Individual Education Plans (IEPs)

Dyslexia

Janet Tod, Mike Blamires, Francis Castle

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781138154391
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136620539
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 2000. This book is one of a series concerning the implementation of effective practice for Individual Education Plans (IEPs ). It seeks to address emergent challenges for schools that IEPs should retain their role in the provision of planning and record keeping for pupils with special educational needs, but that the paperwork burden should be reduced and manageability achieved. The book outlines key principles for the design of IEPs for dyslexic pupils and offers practical advice on target writing and strategy development for teachers and SENCOs in mainstream schools, special schools and dyslexia units. Like other books in this series, the ideas and activities to support institutional self review and development are produced in a photocopiable format.

Assessment for target setting: Principles

Introduction

How can IEPs be integrated into the school's general arrangements for assessing and recording the progress of all pupils?

(OFSTED 1996)

‘So far as possible the plan (IEP) should build on the curriculum, the child following alongside fellow pupils and should make use of programmes, activities, materials and assessment techniques readily available to the class teacher

(DfE 1994)

Schools should build on pupil strengths as well as addressing their needs ... All schools including special schools will have to set challenging targets for pupil performance

(DfEE 1997)

Assessment for IEP planning starts with an individual analysis of children's reading and spelling performance and their pedagogical experiences rather than by determining whether they are dyslexic or not. Assessment for IEP target setting differs from many of the assessment procedures which have been usefully and comprehensively described in texts on dyslexia (e.g. Reid 1998). Although until now it has been accepted practice for schools to refer a pupil who is suspected of being dyslexic to an educational psychologist for a psychometric assessment the British Psychological Society are now suggesting a change to that practice. After defining dyslexia as follows:

Dyslexia is present when fluent and accurate word identification (reading) and/or spelling does not develop or does so very incompletely or with great difficulty

they go on to state:

we would now wish to distance ourselves from the type of one off assessments in which a critical issue is to establish whether or not a discrepancy between general cognitive abilities and attainments in literacy is evident ... but would endorse assessments within which data is gathered over time about a child's response to his or her strengths and weaknesses and appropriate interventions.

Another reason why assessment for ‘dyslexia’ is likely to become increasingly carried out by teachers is to meet the requirement for early identification and intervention. Screening tests such as CoPS (Lucid Cognitive Profiling System) and PhAB (Phonological Assessment Battery) are being used by schools in conjunction with Baseline Assessment so that those pupils who are likely to experience difficulties in learning to read, write and spell can be identified before they qualify for a ‘dyslexia’ label made on the basis of evidencing ‘a great difficulty in learning to read and write’.

The primary aim of assessment in the context of IEPs is to inform the planning of ‘additional or otherwise extra provision’ needed to enable the pupil to make progress. Assessment for IEP planning thus needs to be undertaken in context and should be focused and purposeful. Those concerned in the assessment procedure need sufficient information to enable the setting of targets which fulfil the following criteria.

Key criteria for effective target setting

Targets are linked to long- and medium-term objectives

Assessment for IEP planning should be part of whole school planning (see Figure 11) and should aim to ensure that IEP targets are set within the context of statutory target setting for overall pupil performance which came into effect in September 1998. While it is noted that ‘school targets are set to drive school improvement and are therefore different from targets in IEPs’ (QCA 1998) it makes sense for IEP target setting for dyslexic pupils to be purposefully linked to school targets for English and Mathematics at age 11 and GCSE examinations at age 16 years if they are to be included in their school's improvement process. Dyslexic pupils’ difficulties change over time (Povey and Tod 1996), mainly due to timely curricular demands which are linked to Key Stage level of study priorities. Dyslexic pupils experience a literacy attainment lag and have not ‘automatised’ word identification (reading) by the time they are required to generate their own written language (write and spell). Long-term target setting needs to be based on an assessment which enables teachers to: identify what the pupil will need to be able to do in order to cope with the next Key Stage; and then set medium- and short-term (IEP) targets based on the pupil's observed rate of progress. Typically dyslexic pupils need targets and additional provision which is based on their ‘past, present and future’ needs. They need to regularly ‘revisit’ areas of work from the previous term or Key Stage; they need to work on specific areas from their current learning objectives; and they need to prepare for the curricular and organisational demands of the next Key Stage. This is an important notion as teachers and parents report that learning for dyslexics often tends to be somewhat discrete rather than continuous, with limited transfer from one stage to the next.

Target's impact upon pupil progress

It is important that target setting is not undertaken simply as a compensatory strategy. If targets are set just to address immediate curricular concerns (e.g. will learn to read and write six new CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words there is a risk that achievement of this type of target will not have a noticeable effect on progress due to the fact that the underlying decoding and synthesising skill has not transferred to the learning of new CVC words.

Progress in reading and writing for dyslexic pupils is noticeably slower than for non-dyslexic pupils and this needs to be acknowledged when writing targets. In order to guide the setting of ‘impact’ targets it might be useful to consider a ‘balanced diet’ rather than a restricted diet of SMART literacy targets.

Figure 11

For example in setting targets it is useful to consider the following questions:

• What? Setting three or four targets which cover key skills – literacy, numeracy, communication (language) and behaviour/social skills (DfEE 1997, p. 15); This allows for the setting of targets which harness the dyslexic pupil's strengths in addressing his/her difficulties (e.g. a ‘language’ t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Dyslexia: controversy, concerns and consensus
• IEPs and dyslexia: Principles
• Assessment for target setting: Principles
• Assessment for target setting: Institutional self-review
• Assessment for target setting: Ideas for action
• Strategies: Principles
• Strategies: Institutional self-review
• Strategies: Ideas for action
• Monitoring: principles
• Monitoring: Institutional self-review
• Monitoring: Ideas for action
• Involving the learner in their IEP: Principles
• Involving the learner: Institutional self-review
• Involving the Learner: Ideas for Action
• Postscript
• References