Special Educational Needs in Schools

Sally Beveridge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780415202947
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134631155
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This new edition of Special Educational Needs in Schools provides a concise but comprehensive overview of key issues in provision for children with special needs in schools, emphasising the role of the mainstream classroom teacher. This second edition looks at the numerous changes in special educational policy and practice that have taken place in the past five years. Topics covered include:
* concepts of SEN
* the legislative framework
* the range of special educational need and provision
* teaching approaches and organisational strategies
* frameworks of support.

Chapter 1

Concepts of Special Educational Need

All children can be regarded as having special needs of some kind during their school careers, and there are few of us who, when looking back at our own time as pupils, cannot recollect particular instances where we experienced difficulties in learning or in social contexts. This does not imply, however, that we were necessarily judged by our teachers to be in need of special educational help. For this to have happened, we would have to have been among a minority of pupils whose difficulties were assessed as significantly different from those of their peers. The criteria for such an assessment, and the resulting proportions of pupils who are so identified, have fluctuated over time, for the concept of special educational need is socially constructed. As such, it changes over time in a way which is influenced both by prevalent expectations about children’s educational progress and also by political and economic concerns.

The present concept of special educational need is based on the deliberations of the Wamock Committee, which had a governmental brief to investigate and make recommendations about special educational provision, and which published its report in 1978 (DES 1978). The Committee brought together and articulated the views that were current among many of those who were working in special education, and it was generally held to represent a major development in official thinking about special educational need. Although not all of its recommendations were adopted, it has been of lasting significance, not least because of its insistence that special educational need and special educational provision are central concerns for all who are involved in education, rather than subjects for specialist interest only.

Background to the Warnock Recommendations

Prior to the publication of the Warnock Report, models of special educational need which emphasized deficits within the child from a medical or psychological perspective were predominant. The need for special educational ‘treatment’ was associated with the notion of ‘disability of mind or body’. The 1944 Education Act had defined eleven categories of disability. These excluded a group of children who were deemed ‘ineducable’ on account of the severity of their ‘handicaps’, but included varying degrees of blindness or deafness, physical impairment, speech defects, educational ‘subnormality’ and ‘maladjustment’. It may be noted that, apart from the latter two categories, disabilities were described in medical terms and their diagnosis appeared to be relatively clear-cut. Educational subnormality and maladjustment were more difficult to determine, implying as they did some value judgements about the cut-off point between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ levels of individual variation in learning and in social and emotional development. As these were to become by far the largest of the categories described in the legislation, concerns were increasingly raised about the appropriateness of their definition, particularly as it was found that diagnosis seemed to be associated with certain ethnic and social class variables. Concerns were also voiced that, no matter how severe their impairments, no children should be regarded as ineducable. This argument gathered considerable support, and in 1970 legislation was introduced whereby LEAs were required to make special educational provision for all types of disability. Although it was not stipulated that this provision should necessarily take the form of separate schools or classes, this became the predominant practice and, as a result, ‘special education’ tended to be regarded as that which occurred in special schools.

Warnock’s Approach

The Warnock Committee took a much wider view of special education. Drawing attention to the significant numbers of children in ordinary schools who at some time experience difficulties in their learning, it argued that it was not helpful to think in terms of a dichotomy between their educational needs and those of the pupils in special schools. Rather, it wished to see an acknowledgement of the continuum of individual educational need among all pupils. From this broader perspective, special education could be defined as ‘any form of additional help, wherever it is provided … to overcome educational difficulty’ (DES 1978: para. 1.10).

In extending the scope of special education in this way, the Warnock Committee was not suggesting that large numbers of children in ordinary schools should be regarded as having disabilities. On the contrary, it recommended that the existing categorization of disability was educationally inappropriate and should be abolished. It pointed out that to categorize children in such a way could be stigmatizing and, further, that to describe a child as having a particular disability was of little help when it came to determining what sort of educational provision might best meet the child’s needs. Children quite frequently have more than one form of difficulty, and that which is most significant from a medical point of view is not necessarily of the greatest educational relevance. Further, there is wide individual variation between the educational needs of children who have the same form of disability, and an undue focus on their impairment can distract attention from other important influences on their learning. The Committee proposed, therefore, that instead of the previous categories a generic term of ‘learning difficulties’ should be applied to embrace all those pupils who, for whatever reasons, require additional educational help. Figure 1.1 shows three dimensions of learning difficulty that are described in the Warnock Report. From this it can be seen that special educational needs might be long-lasting or short-term, specific to particular aspects of learning or more general, and will also vary in the degree to which they affect a child’s learning. In recognition of this variation, the Warnock Committee suggested that learning difficulties could be further described as ‘mild’, ‘moderate’, ‘severe’ or ‘specific’.

Figure 1.1 Dimensions of learning difficulty in Warnock’s continuum of special educational need

It has frequently been noted that by making this suggestion, rather than abolishing categorization, the Committee effectively provided the basis for a new method of categorizing educational needs. While this has indeed proved to be the case, it does not detract from the importance of the Committee’s arguments for a shift away from psychological-medical models of children’s learning difficulties. Its line of reasoning represents an explicit attempt to break with traditional notions of educational difficulty as being primarily rooted and fixed within the individual child. It did not deny that within-child factors can have a significant impact on learning, but the concept of special educational need which was put forward was far more concerned with the interaction between the child and the learning contexts which the child experiences. An interactive explanation of educational need has, as the Committee argued, many more positive implications for schools than are offered by traditional models. It allows us to view children’s needs as a result of a mismatch between the knowledge, skills and experiences they bring to their learning situations and the demands that are made of them. From this perspective, there are constructive steps that can be taken to overcome or even prevent learning difficulties.

The principle that children’s special educational needs cannot be viewed in isolation from the learning contexts in which they arise is further emphasized by the three aspects of need that are identified in the Wamock Report:

1. the provision of special means of access to the curriculum;
2. the provision of a special or modified curriculum;
3. particular attention to the social structure and emotional climate in which education takes place.

(DES 1978: para. 3.19)

The first of these provisions is not controversial. Where children have difficulties which prevent them from gaining access to the curriculum in the usual way, then clearly they need whatever help is necessary to allow them to participate as fully as possible in the learning experiences that are provided. For example, children with sensory or physical impairments may need special equipment or attention to positioning, and others will benefit from the use of adapted written material. The second and third provisions have given rise to rather more debate, however. Though not denying that the curriculum and the social and emotional climate are important influences on children’s learning, some (e.g. Galloway 1985) have suggested that children may too readily be transferred to different curricular activities and social groupings, and that there is no guarantee that this will help them overcome their difficulties. They point out that the ‘ordinary’ curriculum and climate for learning in schools can add to as well as alleviate children’s difficulties, and argue that the better these are matched to the needs of all pupils, then the less likelihood there will be that substantial numbers of children will be regarded as having needs which require special educational provision.

The fact that there is considerable variation between schools in the proportion of their pupils who experience educational difficulties is not in doubt. Indeed, an acceptance of the interactive nature of special educational needs implies an acknowledgement of their relativity. Thus, a child who is identified as having learning difficulties in one school would not automatically be judged in the same way in another. The child’s needs, therefore, can be seen to be relative to those of the other pupils in the school, the teachers’ knowledge, skills and approach, the school’s approach to individual diversity, LEA policy, and so on. Given this relativity, it is not surprising to find that estimates of the prevalence of special educational needs are problematic. On the basis of the research evidence that was available to them, the Warnock Committee estimated that as many as 20 per cent of pupils might have such needs at some point in their school career and, although certain reservations have been voiced, this figure has until now been generally accepted.

The Implications of the Warnock Committee’s Approach

In summing up the Wamock Committee’s approach to the concept of special educational needs, it would be fair to say that it was representative of the opinions of many of those who were involved in special education at the time. Among these professionals, there was a large degree of acceptance of the notion that the scope of special education should be conceived much more broadly, and that a continuum of special educational needs, with particular attention to their interactive and relative nature, should be recognized. The new concept did, though, have wide-ranging and major implications for ordinary schools and their teachers. Previously, it had been possible to see special education as separate from the ordinary school system. Where significant learning difficulties were experienced by pupils in ordinary classes, there were channels for referring these pupils for special help elsewhere. If one in five pupils were to be regarded as having such difficulties, however, then it became apparent that special education must be conceived as an integral part of the whole educational system. Fewer than 2 per cent of pupils had traditionally been educated in separate special provision and therefore the vast majority of pupils with special educational needs had always been educated in ordinary schools. It followed therefore that all teachers must be seen to have a responsibility for making special educational provision for those pupils experiencing learning difficulties in their classes. Furthermore, the acknowledgement of the interactive and relative nature of those pupils’ needs made it clear that both teachers individually and schools collectively have a significant role to play in alleviating or adding to their difficulties. In order to explore the nature of that role, it is necessary to look more closely at the implications of the main features of the Wamock Committee’s concept of special educational need.

The Interactive Nature of Special Educational Need

Most teachers accept, at least in principle, that the educational difficulties which children experience can only be fully understood by reference to the contexts in which they arise. Although it is clear that some children have cognitive limitations or other impairments that impede their progress, it is also generally acknowledged that there can be very different educational outcomes for such children. Among the complex and interacting factors that contribute to this diversity, the attitudes and expectations of others, and the type of support, knowledge and understanding that they experience at home, at school and in their local community, all play a significant part.

Few teachers need persuading of the importance of home background factors in children’s attainment and behaviour at school. For most children home is clearly not only their first and primary learning environment, but one which continues to exert a powerful influence. Further, there is ample research evidence to demonstrate an association between poor educational achievement and measures of social disadvantage (Sammons and Mortimore 1990), although it should be noted that there are a number of different explanations put forward for this finding. Teachers frequently cite parental attitudes to school and apparent interest in their children’s education as critical factors, and there is no doubt that good home-school relationships can have an essential role in children’s learning. In order to foster such relations, however, positive attitudes towards and interest in parental perspectives on the part of schools are likely to be as important as home background variables.

It is particularly important that the acknowledgement of the significant influence of home on attainment at school should not lead to the conclusion that schools themselves have only a subsidiary role to play. On the contrary; the evidence from research into school effectiveness at both primary and secondary levels (Rutter et al. 1979; Mortimore et al. 1988) is that schools vary in their effectiveness in educating pupils even when they come from similar home backgrounds and have similar initial levels of achievement. A recognition of the impact that schools can have on the difficulties experienced by some of their pupils may not be widespread among teachers, however. For example, in a study of special educational needs in junior schools, Croll and Moses (1985) asked teachers for their explanation of the needs of children in their classes. The vast majority of references were to ‘within-child’ factors for those with learning difficulties, and to home background for those with emotional or behavioural difficulties. Mention of school-based factors was made in fewer than 4 per cent of all cases. Many changes have been introduced in schools since this study took place. Nevertheless, researchers (e.g. Ainscow 1995a; Clark et al. 1997) continue to report the lasting influence among teachers of similar perspectives which, with their emphasis on individual child and/or family deficits, can distract attention from school-based strategies for overcoming special educational needs.

The Scope of Special Educational Needs

In their survey of junior schools Croll and Moses (1985) found that, on average, class teachers judged 18.8 per cent of their pupils to have some form of special educational need. As under 2 per cent of pupils were placed in special schools at the time, this might be taken as strong support for Wamock’s estimate. However, it has been argued that the figure of 20 per cent has become a target (e.g. Ainscow and Muncey 1989) and that given the expectation that there will be this proportion of pupils experiencing difficulties, schools are likely to identify and categorize a group of their lowest achieving pupils accordingly. This is perhaps a rather oversimplified interpretation, as all the evidence suggests considerable variation between schools in the numbers of pupils judged to have special educational needs. Nevertheless, government statistics for 1997 reveal that across the country schools continue to identify approximately 18 per cent of their pupils as having such needs (DfEE 1997a), and concerns have been voiced that a fixed notion of a distinct group of this size has become established (e.g. Thomas 1995; Davie 1996). The identification of need may often be more influenced by the local and national educational criteria currently in use than by an individual pupil’s characteristics, and for this reason not all have welcomed the way in which the scope of special education has been broadened since the publication of the Wamock Report. Their concerns focus both on which children are identified as in need, and also on what follows from their identification.

Sociologists of education such as Tomlinson (1981, 1982) have in the past drawn attention to the disproportionate representation of ‘relatively powerless groups in society’ in those special schools that cater for pupils with moderate learning difficulties and emotional and behavioural difficulties. Tomlinson has argued that factors of socio-economic and ethnic status are significantly associated with the identification of these forms of special educational need, and that as the scope of special education expands within ordinary schools so larger and larger numbers of children from the lowest status families will be judged to have such difficulties.

Most of those concerned with special education would accept the evidence that social factors are involved in the identification of special educational need. Indeed, the influence of gender, as well as of socio-economic class and ethnicity, has frequently been documented. There is rather more debate, however, about the impact of identification on the pupils concerned. The Warnock Committee made it quite clear that it saw identification as a positive first step for any pupil who was experiencing difficulties. It recommended that all schools should have procedures which enable them to identify pupils as early as possible, so that special help can be given both to enable pupils to overcome their current difficulties and, hopefully, to prevent more serious difficulties from arising subsequently. By contrast, Tomlinson, while not denying the importance of such ‘humanitarian’ motives for the identification of special educational need, argues that historically it has often served a different purpose. She suggests that, rather than being primarily concerned with the needs of individuals, special education has traditionally acted as a ‘safety valve’ for the ordinary education system, by removing those pupils who posed a challenge to its smooth operation. As a result, an extensive specialist and separate service has grown up with a focus on individual difficulties, and this has served to distract attention from what might be problematic in the ordinary school system. Furthermore, whether pupils have been removed to different groups in ordinary schools or to special schools, they have typically been provided with different curricular experiences. Tomlinson concludes that these are of lower status than the experiences of their peers, and that this, in conjunction with lowered expectations of the p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Concepts of special educational need
• 2. The legislative framework
• 3. The range of special educational need and provision
• 4. A curriculum for all?
• 5. Teaching approaches and organizational strategies
• 6. The social and emotional context for learning
• 7. Frameworks of support
• Sources of further information
• References
• Index