Mainstream Schools with Special Educational Needs - Essay Example

Support Services and Mainstream Schools Introduction Legislation and policies that have come into effect in the last few years are leading to closure of many special schools, and integration of children with special educational needs within mainstream schools. While the numbers of children with SEN in most mainstream schools have not yet increased substantially (Ofsted, 2004) , it is an inevitable change, and it is therefore important that all staff are aware of inclusion guidelines, and that schools work towards implementing them. Although inclusion is often seen as the movement of pupils with special educational needs from special to mainstream schools, they often then remain isolated within the new setting. Therefore inclusion within mainstream schools should also concentrate on improving interaction of pupils within the mainstream school. This isolation needs to be overcome if LEAs are to make progress with their main challenge, which is to raise educational standards. Strategies to aid this improvement include Educational Development Plans, LEA inspections and Best Value (Ainscow et al., 1999). The Code of Practice for SEN The guidance in the code states that all children with SEN should be enabled to reach their full potential, to be fully included in their school communities, and be enabled to make a successful transition to adult life. For most, the mainstream school setting is suitable to help them to attain all of these goals, and it is only in severe cases that they would be better helped in a specialist school setting. The code recommends that schools take an approach in which the match the provision of specialist support to the individual child's SEN (DfES, 2001). How support services contribute to inclusion Support services must work to the Code of Practice for SEN, but they go about doing this is in different ways, using various methods to achieve the goals laid out in the Code. There is some debate as to how successful these support services are at doing that, and much discussion as to what makes some services more successful than others. Ainscow et al. (1999) found in their study conducted on various stakeholders, that the availability of support teams was seen as being important to the effective practice of inclusion. However even though some of the LEAs which were surveyed thought that classroom assistants were central to gaining inclusion, others speculated that they in fact caused a new degree of segregation. An Ofsted report in 2005 found also that support and outreach services were successful in promoting inclusion and improving performance of pupils with special educational needs, and they found that this was because in the most effective support services, all staff were fully committed to inclusion, which came across in their work. The members of the support service which they found most useful were those who brought new knowledge or skills that were not already present in the school. A previous Ofsted report (2004) on a limited number of LEAs across the country found that some of the most useful Support services were those that provided training to raise staff awareness of SENs and to give training on pupils' personal and social development. Leeds City Council Leeds City Council is one area in which the mainstream schools successfully utilise support services to ensure that the education provision lives up to the SEN Code of Practice. The SEN and Inclusion Support Services (SENISS) is part of Education Leeds, who work with Leeds City Council to supply Support services to the schools within the Leeds and surrounding areas. As with all support services, their aims are to remove barriers to learning and inclusion, and promote the achievement of pupils with SEN. They go about doing this by providing support on two levels: on the school-based level, and on the individual level of each pupil. The service also tries to enhance the capacity of the school to become self-managing in terms of SEN, by providing training on legislation and SEN policy and issues. The service also aims to provide this same training for parents, carers and other agencies that may work in collaboration with the school. The services are offered to schools who approach the agency for help, and may be offered to schools that are highlighted by the LEA as requiring additional help. The various support staff are composed of former teachers, and has separate coordinators for training, education projects, child protection and travellers education services. The funding for the support services is covered by the Leeds City Council, so there is no charge to the schools (SEN and Inclusion Support Services, n.d.). This means that schools are more likely to accept help from this source since they do not have to consider whether their budget could cope with the costs, which ensures that the schools can exploit all available resources, in line with the Code of Practice. Issues in current framework of Support Services and multi-agency working While supporting the use of support services to improve inclusion and performance, the 2005 Ofsted report did however highlight several problems with the current system. For instance it was found that services in some LEAs overlapped, causing conflicts, and also leading to some areas which were not covered, so where there was no support available. It was also found that funding arrangements made long-term planning for some services difficult, so there was no guarantee that there would be services available in the future. The Ofsted report also found that the LEAs were not measuring and analysing results effectively. This could mean that funding was misplaced into areas that did not require development, and areas that still required extra resources could go unnoticed. Ainscow et al. (1999) identified that there was an emphasis on working in effective partnerships if inclusion was to be attained. They identified support services to be of central importance in these partnerships, but found that at the time there were many issues which affected how well these partnerships functioned. These included the fact that the various agencies, including Health Authorities, Social Services and other Support Services, worked under separate management, within non-overlapping areas, which created problems; also the different agencies had different priorities and responsibilities, which could possibly lead to conflicts. The best collaboration between schools and support services have been found to be those in which the infrastructure of the support services is very similar to that in the school (Johnstone and Warwick, 1999). Inter-agency working can only be affective if all of the agencies share the same vision, which has shown to not always be the case. There is also an issue in which some professionals may feel undervalued, or in which the full range of professional skills on offer is not effectively utilised. Often, the different opinions and practices adopted by the different agencies may arise from initial training differences, so one way in which this problem could be addressed would be to introduce a standard training framework for all professionals working in the field of SEN to undergo, which could help to highlight the different viewpoints of the different fields involved. Pickles (1994, p.77) highlighted that professionals in different fields may become so embedded in their own traditions that they may not appreciate how others view and act on a situation, which can lead to criticism of other methods. This will need to be addressed if inter-agency collaboration is ever to become successful. It is possible that the different agencies involved in inclusive education may have conflicting views to what exactly this means, which can not only affect intra-agency co-operation, but can result in parents receiving conflicting advice. Other studies have found further issues in multi-agency collaboration caused by differences in funding mechanisms, and communication difficulties (Tett et al., 2003). Some communication difficulties are easily avoidable, in that it is simply a lack of effort on one side or another in conveying necessary information. However some communication issues are more complex, since there are very strict legalities involved with information sharing, especially information of a sensitive nature. In most cases, the necessary information can still be shared after receiving consent from the people involved, which is of benefit to everyone. There are also cases when consent can be over-ridden, such as when safety is at risk; it is for these reasons that all staff should be aware of the protocol for information sharing, and use the knowledge to communicate as effectively as possible. Assessment of value Funding is a major issue in implementation of inclusion strategies, and varies widely across mainstream schools (Ainscow et al., 1999). It is therefore essential that in the future LEAs funding policies for SEN support are brought into line, to ensure that all schools can strive effectively for better inclusion. There has been Value Base that has been developed in order to serve as a tool to enable stakeholders in education to assess the value that they are getting from support services. Entitled the National Occupational Standards (NOS), it ensures that the best quality is obtained in regard to opportunities, and commitment. The guidelines advise that practitioners adopt a client-centred approach at all times, seeking the views of their service users (children, parents and teachers) on a regular basis, and using the feedback to compile a Reflective Practice Log. These guidelines also state that practitioners should be committed to working alongside other agencies to best serve the needs of the client, and it also deals with the aspect of information sharing, giving guidance on the correct procedures to be followed (Sauve Bell Associates, 2003). Alternative models of support It has been suggested that the best way in which to coordinate the support services in a school is to identify one key staff member who will coordinate the various agencies involved, and would be responsible for monitoring and evaluating the quality of the services they provide (Hamil and Boyd, 2001). This is a good idea from the organisational point of view, but may not on its own resolve the problems in the current model of support. Ofsted (2005) have made several recommendations to the system which could lead to improvements, such as LEAs delegating the funding for support services to special schools, who can then work on an outreach basis with mainstream schools. This is already the case in some areas such as the City of Liverppol (SEN Strategy: Policy into Practice, 2005), and may work if expanded nationally. There are however some downsides to this approach. For instance, parents of children with SEN may believe that specialist schools who receive this extra funding are better equipped themselves to deal with their child, and this may lead more parents to want to enrol their children at the specialist schools when their children would be better suited to the mainstream school system. Also, although the staff at special schools are obviously specialists in their field, it still may lead to a lack of expertise in certain areas, once the sources of support are narrowed for schools, since the diversity of the children with SEN is diverse (Ofsted, 2004), and the specialist schools within the area may not have teachers with the required expertise. Conclusion In the period of transition which we are in, it is important to acknowledge that teachers in mainstream schools do not possess adequate knowledge and skills to fully achieve the goals laid out in the current policies on SEN and inclusion. It is therefore essential that schools can engage the help of external support services in order to enable them to raise the standards with regard to pupils with SEN. There are however drawbacks in the current system, mostly involving the problems that arise through multi-agency working, and it is important that these problems be addressed in order for the system to be as successful as it could be. While practitioners can go some way to individually addressing issues which may concern them, there are many issues that must be addressed on a national basis, and long-term studies should be repeated periodically in order to asses how far we still need to go, and what new methods should be introduced. References Ainscow, M., Farrell, P., Tweddle, D. and Malki, G. (1999) Effective practice in inclusion, and in special and mainstream schools working together. London: DfEE. DfES (2001) SEN Code of Practice. DfES, 581/2001. DfES (2005) Primary National Strategy: Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning. DfES. Johnstone, D. and Warwick, C. (1999) Community solutions to inclusion: Some observations on practice in Europe and the United Kingdom. Support for Learning, 14 (1), pp. 9-12. Hamill, P. and Boyd, B. (2001) Rhetoric or Reality: Inter-agency provision for young people with challenging behaviour. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 6 (3), pp. 135-149. Milbourne, L., Macrae, S. and Maguire, M. (2003) Collaborative solutions or new policy problems: exploring multi-agency partnerships in education and health work. Journal of Educational Policy, 18 (1), pp. 19-35. Ofsted (2004) Special Educational Needs and Disability: Towards inclusive schools. HMI 2276, October 2004. Ofsted (2005) Inclusion: The impact of LEA support and outreach services. HMI 2452, July 2005. Pickles, T. (1994) Teachers and Social Workers Working Together in Challenging Behaviour in Schools. London: Routledge. SEN and Inclusion Support Services (SENISS) (n.d.) [Online] Leeds City Council. Available from: [Accessed 9th April 2007] SEN Strategy: Policy into Practice (2005) The City of Liverpool. [Online]. Available from: http://www.liverpool.gov.uk/Education_and_learning/Education_welfare_services-Social_inclusion/index.asp [Accessed 8th April 2007]. Sauvee Bell Associates (2003) Development of National Occupational Standards and a Qualification Structure for Learning, Development and Support Services: Value Base to Support the Standards. Ampthill: Sauve Bell Associates. Produced on behalf of DfES. Tett, L., Crowther, J. and O'Hara, P. (2003) Collaborative partnerships in community education. Journal of Educational Policy, 18 (1), pp. 37-51. Read More