or demotivated. That is partly due to poor leadership from their senior leadership team, and partly due to other factors.
One of the things that we need to think hard about is how we improve performance management. Some of the changes that were made by Sally Coates in her Review of Teacher’s Standards and some of the things that we talked about when we were reviewing performance management and the capability procedures a couple of weeks ago, are helping to drive a culture change, but I also referred earlier to the work of high-performing schools, teaching schools and others. Part of the change is making sure that the classroom becomes a more open environment.
You referred to other nations earlier. One of the striking things I found when I visited the Far East is that the classroom is an open environment in which teachers learn from the leaders of their profession, who welcome observation, and then those who are either starting out or who feel that their practice has become becalmed also benefit from having other high-performing colleagues come in, observe and then offer advice. It is through that process of collaboration that we can drive improvement.
One thing I should say is that there are a number of partners with whom we should work in helping to improve professional development. The unions have a very strong role to play here. I am very grateful, for example, for the leadership shown by the ATL’s General Secretary, Mary Bousted, who has been a champion of improved professional development. There are also organisations like the Prince’s Teaching Institute, which has done a great deal in particular to help deepen teachers’ engagement with their subject. There is more that can be done, including thinking about how we can offer sabbaticals and offer opportunities for teachers to refresh their subject knowledge so that, as Michael Wilshaw has pointed out, we do not get burnout, but increased passion and reengagement.
Special Educational Needs
Q129 Charlotte Leslie: Two-thirds of rioters had SEN. What are we doing about it and what should we be doing about it?
Michael Gove: It is important, when we are talking about special educational needs, to disaggregate the different types of challenges that children and young people face. We should be clear that many of those were children who had behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, and that those were often a consequence of problems very early in their lives, as Damian was talking about earlier. So these are children who do have needs that affect their education: their lives have been blighted, but it will often be as a result of poor parenting, being born in poverty, and poor education earlier in their life, so we need to tackle all of those problems together.
Q192 Craig Whittaker: The Green Paper on SEN talks about steps to improve initial teacher training for teachers in special schools. The headteacher at Ravenscliffe, which is in Calderdale, has grave concerns about the recruitment of specialist teachers in this area because of a lack of focus on special training for those teachers in initial teacher training. Will that change?
Michael Gove: I hope so, yes, and I will report back to you, Craig, and the Committee, on how we intend to do that.
Monday saw the launch of the RHS report Moving up, Growing on which focuses on six schools and education centres across Yorkshire, who through their work with the RHS have helped children and young people with Special Educational Needs (SEN) to find their own voice and re-engage with education. The skills learnt through the gardening projects undertaken not only bolstered the children’s confidence and friendships but also enabled them to move from childhood to adolescence with less stress and trauma.
Sarah-Jane Mason, SEN Project Officer for the RHS and co-author of the report, explains, “Over the past twelve months I worked with 130 students and 80 teachers across six different learning environments in Yorkshire. All the students have different educational needs, meaning that a person-centred approach is vital to their learning.
“Gardening is a fantastic tool for breaking down barriers and offering children a different environment in which to learn. Gardening is a practical subject, so for a child with SEN this means it is accessible – it makes learning fun and opens up a new world of possibility. I think one of my favourite stories is that of Ghulam, a 13 year old who was starting to become disengaged from education. Through my work with him he now wants to start his own gardening business when he leaves school and has now enrolled on a placement to gain accreditation through the National Open College Network for his practical skills.”
This was reinforced by Lorraine Petersen CEO nasen who said, “When a child has Special Educational Needs, it is imperative that they feel part of society in order to succeed. From what I have read and seen, gardening in schools put everyone on a level playing field – they all learn together, experience together and move forward together. The other children, teachers and parents are learning at the same time as the children with SEN, meaning they have a shared experience. This experience goes a long way to closing the gap between being different.”
For further information on the RHS, its work with SEN schools and its Campaign for School Gardening please visit www.rhs.org.uk/schoolgardening. To download a copy of Moving up, Growing on, visit the RHS Media Centre http://press.rhs.org.uk.
Sean Stockdale, Editor Special
Westminster Education Forum -Thursday, 26th January 2012
It was interesting to attend an event that featured many contributors to Special magazine in the audience. There was lots of discussion around future SEND provision which we will cover in Special magazine but three points from the day really stuck out:
The need to construct services having listened to what the children themselves want in their future and form a clear picture of what skills these children will require to meet their aims.
We have a current statementing situation where success for the LA and success for the parent aren’t always seen as the same thing. How will ‘Next Steps’ ensure that parents and LAs aren’t pitched at opposing ends of the statementing process?
Finally we need more reassurances that Academies will improve rather than erode the currently quality of provision from pupils with SEND.
Sean Stockdale – Editor Special magazine
The Annual Conference in Northern Ireland certainly proved to be a very well attended event by delegates from all parts of the province. Newly qualified teachers, more experienced colleagues, SENCO’S, parents, carers, classroom assistants and young students embarking on new careers, attended a range of seminars linked specifically to working with children in both primary and post-primary Education.
The keynote speaker, Jo Douglas, opened the Conference and shared her views and expertise on the whole Spectrum of Autism and specifically highlighted the situation in Northern Ireland where children are being diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), at quite an alarming rate.
Jo highlighted the everyday challenges that young people with a diagnosis face and encouraged everyone working and supporting them, to not only embrace the challenges, unique strengths and learning styles of children diagnosed with an ASD but to look at the challenges and to turn them into an opportunity to make a difference in their lives, in whatever capacity they are working.
‘Creating ASD friendly environments’, ‘Celebrating Asperger Syndrome’ and ‘Developing Social Skills and Independence skills in young people with ASD’ were top of the Conference agenda and proved popular with all delegates who later chose to attend either primary or post-primary seminars where the emphasis lay in ‘understanding and meeting the needs of young people with an ASD’. The Conference programme also provided an opportunity for all delegates to share and access special resources available through Learning NI – C2K.
The Conference was supported by Learning Space NI www.learningspaceni.co.uk who provided us with a tremendous display of products specifically designed to meet and support the needs of young people with ASD in addition to a superb portable sensory room which demonstrated the new age of technology in a very sensory-sensitive way and intrigued delegates.
Information on nasen NI’s next event is available here: http://www.nasen.org.uk/nasen-ni/
Valerie Steenson
nasen NI – President
It was a pleasure to see Sal McKeown at BETT 2012 and we both listened with interest as Michael Gove outlined his plans to alter the curriculum. Other than learning that we must now refer to ICT as ‘Computer Science’ there was nothing about how we can use ICT to help students with additional needs. Luckily Sal was able to address this issue during her BETT Inclusive ICT seminar where she explored some of the practical ideas in her new nasen book: Brilliant Ideas for Using ICT in the Inclusive Classroom to a packed audience. Sal did have several copies hot off the press but these quickly disappeared. However you can find out more and purchase a copy at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415672542/
Congratulations to Jean Gross who received a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List for services to education. Jean has worked with nasen over a number of years and we are delighted that her efforts have been recognised at a national level.
Jean has written a roundup of her work as Communication Champion which will be published in March Special.
Readers of Special will be well aware of Oak Field school in Nottingham and its’ head David Stewart. Both I and Lorraine paid another visit to the school to share current SEN practice with professionals visiting from China. In the morning after an impromptu question and answer session David gave the visitors a tour of his school highlighting pieces of assistive technology, unique school features and even included a preview of his latest Christmas production. In the afternoon Lorraine held a seminar exploring current special needs provision and possible implications from the SEND Green Paper. The delegates were suitable impressed by the range of provision on offer and showed a keen interest in the policies that underpin current UK provision. They were especially keen to see the wider implication of inclusion policies and how this impacts on schools.
Nasen would like to thank everyone at Oakhill who made us feel so welcome.
Sean Stockdale – Editor Special
On Monday the 12th December nasen was asked to give evidence on the Response to Children’s Commissioner’s School Exclusion Inquiry
Nasen feels very strongly that we need to look beyond media headlines of being hard or soft on discipline and consider how best to reduce exclusions. There are a number of schools which nasen has previously highlighted whom do not exclude any pupil, yet work with the most challenging children and young adults. By considering their student’s needs, curriculum, staff training and allocation of resources they are able to ensure that everyone is able to achieve. With early intervention and personalised planning implemented with the proper rigour children who are indanger of being excluded can be successfully integrated.
With 304,000 fixed term exclusion in 2008/09, do we want to run the risk of today’s excluded children being tomorrow’s rioter?
Nasen’s response to the inquiry questions can be found here:
http://www.nasen.org.uk/response/
Lorraine Petersen OBE