The Management of Special Needs in Ordinary Schools

Neville Jones, Tim Southgate, Neville Jones, Tim Southgate

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134938452
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The management of special needs, especially those of students of secondary age, has received considerable attention in the past decade and, in the light of the new education legislation, will assume a new urgency. The Management of Special Needs in Ordinary Schools provides an overview of the issues facing teachers in secondary schools with pupils who have special needs. These issues include managerial and curricular problems, in-service training, the use of new technology and developing community links. The book also illustrates the changes in thinking and practice since the publication of the Warnock Report, Special Educational Needs (1978). The contributors range from teacher to chief education officer, and include headteachers, psychologists, advisors and administrators, as well as those involved in educational research. Drawing on their experience in the mainstream and in special schools, at secondary level and in further education, their contributions reflect an active involvement in the development of new approaches within this area of education. The educational experiences of those with special needs can be considerably broadened and enhanced through imaginative management and skilful use of resources. The book therefore emphasises practical approaches to the day-to-day and longer-term needs of pupils with disabilities in ordinary schools. All those working within this area will find much of relevance to their own work.

PART 1: MANAGEMENT AND SCHOOLS

1 EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS AND PUPIL NEEDS

Tim Brighouse

INTRODUCTION

The first part of this chapter attempts to provide an impression of an effective school and suggests a classification of schools. I want to go on to describe what I think are the processes through which schools become effective. We can then look at the evidence which schools themselves use to judge their effectiveness. Finally, I want to examine some of the implications of the government’s proposals to legislate for a national curriculum, the retrenchment that will take place if teachers are required to engage in assessing pupil learning at ages 7, 11 and 14, and the way this will have a considerable effect on the majority of pupils who are not engaged in learning directed towards formalised state examinations which in reality is a provision for the select few. Included amongst this number is a significant proportion of pupils with special educational needs.

It is ironic that, apart from the HMI document ‘Ten Good Schools’ (1977) there is practically no consideration of the effective school in all the many HMI and DES documents of the last ten years. Even the White Paper ‘Better Schools’, which might have been expected to give attention to the issue, failed to do so. There are, of course, other studies from different agencies and such research findings as found in Rutter et al.’s (1979) publication.

This omission is explained in part by the diversity of opinion about what is a good or effective school and, therefore, the elusiveness of the topic. In some strange way the sum of the parts of the effective school is exceeded by the totality of what it stands for.

Nor is this a topic which can be tackled by an examination of the obverse side of the coin: it is easy to identify the really ineffective school. Perhaps that is why the media concentrate on bad schools in the hope that by identifying their qualities other schools would know what to avoid. Merely to avoid evil, however, does not guarantee virtue; indeed it might be argued that a preoccupation with adequacy, incompetence and downright inefficiency involves such close scutiny of its qualities that one is, as it were, adversely affected by the experience. One thing that is certain, however, is that schools which look over their shoulders too often, schools which seek to interpret the latest whim of society, are uncertain schools. They are schools that do not know for what they stand. Such schools—just like complacent schools—will never be good or effective schools. Just as the good citizen is not simply one who avoids crime, so the good school is not merely to be defined by being safely indistinguishable from the next. Nevertheless to establish effective schools and colleges constitutes the major part of a local authority’s business. If it could get that right, the LEA would have reasonable claim to being itself effective in the major part of its business.

THE EFFECTIVE SCHOOL

Some of the best literature on the topic is illuminating and positive, descriptive, and relies little on quantified evidence and research, preferring instead a subjective impressionistic view of quality. It is none the worse for that.

An effective school can first and foremost be recognised through its pupils, its staff and its community. Recognition is not solely from the office, from the headteacher or the newspaper; nor will it be necessarily through brochures or speech days—important though they may be—that you know of the effective school. It will be rather from parents who say ‘My child simply cannot wait to go to school… We are doing this survey with Jane because she has brought it home from school and is so insistent that we take part in its completion’. It will be from the kitchen staff or the cleaners who comment, ‘It’s alright up at Bluebells. Their head is a real good sport. I go there for the people and not the money and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ Or it will be from the community represented perhaps by the local employer’s comment, ‘We’d always take one from St. Thomas. They always seem to produce such willing and confident youngsters.’ Such are the comments that will be heard about the effective school in its local community.

Litmus tests of outstanding schools, therefore, are not just public occasions or examination results but also and importantly private witnesses. Of all connected with the school, the non-teaching staff can tell the depth of the quality of the relationships in the school and can readily see readily whether the school truly celebrates all its constituents. They see beyond the honours board to the consistency of treatment of one another. Ultimately the effective school is discerned in the confidence of its pupils and their commitment to future personal development. They are not merely happy, they are unafraid, free, self-disciplined and autonomous. So often the ordinary school celebiates the few and misleads or even disables the many.

Shared values

The outstanding and effective school will have a set of articles—not of course the Articles of Government which every school must have—but almost articles of faith, a kind of collective creed. The jargon phrase often used to describe this phenomenon is a ‘shared value system’. The school as a whole, especially the teaching and non-teaching staff, will have a high level of agreement on the purpose of the school.

I do not mean unexceptionable and vague generalisations which adorn education text books but the certainty of a shared value system. Such schools know where they stand on race, the equality of the sexes, on the place of the family in society, matters of prejudice and educational philosophy, because they have discussed these issues sometimes to the point of exhaustion. From this certainty the important everyday rules and habits of the community flow. The certainty informs the marking system, the personal records, arrangements for games, time given to music and residential trips—in short, every activity of the school community.

Self evaluation

One of the means of achieving such a shared value system is the sensitive use of the processes of self evaluation— eschewing perhaps initially the accountability end of the spectrum with associated implications of self-justification or defensiveness—in favour of an emphasis on common school purposes which depend on interdependence and collegiality.

Such shared value systems are more difficult to achieve in a society which has become more pluralist and tolerant of diversity and where perhaps the pervasive and powerful influences of institutions such as the church and the extended family can no longer be assumed. Moreover, the purpose of schooling has simultaneously become more ambitious. In former times it was more straightforward to achieve a shared value system in primary schools which would be judged by their success rate at eleven—plus or in the grammar school, with the view of ability which was narrowly intellectual—even if monocularly ungenerous— and based on flawed research for its justification. The shared value systems achieved may have been flawed— they may, for example, have undervalued the wider range of human ability and have depended for their existence on the failure of the majority, many of whom had talents which were never uncovered and for whom schooling was an experience to be got out of the way as soon as possible—but they were at least clear and realisable.

A set of principles

It is more difficult to espouse the value systems of the comprehensive, primary and secondary schools especially when most of the organisational features are inherited from the previous selective system. The teachers of one school, during a reconsideration of their self-evaluation, expressed their value system—which is, of course, distinct from their aims and objectives—broadly if idealistically as follows:

• children should be treated as they might become rather than as they are;
• all pupils should be equally valued;
• teachers should have the expectation that all their students have it in them to walk a step or two with genius, if only they could identify the talent to find the key to unlock it;
• the staff unitedly should stand for the successful education of the whole person;
• the staff should contribute to the development of mature adults for whom education is a lifelong process and proposed to judge their success by their students’ subsequent love of education;
• the staff should try to heal rather than to increase diversities, to encourage a self-discipline, a lively activity to breed lively minds and good health, a sense of interdependence and community.

The effective school will test all its practices—its systems of marking, recording, appointments, publications, its staff development systems, its curriculum, its communications system, structure and system of community relationships— against these principles. It will necessarily find mismatch but will ceaselessly attempt to bring its practices closer to its principles.

Leadership

In this task the school will depend on successful leadership. In the DES document ‘Ten Good Schools’, and all other literature, there is the underlying importance of the presence of an outstanding headteacher. The importance of leadership was brought home when a colleague commented on the paradox in one primary school where all the teachers were good, even outstanding, and yet the school could not be called effective. What had happened was the departure of an outstanding headteacher who had been replaced by a very ordinary, even inadequate, newcomer. Slowly the edge was disappearing from the school. Conversely we agreed there was another school which was outstanding although a few years ago we would have thought it ordinary, even humdrum. The collective growth in the school’s imperatives seemed to have spurred on all staff to the point where ordinary teachers were performing above themselves, the children had new-found confidence and assurance. Of course, a new and skilful headteacher had arrived.

Our leadership in schools may be divided into three categories. The first category displays a style which leads researchers into classroom practice to call its practitioners ‘perceptive professional developers’. Such headteachers would see their role above all as requiring experience and insight based on a deep understanding of their own position on educational and social issues; they would, however, eschew imposing views on others. They regard their role as enjoyable and enriching to themselves as they develop their own skills as well as those of others. They are sharp at identifying the necessity for change and have a deep understanding of its nature. Galton (1980), in the ‘ORACLE’ survey, gave high marks for success to classroom teachers who were ‘infrequent changers’. Every now and then such teachers changed their arrangements, changed their style, the style of the classroom organisation, and improved the quality of children learning. So it is for the first category of school leadership.

The ‘perceptive professional developers’ give attention to and have an active interest in the curriculum where the change needs to be most frequent. It needs to be most frequent because the teacher must meet individual needs and catch the interests of a multitude of different young people. New materials, new courses, a new environment (in the sense of being new to the teacher or the department concerned) are justified by the expansion of information and the consequential need to replace the old and irrelevant with the new and relevant.

New skills are also cherished but the older ones are cast off only after a deliberate reflection of outworn usefulness. In the curriculum, therefore, the ‘perceptive professional developer’ knows that information needs to change more frequently than skills and that attitudes need to be fairly consistent in the school as a derivative of their shared value systems. Such leaders see themselves as conductors or perhaps the first violin and the staff basically as colleagues in an orchestra. They may be flamboyant or you may not notice them—styles are legitimately different after all. Such headteachers recognise teachers’ different strengths and work so as not to produce a false model to those teachers. Such leaders have the breadth of vision in their appointments to bring to their orchestra new instruments and new performers. They are often good at improvisation: they look for harmony rather than discord to see the necessity for hard argument and debate.

Such leaders have a keen interest in others and see themselves as facilitating the development of those people. Such headteachers will not be absent too long from the school. Such a category of school will change the organisational structure less frequently—perhaps only to give new perspective for teachers and other staff and the learners themselves in order to maximise the opportunity of shared perceptions. So the timetable, pastoral systems of posts and responsibilities, and the departmental arrangements are changed, but only with enormous care since they provide the everyday bearings of support and stability on which the community depends.

The ‘perceptive professional developers’ see the importance of the bits and pieces: the note of thanks, the particular potential and failing of each member of the community and his or her different need of support, the chronic and acute personal problems of his or her senior colleagues, none in themselves important in the grand scheme of things but everyone, however, vital for the performance of the school as a whole. Such leadership is of course a plural quality. It is exercised at all levels, heads of department and co-ordinators, for example, and for all the people there are in the school.

The second category of leadership produces people who can best be called ‘the system maintainers’. They are characterised by their wish ‘to keep things on an even keel’ and to preserve the existing order of things in order to maintain high standards. They fear precedents which might weaken previous success and are alarmed by change which might precipitate declining standards. They eschew virtually all change. They do not take risks. They like order in all that they do. In establishments run by ‘system maintainers’ you will find comments like these:

• We tried that in so-and-so’s time and it didn’t work.
• Why do you want to upset everything that has worked for so long?
• Yes, that is a good idea: if only we could consider it but I fear we cannot because…
• That would set a precedent which would have alarming implications.

Such schools have some way Jo go to be really effective. They will achieve success of a sort but they will never have that sharp observation which will find the talent of every child. You can tell when they are getting near to moving towards success. It is when they try something different and confess to the thrill of unexpected enjoyment. You can also tell when they are en route towards the third category. It is when you hear more frequently the comment ‘Things are not what they used to be’ or ‘Many leaders are instinctively system maintainers’. They are too distrustful of change.

The third category of leadership is thankfully very rare nowadays. One may simply term it as inadequate. Security has become a way of life. Such leaders fear their insecurity. They are left with enjoying a status to which they adhere for their own salvation: they use the post not for what can be done for others but solely for themselves. In such schools good teachers become worse and if they have sense they leave. In the end ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• PART 1: MANAGEMENT AND SCHOOLS
• PART 2: INTEGRATION AND LEARNING
• PART 3: LEARNING AND THE CURRICULUM
• PART 4: IN-SERVICE TRAINING, MICROELECTRONICS, THE COMMUNITY