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 | You and Yours - Transcript ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 |
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| TX: 13.04.04 – Special Schools - Call You And Yours PRESENTER: LIZ BARCLAY |
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| 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 ´óÏó´«Ã½ CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY BARCLAY It's now just gone half past twelve and it's time for Call You and Yours and today we're discussing some of the issues raised in that report. Do you think children with special educational needs - children with autism perhaps, behavioural problems, a disability or those who are exceptionally gifted - should be educated in special schools or integrated into mainstream education? The Government is keen for as many pupils as possible to be taught in standard schools, inclusion is the policy for all but the most severely disabled. Do mainstream schools have the resources and the expertise to handle children with special requirements? Do pupils who go to special schools benefit more from specialist attention and facilities? Or does that lead to a segregated society with disabled people being treated as second class citizens? And are exceptionally gifted children best served by having extra tuition in a standard school or in separate institutions where they can be fully stretched? Hazel Harding, leader of Lancashire County Council and former chair of their education committee joins us to give us the local education authority's views on the issues and we'd like to hear your views and experiences too - parents, pupils, teachers and those who've been through either type of education. Please do call us now on 08700 100 444. Melissa Phillips is on the line from Macclesfield. Melissa, you have two autistic children in mainstream education. PHILLIPS That's right. My eldest son James is seven, he attends our local school - Park Royal - full time. He does have special needs support there, however, when he entered the early years he only said one word and that was dinosaur. Now he's fully participating, he's very social, he's a very happy little boy. My younger son, Matthew, who is six requires more support. He attends the same school half days, in the afternoons, in the morning he has intensive one-to-one ABA support but that is with a view to him attending full time before the end of the year. BARCLAY Did you not want them to go to specialist schools? PHILLIPS Well we did - when we first got the news about the boys the information we were given was so soul destroying we didn't know where to begin frankly and we did look at specialist units in our area. And one headmistress actually said to us - Well you just have to learn to accept their limitations. And we felt that we didn't know what their limitations were and that if you wanted the child to emulate - because the two boys did mirror other children - that to put them in with "normal" children was the best chance we had of them adapting and becoming more like other children and seeing how far they could go within that situation. BARCLAY Why do you think it is that the school they're in is so supportive and so good with your children? PHILLIPS We are extremely lucky in so many ways. The headmaster and his staff, we went and had long meetings with them and the team in the early years, we discussed the boys and we got the LEA involved, we got the CDC involved. It took a lot of meetings and a lot of conversations about the boys and their particular issues but they were so supportive and really, really understanding and the LEA after a lot of discussion and after a lot of petitioning actually gave us the resources we needed to have appropriate support within the school and at home, in Matthew's case, and that was what was so important. We're very fortunate as well because we actually went looking for other alternatives to what we were just offered by the LEA, in terms of support for our boys, so we actually found an ABA - autism partnership which actually helped us put together programmes. So we've been extremely fortunate, well informed and I think a lot of parents, particularly with children with autism, really have no idea where to begin. BARCLAY Melissa thank you very much indeed for that. Caroline Smith is on the line from Burwell. Caroline, I think you have a rather different view. SMITH Yes my experience is very different and again we found a very good solution for our son. He's 12 and he's got a mild cerebral palsy and moderate learning difficulties. He spent two years in a local mainstream school, small village school, which was very, very supportive and the reception teacher particularly worked very hard to address his needs. But over that time he became more and more disruptive because he became more and more aware of the fact that he was seeing himself as failing, compared with the other children. A lot of the lessons were going over his head and when it was suggested we might try a special school we were quite sceptical, quite resistant to the idea. But having gone there and talked to the teachers, they felt that really the sky was the limit, they didn't think - accept your child has limitations - it was - just let him, stretch him, try and get him to progress as far as possible. BARCLAY So he's working at his own pace. SMITH He is and since he's been there his self esteem has just absolutely sky rocketed. I mean out of the family of four I would say he was the most confident person now, he goes up to people, he asks questions, he's got a keen interest in history, he'd like to be a history teacher in fact. So it's just been so wonderful for him but I think we're very, very lucky to have a local special school which is so good. BARCLAY Well Caroline I do hope that he makes it to be what he'd like to be - a history teacher. Odette Franks is on the line from Waterlooville. Odette. FRANKS Hello. BARCLAY Hi. You have a nephew, I think, with muscular dystrophy? FRANKS That's right, yes Duchenne yes. BARCLAY What kind of school is he at? FRANKS Well at the moment he's been through the education system almost, he's at college now studying computer aided design. But he was at the local primary school until such time as the junior classes were up a flight of three flagstone steps and he just couldn't make that unsupervised and unaided. So at that point the school felt that they could no longer cope with his needs, albeit that they were all physical needs, and so it was suggested that he was transferred to a special school in the area. BARCLAY Would you have liked him to have stayed? FRANKS Well the situation now is that he's made it to age 22 and every extra year is a blessing, so you could argue that the therapies that he was able to receive in the special location - such as hydrotherapy - have benefited him physically. But he actually needs help with reading. So now he's at college in another special needs category because he actually has to have someone accompany him through not just for toilet needs but for actual reading. BARCLAY So academically it hasn't been a great success. FRANKS Academically it hasn't been a great success and when you're wheelchair bound I would have thought that reading was an absolute necessity, skills wise. BARCLAY But the school wasn't able to address the fact that it was just a physical barrier that was stopping him going to a mainstream school? FRANKS That was the situation at the time, yes. I mean obviously the fact that he gets all this help at college shows that things are moving in the right direction. BARCLAY Let me bring in Hazel Harding who is leader of Lancashire County Council and former chair of their education committee. Hazel, three different stories there. One where inclusion in the mainstream has absolutely worked. One where going to a special school has worked. And one where there simply was a barrier, a physical barrier, to stop integration into inclusion into the mainstream. HARDING Yes I could probably point you to similar stories across our county and across the country. I think firstly the most important thing is to say that the physical barrier nowadays is not the barrier it was when your caller's child was at primary school - there's been an awful lot of money put in to disability access to actually open up our schools for young people and we're not alone in that as an education authority. So if we have a child in a wheelchair going into a school the money is available to actually make the school accessible to that child. Or if it was a teacher or another member of staff equally so. BARCLAY But it does sound then as if it is not always - inclusion's not always the right thing for all children and special schools aren't always the right thing for all children. HARDING That's right and here in Lancashire I think we're probably a reflection of that, as it is across the country. BARCLAY Does it depend on the special needs of the child? HARDING It does. We've got children now who are surviving trauma at birth, with complex problems and complex difficulties, who are increasingly very - in need of very specialised care as well as an education, we've a duty to educate those children but we do need to ensure that they are looked after in very special care throughout their education as well. So for those children there is a need. There are other children for whom equally their needs are best addressed within a specialised setting, who do need the opportunities to socialise and mix. And so in looking at our special schools we are increasingly trying to site them alongside mainstream, so that the children are not segregated, so that the children in the mainstream school relate to the children in the special school and vice versa and both lots of children can benefit. BARCLAY Well let me bring in on that subject Alan Reid, who's head of a special school in Staffordshire. Alan, inclusion is that - would you favour inclusion? REID It's certainly the right way forward for many people with special needs, particularly those with physical or sensory difficulties because one can put in ramps and large print and Braille and so on. But for some people, who have learning difficulties, they're always on the periphery of the mainstream group and perhaps for those children the segregated provision is the better option. BARCLAY So as far as - we were talking about that point there where there were two children at a school in Macclesfield with autism where the school had listened absolutely to what their needs were and they were therefore included very successfully but a child with cerebral palsy who was much better off in the special school. So to a certain extent it actually depends on the very nature of the need of the disability. REID Absolutely, all children are individuals, not least those with special needs. And my real concern is that parents aren't always being given the information that they need to make an informed choice. BARCLAY And Melissa in Macclesfield said just that - she didn't know where to start. Do parents really genuinely have a choice? REID The Government act requires that authorities look first to mainstream and secondly to special if mainstream settings can't meet the needs. Now parents actually have the option of researching and finding a good special school and asking for that but I don't think many parents know that they have that option available to them. BARCLAY Hazel Harding, do parents know? HARDING No I think the majority of parents probably aren't aware. There are support networks and we have a very successful one here in Lancashire, independent of the education authority, which is there just for that purpose - to help and support parents in what is an extremely difficult time of their life, coming to terms with their child's problems and needs and finding the right educational setting for them. BARCLAY Well let's hear from Robert Tan, who's on the line from Boreham Wood. Robert, you - are you in mainstream education? TAN Yeah I am currently. BARCLAY And how do you find it? TAN I find it pretty - I find it hard but not quite as hard as I used to because I've been moved from one school to the next quite a few times. BARCLAY So you're saying it's better than it was but would you have preferred to go to a special school? TAN I would, I've had two tribunals, both of them have been where it's been delayed and I've had to stay at Francis Cooper longer and longer. BARCLAY And are you still looking for a place in a special school? TAN Yes I am, I'm still looking and I felt really happy when I went there for a trial, yeah I am. BARCLAY And what was it that made you feel happy about it? TAN Well because there's so many people there who are similar to me, yeah and I just don't feel the same there. It's just - I feel so left out when I'm at this public school and to just be put there and they've got this kind of spell base where they just establish you'll do spelling and stuff for a few minutes and it just isn't really. BARCLAY Alan Reid is still on the line - head of special schools in Staffordshire. Alan, in this situation what about these assessments? Here is Robert and has been assessed several times and still not got that place? REID Right, well I've been supporting one or two parents who have got one child at my school and another child in mainstream and they're trying to get the child assessed for more intensive provision and they particularly want their second child to come to a special school and they're meeting a lot of barriers. And it's very important that any assessment is holistic and that all people working with the child come together to discuss their particular needs to get consensus of view and particularly listen to the parents and where you have a youngster as coherent as that young man we need to listen to them. BARCLAY Robert, do you feel you're being listened to? TAN Well I often feel like I'm being ignored a lot of the time at these tribunals. I often feel it's just the money - they've been given these deadlines and it's always been where they leave it till the last minute, these deadlines are like get a laptop to compensate or get someone in to help me with my social skills but it's always at the last minute they do it. BARCLAY Well Robert good luck and I hope that you do get the place you're looking for. Hazel Harding what about these tribunals and these assessments - are we seeing pupils perhaps who would have been assessed as in need of a special place, a special school, in the past now being assessed as if they can cope in a mainstream school? HARDING Yes, everyone is an individual though and is looked at individually. But we are seeing real successes in children who 10 years ago, 20 years ago, with those same needs, a special school would have been the automatic place for them, now they are successfully accessing mainstream throughout their school careers. And making a real success of their lives as a consequence. The tribunals are the means by which parents can challenge the education authority's decision on the child, they are independent and they are the means by which parents can go to someone outside of the authority and challenge what the authority has said is the appropriate place for their child. BARCLAY Clive Warden is on the line from Leicester, Clive what's your point? WARDEN Okay, the situation in Leicester at the moment is that although there are some very good special schools there are proposals in the pipeline, quite radical proposals, to change that, with an overall reduction in the number of places available and I think one of the major areas of concern is that under the proposals there's absolutely no separate special provision available, or there will be, for key stage 1 pupils. So if you have a child from the age of 4-7, if the proposals go through, if they're in mainstream and failing there is absolutely nowhere for them to go. BARCLAY So if they're in mainstream you're obviously concerned that there will be nowhere for them to go but if they're in mainstream are you saying that there are concerns that mainstream schools are not equipped to cope with them? WARDEN Well they're certainly not at the moment, looking at our own experience and talking to other parents where there is a very common experience of their children start off in mainstream school and then over maybe the first year it becomes apparent that it isn't working out. BARCLAY So why is it not working out? Is that down to the school, is it lack of teacher training, is it the fact that pupils and parents aren't being listened to, what is the problem? WARDEN Well I think there's several problems. I mean sort of looking at our own situation and we have an eight-year-old son who started off in mainstream and some of the issues that came out from that, was there was an unwillingness or maybe an inability for them to adapt their teaching methods to include him, to a just very simple lack of resources, very simple items such as getting a pair of left handed scissors for him because he can't use his right hand. We had to push for simple resources like that. There were areas such as the actual physical security because he's a child who has no sense of danger, he wanders off, and there were times when he was found on his own outside with the school gates open to a busy road. BARCLAY I know you're concerned about the closure of special schools but would you actually prefer those special schools to remain open or would you prefer the mainstream schools to tackle the problems? WARDEN I think - I think really it's an issue of choice, I think that for some children mainstream would be suitable but I think a lot of work needs to be done to get them up to the same standard of provision that's provided by the current special schools. But there will always be some children where I think separate special provision will be appropriate for them. BARCLAY Let me bring in Dr Roy Green, who's a psychologist. Dr Green, what's your view on special schools versus mainstream? GREEN Well the trouble with special schools is they take disabled people out of their environment and put them into a completely strange one and when they leave school at the age of 16, 18 whatever they then go back into a family where nobody in the locality knows them and they don't get any relationships at all, they don't get to the local discos because nobody knows them, they don't get - you meet people and you see somebody from down the street, they say - hello you. I had this myself because I was away in a special school till my early twenties and it was horrendous, I knew nobody in my locality. BARCLAY Do you think it works both ways though - also the people in the locality don't know people who have disabilities and special needs? GREEN Absolutely, oh yes, certainly. You see they see the disabled person as someone to be afraid of, somebody to be avoided because they've never met disabled people and it does actually add to the opportunities of people to meet disabled people and to get to know them. BARCLAY Thank you very much indeed for that point. We've had also, apart from having a lot of calls, we've had a lot of e-mails. Jo Sandford-Smith is here with some of those. Jo, what are people saying reflecting what we've been hearing? SANDFORD-SMITH Absolutely. And we've had lots of e-mails from people with disabilities, e-mailing us directly with their experiences. Mark Wilson is one of them. He's a disabled student in his final year of a computer science degree at Southampton University. He says: I went to a special school, which I loved, but needed to get out when I was 16 because I felt it was really holding me back. My girlfriend is also disabled and went to a mainstream school and for both of us both of the ways have worked in different ways but I feel both options should be treated equally and one shouldn't be pushed on you over and above the other. We've also had another e-mail from a 19-year-old called Marissa McKeith. She says she has no speech and very little controlled movement, as a result of cerebral palsy, as a consequence she talks by spelling out works on a special board. She says when she was at special school it was assumed that she had very little learning ability and she had to fight hard to get into mainstream and when she was in mainstream school she developed very rapidly and she left eventually with six GCSEs and went on to do A Levels. We've also had an e-mail from Dr John Ballard who contacted us to say that his nephew, who has learning disabilities, has been studying for GCSEs and is doing extremely well but he doesn't feel that the current grading system will reflect his progress and achievement. An F grade or a G grade is a fantastic result for him but he feels it will be seen as a failure by others in education or employment. So he says: I'd like to see the grades being more inclusive for those with learning disabilities. BARCLAY So very interesting e-mails there. Hazel Harding, what about that point on the grading system? Does there need to be something done? HARDING I think there needs to be a recognition that as your caller said some pupils to achieve a D, an E, an F is a real success and people need to celebrate that. Our schools celebrate it, unfortunately the sort of 5 A-C syndrome has taken a hold and people tend to judge schools by that. We've got very many schools which are doing very well by children with lesser abilities and learning disabilities and we need to make sure that that success is also celebrated. BARCLAY Well let me bring in Louise-Ella O'Shea from Birmingham. Louise-Ella, yes, your daughter I think has a slightly different problem. O'SHEA Yes. We were told at parents' evening, at the first junior parents' evening, she is beyond my teaching capabilities, she is top end special needs and since then nothing's happened. Well this is something that we've been aware of all the way along. BARCLAY So when you say top end, you're talking about a highly gifted child? O'SHEA Well yes, that's - I mean she left the infant school, because they're two separate schools, it's not a primary, she left the infant school with a pupil of the year award and she was always getting things. When she went into school at the very beginning she was only a fortnight off being reception, rather than nursery and I rang up and I asked at the time would she be able to go into reception - oh no, no the cut off is such and such, we don't have an flexibility, it's nursery. And she nagged me for a year - Can I go into the proper school? When do I start proper school? And she was very frustrated there, although of course she found everything - it was fun, it was more like playing. And by the time she got into reception she was a jump ahead almost because her birthday's September. And at the end of key stage 1, where they're only expected to achieve level 2, she got a level 3 for everything but one, that was a level 2 and that was the one that upset her. BARCLAY You say that she's been frustrated. O'SHEA I think she is now, I think she is now because she's been in the school now for two terms, since that parents' evening there's been no suggestion of anything extra, any extension work and any flexibility within the literacy hour - I mean she's always writing, she's writing plays, she's writing stories, she's writing books, the way she writes dialogue is actually more believable than some drama that's on the tele. And I just think that there's nothing forthcoming from their side. Apparently there's no legal requirement to actually do anything with a top end special needs child and yet - I gave up teaching to have my family, I've got three now, the one who's going to be two is talking more than anybody else, they all think he's older. BARCLAY Let me just put that point very briefly to Hazel because we're coming to the end. Hazel Harding, do LEA's make enough provision, very briefly, for people like that? HARDING I think it probably is a problem in very many LEAs, my advice would be to talk to the education authority and talk again to the school, put the points that the lady's put so ably this morning. BARCLAY HazelHarding thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for all your calls and I'm very sorry if you didn't get through, thank you all. Back to the You and Yours homepage The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for external websites |
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