Special Needs in the Secondary School

The Whole School Approach

Joan Dean

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138597709
• eBook ISBN: 9780429944062
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

First published in 1989. The 1984 Act and the Warnock Report urged greater integration of pupils with special needs into ordinary schools. This book examines how schools cope with a wide variety of special needs – ranging from emotional and behavioural problems to physical disabilities and including the problem faced by gifted children – and assesses how successful the integration of children with special needs can be for both teachers and pupils.

The author recommends the whole school approach where heads, form teachers, subject teachers, the special needs departments and parents work together in making the curriculum as accessible to as many students as possible. The whole school approach enables the fullest participation of all the children in the life of the school whatever their special needs.

This book provides an extremely clear-sighted and positive analysis of integration and will be invaluable to all heads and teachers teaching, remediating or counselling children with special needs.

chapter 1

Towards Integration

Recent years have seen a considerable move towards integrating people with disabilities into normal society. This general move has been reflected in the education service, where the Warnock Report¹ and then the 1981 Education Act² have encouraged local authorities to bring children hitherto in special schools into mainstream schools to be educated alongside their peers.

This move is a response to a public demand to integrate those with disabilities and a recognition that every young person has a right to as normal a life as disability will allow.

Research and Integration

The research which has been done, in looking at the effect of integrating children with disabilities in mainstream schools, whether they have been fully integrated or educated in special units or classes, generally suggests that the effects of integration are positive. Wendy Lyons³, writing about the deaf in Integrating the handicapped in ordinary schools, notes that hearing impaired pupils achieved better in academic and speech attainments in mainstream schools and that, although their progress was poor, it was still poorer in special schools. Dale⁴, in Educating deaf and partially hearing children individually in ordinary schools, found that deaf children achieved better academic attainments the less segregated their educational environment, but noted that they needed a good deal of support. These findings have been confirmed by other researchers here and overseas.

Christine Cope⁵ in Special units in ordinary schools: an exploratory study of special units for disabled children found that physically handicapped pupils in a special class in a primary school did slightly better than similar children attending a day special school. The children were more independent and socially competent although they were happy in both situations. She also looked at special schools and concluded that many more physically handicapped children might be educated in mainstream schools.

A major study by NFER is reported by Hegarty, Pocklington and Lucas⁶ in Educating pupils with special needs in the ordinary school. In general this supports the idea of integration and gives a great deal of information about the effects of it.

The Development of Provision for Special Needs

The Warnock Report estimates that up to one in five children are likely to require some special provision at some point in their school lives. Thus in a class of 30, six children may need special provision. When we add to this figure those children who may have special needs because of exceptional gifts and those whose home language is not the medium of instruction used in the school, both categories excluded from the Warnock Report, it is clear that we are speaking of a sizable group of children which no school and no teacher can afford to relegate to a remedial class or slow stream for all work. Every school and every teacher will have children who have special needs and every school and teacher will need to make provision for them.

The idea of a whole school approach to special needs in which all the children in an age group are educated together has been developing in many countries over a number of years. In Britain, the 1944 Education Act⁷ made LEAs responsible for providing for children with specific disabilities which were defined in eleven and later ten categories and there was a requirement that children who were blind, deaf, epileptic, physically handicapped or aphasie be educated in special schools.

Most of the education of handicapped children during the 1960s and 1970s took place in special schools and in 1970 the education of children previously considered ineducable was handed over from the health to the education service. There was also a growth within schools of remedial provision for pupils who appeared to have difficulties with the normal programme.

The range of disabilities which children experience is both wide and complex, and it has not always proved easy to label any individual problem in such a way as to make it easy to place the child concerned in appropriate special education. A child may have more than one disability. There are also developments in medicine and health care which are changing the incidence of particular disabilities with effect on the special schools catering for those problems. It has gradually come to be appreciated that it might be better to classify children with disabilities according to the way their needs might be met than by labelling them according to their disability. There is also a need to recognise and start to deal with children’s problems at an early stage and to review their progress regularly.

Alongside these developments the view has been developing that people with disabilities should be as much integrated into the normal life of the community as possible. The corollary of this is that children with disabilities should be educated in normal schools wherever possible.

This thinking was brought together in the Warnock Report which was commissioned by Margaret Thatcher in 1973 when she was Secretary of State for Education and taken on by the subsequent Labour Government in 1974. The Report itself was published in 1978.

The Warnock Report started with a definition of the goals of education which has since been quoted in many contexts. The Report describes the goals as twofold:

First to enlarge a child’s knowledge, experience and imaginative understanding, and thus his awareness of moral values and capacity for enjoyment; and secondly to enable him to enter the world after formal education is over as an active participant in society and a responsible contributor to it, capable of achieving as much independence as possible.

The Warnock Report suggested replacing the separately described handicaps with the concept of special educational needs. Those concerned with assessing the needs of a handicapped child would do so on the basis of assessing the needs of the individual.

The Report came out strongly in favour of the idea of the integration of children with special needs with their age groups in mainstream schools wherever this was possible. Its recommendations also gave parents an important place in the consideration of the needs of their child.

One category of children with special educational needs not covered by the Warnock Report is that of children who are exceptionally able. There is a substantial amount of research to suggest that these children are frequently not extended by their education and that their needs are not fully met. It would seem that they are quite properly a concern when we are looking at pupils whose educational needs require individual consideration.

The Warnock Report was followed in 1981 by an Education Act which dealt with many of the issues in the Report. It abolished categories of handicap and established the definition of special educational needs as a learning difficulty which requires special education provision. According to the Act, learning difficulty exists if the child has:

• ° significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of his age;
• ° a disability which either prevents or hinders him from making use of the educational facilities of a kind generally provided in schools.

The Act sets out clearly the various stages involved in making an assessment of a child’s special educational needs, possibly leading to a Statement which makes it a legal requirement to provide for those needs in the way agreed in the Statement. This should happen ‘where there are prima facie grounds to suggest that a child’s needs are such as to require provision additional to or otherwise different from, the facilities and resources generally available in ordinary schools in the area.’

Assessment^* involves seeking advice from a range of people including teachers and parents. It is a lengthy process. At every stage parental views are sought and time is given for parents to comment and eventually if necesssary to appeal against any decisions made. Assessment may result in a Statement which is a legal document giving details about the child’s needs, outlining the special educational provision required, and stating the arrangements proposed to met the child’s needs both in terms of his educational and any additional non-educational needs e.g physiotherapy, speech therapy.

Once a Statement has been made the child’s progress has to be reviewed annually, usually on the basis of information provided by the school. A full re-assessment has to take place when the child is between the ages of twelve and a half and thirteen and a half. This is intended to provide information on which subsequent education and preparation for adult life can be based.

The Act establishes the principle that children with special educational needs should be educated in ordinary schools wherever possible, subject to the agreement of their parents, the efficient education of other children and the efficient use of resources by the LEA.

Integration

The word ‘integration’ is open to a variety of interpretations. The overall aim of integration would seem to be to enable each child to be part of normal society as far as this is possible. Wendy Lyons, quoted above, suggests that ‘a fully assimilated child or adult is one who enters into all spheres of activity, such as education, occupation, friendship on the same terms as anyone else.’ She also suggests that both handicapped and non-handicapped need to accommodate to each other and make an effort to meet each other’s needs.

The Warnock Report defined three levels of integration :

Locational Integration

‘where special units are set up in ordinary schools’ or ‘where a special school and an ordinary school share the same site’.

Social Integration

‘where children attending a special class or unit eat, play and consort with other children and possibly share organised out-of-classroom activities with them’.

Functional Integration

‘where the locational and social association of children with special needs with their fellows leads to joint participation in educational programmes’.

There is ‘an obligation on the LEA to make special educational provision for any child judged to be in need of such education on the basis of a profile of his needs prepared by a multi-disciplinary team’.

According to the Warnock Report special educational provision may take any of the following forms :

the provision of special means of access to the curriculum through special equipment, facilities or resources, modification of the physical environment or specialist teaching techniques;

the provision of a special or modified curriculum;

particular attention to the social structure and emotional climate in which education takes place.

The Report sees children who require special means of access to the curriculum as possibly being able to take part in learning in an ordinary class, depending on the nature of the problems. A child requiring a modified curriculum may need a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Towards Integration
• 2 The Pupils
• 3 The Whole School Approach
• 4 The Curriculum
• 5 Learning and Teaching
• 6Organising for Special Needs
• 7 The Special Needs Department
• 8 The Special Needs Teacher
• 9 The Subject Teacher
• 10 The Form Teacher
• 11 Assessments and Records
• 12 Parents and the Community
• 13 Staff Development
• 14 Evaluation
• 15 Support Services
• 16 Conclusion
• Appendix 1: The statementing of children with special needs
• Appendix 2: Tests available to teachers
• Index