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TX: 02.06.05 - Special Needs Education PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON |
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Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 大象传媒 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON It's estimated that one child in every five in the UK has special educational needs. The description covers everything from severe autism to mild dyslexia. This figure of one in five was identified almost 30 years ago in a Royal Commission on Special Education Needs chaired by Baroness Warnock. It broadly chimes with the estimates made by parents and teachers today. Then, as now, only those with the most complex needs are catered for in special schools. There is broad agreement that the big change over time is that mainstream schools have made huge strides in catering for pupils with mild to moderate difficulties. That then is the history. As your e-mails to this programme demonstrate though the day-to-day reality for parents is that it can be a huge struggle getting the education that children are, in theory at least, legally entitled to have. Six months ago, in a series of reports and discussions about autism, Liz put some of your experiences to Lord Filkin, then minister with responsibility for special educational needs. He outlined a new national strategy and promised gradual improvement. FILKIN There's only so much that it's sensible to specify at the centre. We have to be clear on the general direction of policy but we have to support parents, we have to support children, and LEAs and schools are making it work in localities better. BARCLAY When will you have looked at these issues, when can we come back to you and say - what has changed? FILKIN Well I'm happy to come back in six months time and talk further if you'd like to. These are not sudden initiatives, they're issues that we have been working on and we launched in February of this year our strategy setting out how we thought that the system at both national and local level needed to move forward in dealing better with children with special educational needs. ROBINSON Lord Filkin. Well he's now been replaced at the Department for Education and Skills by Andrew Adonis, he's still getting to grips with the brief and felt unable to keep his predecessor's promises to come on to the programme. Nonetheless, we felt that the time was right to look at progress, particularly since your e-mails keep on coming in on the subject of what constitutes good education for children with special needs and the lamentable lack of it in some areas. Our first expert guest is Christopher Robertson, he's a lecturer in inclusive and special education at Birmingham University and he's editor of something called SENCO Update, it's a newsletter for special needs coordinators. Christopher Robertson, what changed then as a result of the Warnock Report on Special Educational Needs? ROBERTSON Well on a positive note I really do think that we have made significant progress towards including many more children experiencing difficulties in learning in mainstream schools. However, there are still over 90,000 children and young people who do not have access to mainstream education - now that doesn't mean they have a bad education, but there are those who would argue that all children should be mainstreamed. However, I think we still have a long way to go in ensuring that mainstream schools really do have the capability to address the complex needs of this significant number of children and young people. ROBINSON We had a lot of e-mails, one of them was from Michael Carter, who's an educational psychologist, he works for Shropshire and Telford Education Authority. He points out that at the time of the Warnock Report in 1978 around 2% of children were catered for in special school and he says: There is probably a similar percentage of children in special school today, despite the wish for inclusive education written into the law. And he goes on to make the point that I in fact lifted for my introduction that the big difference, as you have just said too, is that mainstream schools are probably better now at catering for pupils with moderate problems. So you would say then that on both counts he's right? ROBERTSON Yes. What I would say however, is if we hark back to the Warnock Report and the 1981 Education Act when people spoke a lot about this 2% of children and young people what we didn't acknowledge until then, and we're still grappling with this problem now, is that probably another 18-20, if not 25% of children and young people do experience significant difficulties in learning at some time or other during their educational careers. And I think there's a real issue about whether those children and young people have access to the same levels of resourcing that this smaller group of children and young people might have. ROBINSON Well we heard Lord Filkin talking about a new strategy launched in February of last year and saying that the government is clear on the general direction of its strategy, what is Labour's approach on mainstream and special school? ROBERTSON Labour's approach has shifted during the time that it's been in office. When David Blunkett was steering policy in 1997 I think there was very much the view or an interpretation of the political view that David Blunkett was pretty keen to shut down all specialist provision, segregated provision some people might call it ... ROBINSON Because he himself had had a bad experience at blind school? ROBERTSON Yeah, well I certainly think it's possible that his interpretation and his experiences of specialist provision might have at least coloured his view of the nature of specialist provision. More recent policy statements however, and in particular I think Lord Filkin was referring us to removing barriers to learning - the current strategy for special educational needs. It's interesting that that policy explicitly states that inclusion is about much more than the type of school that children attend and the strategy also goes on to refer to breaking down the divide between mainstream and special schools to create a unified system. So in eight years we've actually seen quite a shift in Labour policy, you could say they're more pragmatic now about inclusion at all costs, you could say that they have run scared of particular parental groups who are very anxious that the knowledge, understanding and skills associated with staffing in specialist schools is something that we shouldn't lose sight of. So I think we've seen a backing away from radical inclusion on the one hand and a stronger acknowledgement that special schools do have a good education to offer for some children and young people, not everybody agrees with that but that's my take on current policy - high pragmatism. ROBINSON Well we've been contacted by one listener who's very happy with what has been provided for her son, Joachim, who's seven and is autism, I suppose you could describe what's been provided as high pragmatism because he attends a special unit or a resource base, as they call it, within a mainstream primary school in Minehead in West Somerset. This unit though may be closed by the local education authority to save money. Lindsey Cornwall Jones went to see Anne Osterlind at Joachim's school. OSTERLIND That's the [indistinct word] unit in there and in the very centre of the school they've got a little quadrangle where they can go and play safely outside in very small numbers for those children that can't cope with the mainstream playground all the time. Joachim is autistic and because of his autistic disabilities, his learning disabilities, his behavioural disabilities, he finds it very stressful in an environment where there are lots of people, he becomes very stressed, very violent and very frustrated. He was in a mainstream nursery before he was diagnosed and he turned the whole nursery upside down. ACTUALITY What game will it be tomorrow? Tomorrow will be Thursday. Good boy. Tomorrow will be Thursday. Who can tell me what we did yesterday? Zac, can you tell me what we did yesterday? On train. We went on a train. CORNWALL JONES Janet Daley, you're the teacher in the resource space, what do you think Joachim gets out of being here? DALEY It just gives them those specialist facilities that they need. They have the - their work is set to their ability and they are in a small group and there is lots of one-to-one adult support, which helps - just helps their confidence, helps them be able to just function really. CORNWALL JONES Do you think if they had to go into the mainstream school that wouldn't be practical? DALEY It wouldn't be practical, some of our children find it very stressful to be in a mainstream class, they're used to being in a small group, they're not used to being in a class of 30 children, they don't function in a class of 30 children, their mental ability isn't a year 2 if they're year 2, they might be functioning at reception level. So they find it very difficult to stay in a year 2 class. ACTUALITY - CHILDREN SINGING OSTERLIND Autistic spectrum disorder, people are very, very vulnerable to bullying and to really leading a miserable life in schools, it is a big problem. Here I know that Joachim's self-esteem will be kept intact, he's not going to be made to feel less of a person because he's disabled, the school gives him a feeling of security, of routine, he manages to make a few little friends within the unit which is hugely important as often autistic people are very isolated because of their communication difficulties. So basically here the quality of life for Joachim means that he has some inclusion in the world and I think that's very important. ACTUALITY - CHILDREN SINGING CORNWALL JONES If the resource space had to close would Joachim's needs be met? DALEY We'd do our best to incorporate many of the children into our first school but obviously they wouldn't have the specialist provision that we're able to provide for them. And children with very complex needs, which we've got at least three at the moment, would need to access a special school. And our local specialist school is in Bridgewater, which would mean 50 mile round trip. OSTERLIND He just can't manage the long journey, he can get out of the car restraints that we've had fitted. So the practical implications of trying to get him to and from Bridgewater or Taunton is just completely impossible. He wouldn't be able to learn, when he got to school he'd be in such a state, he'd be so tired and stressed he wouldn't be in a fit state to learn. And when he came back again, as well, I'd be trying to pick up the pieces, it would just be too much for him. CORNWALL JONES So what do you think would happen to the children that might have to either travel to a special school or go into a mainstream school next door? DALEY I just think it would be very detrimental for their education. I just think that it's wrong, it shouldn't happen. If you've got a child that needs specialist facilities then that child should have specialist facilities in their local area. OSTERLIND The LEA does not seem to have an answer so far for me yet, so I've asked them what is going to happen to my son if the resource space closes. And they haven't got an answer. He cannot go into a mainstream classroom, it's too far away for him to travel to Taunton or Bridgewater, so he's left with nowhere to go. I think the base has got it right here, it recognises Joachim's disability and at the same time it tries to welcome him into the school community so he can feel part of the school despite his disability and I think that that's really wonderful, I wish that there was more of it around. ACTUALITY - CHILDREN SINGING ROBINSON Anne Osterlind. Well I'm joined now by Charlotte Moore, a writer and mother of two autistic sons, and by Micheline Mason of the Alliance for Inclusive Education, she was educated in special school but her daughter, who has the same physical disability - brittle bone disease - is in a mainstream school. We've had a great many e-mails on both sides of this debate - special versus mainstream education. I'll just give you a brief flavour. Chris Goody refers to special education as segregation and he asks: Is it acceptable that a child in Manchester education authority area is seven times more likely to be segregated than a child in Newham where the authority has gone furthest in closing its segregated schools? And this from Tim Evans, who's worked with children with special educational needs for 25 years, he says: The integration of children with some problems, after the 1981 Education Act, was right and proper but we have thrown the baby out with the bath water by closing or changing radically many badly needed special schools. Charlotte Moore, what do you say to those two points of view? MOORE I think that you have to look at each special need as just that - a special need. A physical disability is very, very different from a condition like autism. When somebody who's physically disabled but mentally completely 100% normal, if you'll excuse the word, then yes I would imagine that they should be included and have the same opportunities as anybody else. But with a condition like autism, which is primarily a social handicap, you really - if my two autistic sons were in mainstream school they would sink without trace or they'd take the place down with them. They simply cannot cope physically in the over-stimulating crowded noisy bustling environment that is actually appropriate to a mainstream child, they need - I'm sorry - they need - and they learn very little in a group, they need one to one attention which really I don't believe is compatible with mainstream inclusion. ROBINSON Micheline Mason. MASON What are you asking me? ROBINSON What do you think of both of the two points of views that we have heard from the e-mails of mainstream schooling as opposed to specialist schooling, what do you think of what Charlotte has just said that mainstream is probably appropriate for people with physical disabilities but not for those who have complex mental disabilities including autism? MASON Well you see I believe in inclusive education. Inclusive education is not about mainstream schools as they are now, it's about changing mainstream schools in order to accommodate the full diversity of human beings that live on this planet. Because the result of segregation - and I'm one of the people that have lived with the results of segregation and I know many, many hundreds of other people - is if you started as a child you end up living it for the rest of your life. And it's the long term outcome that we're looking at, not the short term convenience of not disrupting or not trying to make a difference to the way schools are run. ROBINSON We've had a lot of e-mails on this subject, as you'd imagine, lamenting - Bridget de Silva - the lack of training when children - for teachers when children do go into mainstream school and the child has special needs. Talking about the training here, Bridget de Silva says: It's an optional extra on most teacher training courses. And for anyone who doesn't have contact with a special needs child it might not seem a big deal but through my support group I've heard countless stories where teachers have unwittingly done a lot of damage to vulnerable children because of ignorance. We've had other people questioning the impact, as Charlotte was saying, of trying to put autistic children into mainstream school. This from Liz Jones: Not enough emphasis is placed on the disruption such children can cause and especially as funding is either withdrawn or is no where near adequate for the needs of these children. We had this from a special needs teacher who asks not to be named. She says: In my current class I have pupils with autism and severe challenging behaviours, their behaviours take the form of biting other people, scratching, spitting, kicking and smearing faeces. I believe it's unfair to other pupils to expect them to concentrate on their studies while sharing a room with pupils exhibiting this type of behaviour. And I suppose all of those special needs add up to costs for schools, don't they, Micheline? We've also had e-mails from school governors saying we'd love to do this inclusion thing, we just can't afford it. MASON But some schools do do it. And the organisation that I run - the Alliance For Inclusive Education - has just in fact written a whole book studying over 20 schools that are doing wonderful things in inclusive education. I don't think there is a single level of impairment or type of impairment that I haven't seen included well somewhere. ROBINSON Christopher Robertson, as I said earlier you're a lecturer in inclusive and special education at Birmingham University, one listener e-mailed to say there's a very obvious answer to this debate which is that it depends on what your child needs and what's on offer locally. MOORE Absolutely, I mean I'm a rare and lucky parent in that all my three children are appropriately and happily provided for in state schools. But the needs of my non-autistic seven year old, Jake, who's in the village primary school and having a great time there, his needs are almost diametrically opposed to the needs of George and Sam, who are autistic, and are in an ASD unit. ROBINSON Christopher Robertson, what do you think? ROBERTSON Well I mean I think that raises a kind of interesting issue about how all children are affected by or benefit from inclusive education. Interestingly a very new research review has just come out ... ROBINSON Or don't benefit though as some of the e-mails were saying. ROBERTSON Yeah but actually there isn't much in the way of evidence that tells us that non-disabled children suffer in any way from the presence of disabled children or children with special educational needs in their classrooms, there isn't strong evidence. ROBINSON They may not be able to produce the evidence, Christopher Robertson, but doesn't common sense tell you, some of the e-mails say that if you've got children in class biting, causing mayhem, smearing faeces, that can't be good for the education of the majority can it? ROBERTSON Of course it cannot but the example there is clearly an example that reflects a very, very small minority of children and young people. My own view is that there will always be children and young people who challenge all of the expertise, knowledge and understanding that educators can currently muster and that we need to consider making discrete provision available for those children and young people. ROBINSON Okay, I want to bring one more guest into this discussion, Jude Ragan is head of Spa School in Southwark in London, it's a special school for 11-19 year olds with autism, but she worked for many years in mainstream schools and her school is featuring in a Channel 4 documentary - Make Me Normal - which is being broadcast tonight. Jude Ragan, lots of the e-mails sent to us are about local education authorities apparently always insisting that the cheapest option must be the best for any child and that's understandable obviously because they have to make resources stretch. We had this from Adam Long about his son, it says that although his statement calls for speech therapy, occupational therapy, input from an educational psychologist, there's a chronic shortage of therapists and psychologists in our borough and his needs simply cannot be met. Because the education authority has a legal responsibility to provide for him though they are reluctant to admit that they're incapable of doing so and that leaves us in a kind of limbo. How easy or difficult is it for parents to choose to send their child to your school if they so wish? RAGAN I think it can be very difficult, I mean there can be huge obstructions in their path if they want it. It's a huge sadness to us that we only have perhaps between 10 and 14 places per year for 7, 11 year old children coming in and we'll probably have over 30 applications for those places. And in many ways I distance myself from that decision because it's not my decision, it's the local education authority's decision because it's a state school. But I feel hugely for those families who very much want a specialist provision and can't get it. ROBINSON Christopher Robertson, what is the overall picture? ROBERTSON For me the overall picture is one actually whereby we still have a long, long way to go to ensuring that mainstream education can respond much more effectively to the wide diversity of needs of children and young people. ROBINSON And would you count the specialist unit within the mainstream school as mainstream schooling or not? ROBERTSON Yes I would. We had the example earlier of autism and children being placed in a unit there and I think there is a very interesting debate that we still need to have about whether children should be on the edge of the mainstream, within the middle of it or in more than one place. I think we're stuck with very arcane views of schooling, we still think of primary and secondary schools as being traditionally class based and I think for inclusion to take much stronger root we need to move beyond that very traditional mode of classes where children go at 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 or whatever and we actually need to look at a wide range of configurations of grouping within schools and that would include units. And those configurations would also apply to children who don't have special educational needs. So I think we need to radically reframe what schools actually look like and I don't yet think, if I'm honest, that the government has really taken seriously that particular radical shake up that is still required if inclusion is to be effective. ROBINSON Jude Ragan. RAGAN I think before your last comment there, the one about the government not yet picked it up, there will have been teachers all over this land screaming at their radios, saying what does he mean by this reconfiguration because mainstream schools have become much more rigid than they previously were, you know there's the literacy and there's the numeracy and there's a huge tension on raising standards in a way that can be read in a league table and so forth. And whilst it shouldn't be impossible, exactly as Micheline says, that we should have a school that can manage all of these things, the climate at the moment is that that's not the case, as Christopher has said. And I was interested to hear a mother say that if a child goes to mainstream she picks up the pieces and that's certainly true with autism. ROBINSON Okay, well we've got to leave it in a moment but before we do leave it, Micheline Mason on this subject of how much real choice there is out there, what is the experience of the people who contact your group who I know would be parents who want their children in mainstream school? MASON Well my group consists of two groups of people, there are parents who have been fighting for years for their right for their child to be included and that isn't simply in mainstream school, that's about inclusion and that's about the mainstream school welcoming a child and being willing to make the adaptions that are needed in order to make that child feel welcome. But the other group of people I want to speak on behalf of are the many, many thousands of people who've been to special schools and they're the group of people I really represent. And I would like to pose you the question: this group of people have now set up a campaign and it is thousands of us to close all special schools by the year 2020. And the reason is because it does not serve our interests in the long term to be segregated. ROBINSON I'm sorry to stop you but we must leave the discussion there. Thank you very much indeed. Back to the You and Yours homepage The 大象传媒 is not responsible for external websites |
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