Supporting Special Educational Needs in Secondary School Classrooms

Jane Lovey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138420342
• eBook ISBN: 9781136756771
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teachers and support teachers in secondary schools can use this book to maximize the impact and effectiveness of their work together. The author looks at a broad range of special needs and offers support strategies that work in a mainstream classroom. Informed by the latest research and updated in the light of the new revised Code of Practice, this new edition explains students' difficulties and contains advice on good classroom practice. It will help the reader to support any student with special educational needs.

Teachers, Teaching Assistants and SENCOs will find this book particularly helpful. For specialist study, there is a list of further reading at the end of each chapter. SEN governors in schools will also find this a useful overview of the breadth of special needs for which their school could be expected to cater.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In the early 1990s the off-site unit for excluded pupils, which I had run for 12 years, was closed. The Warnock Report was a decade old and the ideal of all students with special needs being supported in their neighbourhood school was being implemented. I was redeployed as a support teacher for those with statements of special needs in the borough’s secondary schools. Faced with the requirement to do research in order to finish an MA, I set out to identify indicators of effective support in secondary school classrooms (Lovey 1995).

Research

During the Summer of 2000 I obtained a small research grant from Cambridge to go back and see what, if anything, had changed in the intervening seven years. In the original research I had interviewed heads, Special Needs Co-ordinators (SENCOs), subject teachers, learning support teachers (LSTs), parents, and last but by no means least, children. In the new research I added a new cohort of interviewees, teaching assistants (TAs) (formerly known as learning support assistants).

I took as a starting point the 11 indicators of effective support that had emerged in 1993:

• the personal involvement of the senior management team with the delivery of support, and high status given to the post of SENCO;

• good communication between all those concerned with the statemented child;

• time allocation for liaison between all the child’s teachers and the parents;

• recognition of the link between learning difficulties and behavioural difficulties, and the building of self-esteem;

• a positive personality and philosophy on the part of the support teacher;

• the appointment of a special needs co-ordinator for each faculty, or subject area;

• availability of specialist advice for special educational needs;

• INSET provision;

• the facility for withdrawal for a specific purpose, even when the general policy is for in-class support;

• availability of material resources for support;

• covert delivery of support to some secondary school pupils, depending on the pupil’s temperament.

Second time round

The first impression, when visiting the schools after seven years, was the progress that had been made during the intervening years. Where in 1993 heads and SENCOs were often struggling with the language of integration, in 2000 they were speaking the language of inclusion. It was difficult to believe that these were the professionals who had doubts whether their schools would be able to cope with the learning needs of students with severe physical, sensory and learning difficulties. The head who expressed grave reservations spoke proudly of the diversity of need for which the school was now catering: ‘each time we gear up for a student with a different disability we become more inclusive’.

Another school that had been reluctant to accept a student with severe visual impairment (VI) had since taken three further students with VI, had used the monies from these statements to employ a VI specialist teacher and was seeking to be allowed to have a VI unit. Already this school was providing informal outreach to other schools, including advice and practical help with preparing large print and Braille texts.

Parental choice

This advice was welcomed by schools which had no experience of visual impairment, which had nevertheless been named as the chosen school on a statement of special need for a child with VI. This was one of the underlying conflicts that existed alongside the tremendous progress that had been made in inclusion. It seemed to most to be common sense that students with a definite disability, such as VI, should be sent to a secondary school where there were people with experience and expertise in this disability. However, could that simply create another ‘special school system’ within mainstream? The borough that was researched is a small borough, seven miles across its widest point, with a good system of public transport, so that a student could reach any school within 30 minutes. An ideal situation, perhaps, to have some element of specialisation in some of the 14 secondary schools.

Two students with visual impairment were due to transfer to secondary school during the following September. One boy already had two brothers at the only boys’ school, that his father and uncles had also attended. The family was determined that he should also attend this school. The other, a girl with a degenerative disease, had from an early age set her heart on going to the convent school where all the females in her family had been educated for many years. Thus, although there existed a mixed comprehensive with experience and expertise in VI, two other schools were in receipt of informal outreach support. This was the reasoning behind the borough holding back on establishing a dedicated unit in one school for VI.

When these cases were followed up in December, at the end of their first term at their secondary school, SENCOs who had previously had misgivings, spoke enthusiastically of the personalities of both students. They had certainly brought challenges, but the schools had risen to those challenges and were now convinced that the parents were right in putting their child’s feelings before their disability. So often it seemed that professionals, who were overwhelmed by the case papers of a student, were completely won over by the individual personality.

There was one case in which parental choice did not best serve the needs of their children. In 1997 a new secondary school had been built in the borough and was oversubscribed from the beginning. The parents of two children with dyslexia and dyspraxia had named this school on the statement of their first son, and the following year had chosen this school for their second son also. Both boys had to catch two buses as they travelled from the opposite side of the borough to this school. Because of the nature of their disability they were often late. Sometimes they left PE kit or other equipment on one of the buses or at the bus stop where they transferred from one bus to the other. The situation was made more absurd by the fact that they changed buses outside a school where the SENCO and a number of well-established staff are known to have expertise in dyslexia and dyspraxia.

The head teacher of the latter school had warned the parents that the new school had a SENCO who was ‘learning on the job’ and they could not claim any expertise in this area. During the first year that this school had opened it had been named on 12 statements despite having no track record for special needs. One of these statements concerned a girl with mobility problems and her choice was totally valid since it had been built with lifts for students in wheelchairs, and with other mobility aids. The facilities at this school will be described in some detail in Chapter 8.

Emotional and behavioural difficulties

All schools had tremendous concerns about students with emotional and behavioural difficulties. This was the one group of students for whom it was sometimes difficult to see the advantages of being in a mainstream school. This will be discussed in detail in Chapters 6 and 7. Of the students who were interviewed two were more troubled than troublesome, however, the heads and teachers spoke mainly about those who were troublesome and presented constant, and sometimes intolerable, challenges in the classroom.

One young teacher commented that ‘exclusion is instead of special schools now, isn’t it?’, and her two companions nodded sagely. In fact there were students who were often temporarily excluded, excluded until parents came to speak to the head of year, excluded from certain lessons, set work to do in the corridor, or outside the head’s office. When they were in class it was often with a TA placed between them and the other children. When asked how she would cope with a very disruptive student, one head immediately said, ‘Oh, she would have to have one-to-one. Yes, she would have to have a minder with her all the time.’ There were students who were under close surveillance all the time they were in classrooms. Perhaps the question has to be asked whether this really is inclusion.

Indicators of effective support

SENCO status

Apparently some of the heads had received a list of these indicators after the 1993 research was completed, and had worked towards achieving them. The enhanced status of the SENCO and his or her increased involvement with the Senior Management Team (SMT) was very much in evidence. Without exception SENCOs had much more time to do their job. During the time of the first research they were looking forward to the Code of Practice and wondering what difference it would make to their workload. During the revisiting of the research it was clear that the Code had placed tremendous burdens on the shoulders of stressed SENCOs during the first few years. However, heads and boards of governors had recognised that without allowing the resources they could not expect the statutory work to be done. Consequently there were no longer Maths or English teachers who were SENCOs on the side, but SENCOs had status for their special needs role.

In 1993 many of the SENCO were volunteers, or teachers who were ‘good with the weaker ones’, and had been asked to take on the job. In 2000 some of these professionals had become very skilled and confident in their posts. There were others who had ‘cut their teeth’ elsewhere and were on their second or third post as a SENCO. These teachers brought expertise from other situations. Many of the SENCOs had done diplomas and MAs in Special Needs, and were confidently running departments with six or more TAs and occasionally one or two LSTs. In most cases the line manager was the deputy head, and they met regularly with the SMT.

Communication

This remained a problem area, not because of a lack of will to communicate but a lack of time. Liaison with parents depended totally on the goodwill of staff who used time before school, lunch-times and after school to see parents, since most non-contact time was used for statutory statement reviews (where SENCOs hoped parents would attend!).

Whereas nine years ago teachers had supported students with special needs in secondary school classrooms (LSTs), there are now teaching assistants. Concerns about TAs will be dealt with in Chapter 2. However this is an area where the lack of dedicated time to liaise can cause great difficulties. Such LSTs who were still employed also felt a need of more time to maximise the contribution they could make, although because most had been around for six or seven years they had learned to grab quick consultations with teachers in the staff rooms.

Individual Educational Plans had redeemed what could have been an impossible situation. However, these had to be well written, not too ambitious, and distributed to all staff (and read by them) who taught the student. In one school these were reviewed termly by the form teacher, who moved up through the school with the student. This seemed to provide excellent opportunity for real communication, since the form teacher also had facility to liaise with parents.

Link between learning difficulties, behavioural difficulties and self-esteem.

The teachers and support staff recognised the clear links between these three elements and worked hard to raise the self-esteem of the students they were supporting. Many spoke of trying to ‘catch them being good’ (CBG)

(Montgomery 1989) before students started to show frustration with their learning, in outbursts of bad behaviour.

In interviews with parents it became apparent that many of those who had a statement listing both learning and behaviour difficulties had suffered learning difficulties from an early age at primary school but had only developed behavioural difficulties at the end of the primary phase, or on transfer to secondary.

Silly and disruptive behaviour was often used to put up a smokescreen around a student who would otherwise be exposed as having learning difficulties. One boy said: ‘I am my own worst enemy. I like to be the class clown because I know I can’t do the work. Then I go too far and I end up shouting at the teacher, and then running out.’ This boy was dyslexic and dyspraxic. His mother belonged to the national organisations and had explained all his difficulties to the secondary school before he went there. His main difficulty was being unable to copy from the white or chalk board while sitting in his seat. At the beginning teachers gave him what had to be written on a piece of paper to have on his desk, but they did not do this for the homework. At home he either did not have the homework written down or he could not read what he had written. He was then reprimanded for not having done his homework. This would provoke an ‘incident’. This problem and the problems of other students with these difficulties will be dealt with in Chapter 5.

Self-esteem is such an important factor in this study that Chapter 3 will be devoted to this. All schools were consciously addressing the issue of boosting the self-esteem of students with special educational needs.

The personality of the support teacher or assistant, and the compatibility between members of classroom teams

When Fergusson and Adams (1983), Best (1991) and Thomas (1992) wrote about classroom teams this was a fairly novel concept. Since then teachers have become accustomed to leading a classroom team. Indeed newly trained teachers have known nothing else. With the advent of TAs there can often be more than one support worker in the classroom and any tension or unease between adults in the classroom is likely to hinder the learning and affect the behaviour of the adolescents.

Nurture Groups and early intervention for little children are based largely on the relationship between the team of two (a teacher and a learning assistant) who run the group (Bennathan and Boxall 2000). Secondary school students often benefit from similar ‘nurturing’ on their arrival at secondary school. This is especially the case if they know they have difficulties with learning.

Personality and philosophy

In the first research project these aspects emerged as being extremely important. The concept of having a second adult in a classroom was quite a new one for most secondary teachers, and at that time the second adult was usually a qualified teacher. There were two issues here. Firstly the class teacher sometimes felt very exposed, especially if the support teacher was a retired head teacher or someone redeployed from a defunct special school. Secondly the support teacher had usually been accustomed to managing a class, and in some cases a department or a school. Now they were sitting next to individual children in the classroom during much of the lesson. It took time for classroom culture to change to the extent that the second adult felt free to move around while the ‘lead’ teacher was delivering the substance of the lesson. There were also potential tensions when adolescents inevitably tested the boundaries. It was important that the support teacher was able to sit calmly in the class room and read unspoken signals from the ‘lead’ teacher. Both teachers needed to have a will to make working together effective for the children, even if sometimes it meant hiding feelings and deferring to each other.

There were horror stories of support teachers who had stood up in the classroom and inappropriately berated the class for behaviour that was acceptable to the teacher, just as support teachers related how the teacher had turned from the board and demanded to know who was talking. Often it was the support teacher explaining the work to a student with special needs. These incidents became fewer and fewer, and when they did happen were often treated with humour. However, not every teacher has the philosophy and personality to be able to make some of the compromises necessary.

This was an area that had changed a great deal since, in the intervening years, a second adult in the classroom became th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Supporting Roles
• 3 Support and Self-esteem
• 4 Supporting Students with Mild and Moderate Learning Difficulties
• 5 Supporting Students with Specific Learning Difficulties
• 6 Supporting and Understanding the Disruptive Student in the Classroom
• 7 Supporting and Understanding the Invisible or Sad Student in the Classroom
• 8 Supporting Students with Sensory and Physical Difficulties in Mainstream Classrooms
• 9 Supporting Sick Children in the Classroom
• 10 Effective Support and Present Education Policy
• Appendix: Helpful Organisations
• References
• Index