Adaptive Teaching

Adaptive teaching has entered the language of education and, as innovation and developments (or buzzwords and fads!) often will, has already taken on multiple interpretations across the sector.  I’ve seen school level tick lists of adaptive features and single page summaries of what each department does for SEND in their subject, and I would usually strive to distance myself form anything like this… but this is different.  Both of those approaches have missed the point though. 

Adaptive teaching may be new language to try and overcome a very old problem, but it is far from being the new ‘quality first teaching’ (shudder) or differentiation.  It is barely SEND provision or even a discrete provision at all.  The ECF’s descriptors cover a broad range of aspects of what happens in our schools and it has resonated with me because it aligns so well with Mountain Rescue and the work we have been doing at Dixons Trinity for the past ten years. 

And I’m worried.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted.  But I’m worried too.  Because the history of (attempted) inclusive education is filled with promising developments and missed opportunities, and a good idea isn’t enough; right now, we are in the adaptive teaching danger zone.  It already has a buzzwordy name, a checklist, and a strong association with SEND, so it is in grave danger of becoming a separate thing, something we do for our SEND students and separate from the ‘real’ work of teaching and running our schools.  This is a mind-set that has already let our students down so many times before, but we have to start somewhere, I suppose. 

Schools operate on a simple cyclical process.  We establish where our students are at currently, we use that information to plan what we are going to do to move them forward, we implement our plans, and then we review how it went, using this review to update our information and start the cycle again. 

Assess.  Plan.  Do.  Review.

Everything else happening in our schools is either to support that cycle to happen effectively, to maximise on the opportunities it provides, or a combination of the two.  For example, the behaviour system is to support classroom management, but also provides opportunities for personal development.  Safeguarding is how we ensure access to education and we are also ideally placed to provide early and emergency intervention.   We probably most closely associate the ‘assess plan do review’ (APDR) process with SEND provision and the graduated response.  SEND APDR is simply the same process we have in place for all students, but with increasing levels of specificity and personalisation to meet the needs of groups and individuals who require a more targeted or specialist approach.  For students with SEND it is a system that is enshrined in law, but actually it’s a pattern of response we see throughout our schools and for other areas of vulnerability and need.  For example, there will be whole school routines for managing behaviour, and then graduated layers and increasing individualisation for just the children who need it.  The same goes for mental health and for safeguarding. 

The ECF descriptors don’t give us anything additional to do, or anything different that should be in place for students with SEND, but instead gives us the most effective, and therefore inclusive, approach for all learners.  It gives us a lens through which we can view our schools as a system, identify gaps and analyse for optimal inclusivity, and understand how all the moving parts must work together as a whole in order for all children to be able to learn and thrive.

The first phase of the cycle is assessment, including not only meaningful and usable academic data, but all of the information we can pour into the system in order to empower teachers, leaders and support staff to work with precision.  It includes academic levels, but also pastoral information and what staff know from their own observations and interactions with students. 

For the students we identify as SEND, it includes whatever their school is using to share children’s reasonable adjustments and strategies with staff, typically something like an Individual Education Plan (IEP), pen portrait, one page profile, or similar.  With this, and with all of the sources of information contributing to this phase of the cycle, leaders must ensure that the quality, quantity and relevance of the information is right, that support is provided and time to review it is protected, so that staff aren’t overwhelmed or having to sort through what is and isn’t useful.

The next phase of the cycle is to use that rich and varied information to plan and resource effectively, including planning for reasonable adjustments and specialist resources to be in place, but the ECF puts particular emphasis on ‘flexible grouping’.  This might be the opportunity I’ve been waiting for to move away from the term ‘double staffing’, which was an accurate description of it when we first said it, to something that better describes what it has become.  Although literal double staffing of lessons does still happen, it would now be much more accurate to describe it as a willingness to be flexible, a bit creative, and a very information led way to staff and group students.  At this phase, I would also include effective use of teaching assistants, i.e. following the research and not received wisdoms, and ensuring well-stocked, tidy and purposeful spaces for our children to learn in.

At the heart of the cycle, and therefore at the heart of everything we do, is the lesson.  The black box.  The moment.  Our raison d’être.  You can have all the right information and have made all the best plans, but ultimately it comes down to what the teacher does in their classroom.  The best laid plans can turn out not to be quite the right thing and, to complicate things further, our audience are children who have their own personalities and preferences, skills and needs, good moods and bad, just as anyone does. They are expert curveball throwers and so teachers have to be expert curveball catchers.  Standardised routines and resources, such as expected lesson formats, ‘do now’ activities and curriculum booklets, reduce extraneous cognitive load and clutter, help share best practice and create consistency, but must be used as a springboard and not a ball and chain.  What the students need are teachers who are knowledgeable (about their subject and about their students), who have a range of skills and strategies to draw from, and who have the confidence, autonomy and agency to teach dynamically and make responsive decisions in order to maximise on the opportunities the lesson brings them.

Making the most of the lesson itself also relies on support and conducive factors from outside the classroom.  Well-managed transitions, absence cover, senior leadership presence and, whenever something results in a child being out of the lesson (typically for behaviour, SEND or mental health reasons), systems that prioritise quickly returning them back to the classroom where they belong are all crucial for ensuring the lesson itself goes well.  There are valid reasons why a child might be out of their lesson and things like withdrawal intervention, time out cards, internal exclusion, part-time timetables and suspensions, all have a place, but they also all take students away from the thing they came to us to get.  They are effectively forms of legitimised absence and overuse of them, arguably any use of them, results in children being away from the classroom, creating gaps in learning, damaging relationship and, often, children affected finding it increasingly difficult to cope in the classroom.  A student might need a behaviour response, a break or a particular intervention but, ultimately it is our main offer i.e. the main timetable, routines and lessons, that tends to be our most effective, well-resourced and stable offer.  Often it is our most vulnerable learners, the ones that need the very best and most consistent experience, that are most liable to spending time out of their lessons.  We should be operating on the basis that every exit from the classroom is a tragedy.  Unless we are running a behaviour system that recognises classroom paramountcy over getting that pound of flesh, and SEND provision that recognises the difference between a reasonable adjustment and educational provision, we are inevitably going to be letting children down.

The final phase of the cycle is to review.  This includes academic progress and attainment, but also evaluation of how things have gone, what has been learned about the children, what has changed for the better and the worse, and what can be fed back into the next iteration of the cycle, so that it isn’t just repeating but evolving and improving too.  Another key feature of the ECF descriptors is formative assessment and, although there may be literal APDR cycles as well (e.g. timings for assessments or providing feedback on SEND targets), in general I would say that the cycles are more figurative; it is a constant process of using rich information, smart resourcing, and formative assessment to make excellent decisions, big and small, about what action should be taken next. 

What does this have to do with Mountain Rescue?  The adaptive teaching cycle and the school’s pastoral services are two intertwining branches of the same tree, with each one both taking and providing information, resource and support for the other.  The two are inexorably linked, and so the flow of information, resource and people (staff and children) will move between them whether they are optimised for that to be done efficiently or not. 

Mountain Rescue, the model we use (there will be others, I’m sure), is a three-tier multi-disciplinary approach, utilising shared spaces, combined resources, and collaborative leadership to streamline provision and meet the needs of all children holistically.  We can continue to talk about SEND, safeguarding, challenging behaviour, poor attendance and various other vulnerabilities as if they are groups of children distinct from one another, but of course, in reality they are not.  Our highest profile students are likely to fall into multiple categories, and every child has elements of each and the potential to escalate through our systems.  I have seen enough examples of our most vulnerable, ‘edge of education’ students being caught in a tug of war between supportive (but segregating) SEND systems and overly punitive behaviour systems, or life-changing placement decisions being made in the absence of important safeguarding or SEND information, to know that it is about more than just streamlining.  It is about finding ways to do better for our children who are most at risk of losing their entitlement to the best protective factor we can give them and the very reason we exist; a high quality education.  Mountain Rescue is how we optimise the flows of information, resource and support to protect that entitlement for every student.

Another important overarching factor is relationships.  Understanding the teacher student relationship, how it impacts on teaching and learning, and being proactive in fostering, maintaining and protecting it (which requires high quality professional development, just like any of other important aspect of our job) is crucial and has relevance throughout the cyclical process.  What we learn from our interactions with students is a valuable information source and one that (hopefully!) strengthens and strengthens over time, but maybe more importantly, building strong relationships – trust – is how we get children to take learning risks and how we notice the subtle responses that enable us to make dynamic decisions.  Non-attendance, not having your needs met, and inappropriate or excessive use of sanctions are all threats to our relationships with students and so need to be minimised wherever possible.   

So how can we make the most of the potential adaptive teaching brings whilst avoiding the pitfalls of previous attempts to make education more inclusive.  Firstly, this is not a separate thing to do, or a replacement for a previous concept, but a new lens through which to look at our school systems as a whole, identify any gaps, disconnects or in-inclusivity, but probably most importantly, to find opportunities to move forward for the benefit of all students.  Secondly, to remember that the SENCO is an important voice in this conversation, but as soon as you make this a SENCO responsibility, you have missed the point and the opportunity.  This is not SEND provision, it is a way of making your school more inherently inclusive as the norm.  And thirdly, if you use the ECF descriptors as a checklist and tick each one off as done whilst students with SEND remain overrepresented in behaviour and attendance data, your corridors and classrooms are calm through extensive use of internal exclusion, suspensions and part-time timetables, meaning that your vulnerable groups get poor outcomes (not just academic outcomes but other measures as well) you have not been reflective enough. 

Adaptive teaching isn’t really a thing, but a description of what a school does just optimised for inclusivity; but that doesn’t mean it isn’t needed.  The reality is that vulnerable groups still typically receive a second-rate experience of education and adaptive teaching is an opportunity to do something about it; it is an opportunity to make things right for more students and, as if that isn’t enough, also to better understand and maximise our systems and how they work together to build more inclusivity, efficiency and sustainability into our most effective and most stable offer.  It is a way to steady the ship and succeed in spite of any external factors that might affect us.  In the end it will come down to the same thing that any potential change for our most vulnerable groups comes down to; not just what do we want, but what are you willing to do to achieve it?  We all want to be more inclusive, but what are you willing to actually change, even if you’re the only school in the country that is doing it, to make it happen?  Because the only real inclusion is equality.  And we are a long, long way from that.

SEND and Social Justice v2

It’s rare, if ever, that I meet anyone in education that doesn’t recognise that there are improvements to be made in how we manage SEND and inclusion in mainstream schools.  Nor have I ever met anyone who is really vehemently invested in the current statutory and established systems for it.  Yet the conversations continue to go around in the same circles, with the same ‘beyond our control’ problems being blamed, and we continue to lean in to familiar approaches whilst bemoaning lack of availability or whatever, with little or no evidence of their positive impact anywhere to be found.  Certainly, part of the problem is that the conversations about SEND and inclusion remain separate from the wider discourse within education.  We talk about it like it is something entirely different to education itself.  Inclusion is not a separate issue, but a thread that runs through every other issue in education.  Actually, it is so much more than even that.  Achieving true inclusivity for SEND leaners in education is a matter of social justice.  Inclusion is a human rights issue.

Inclusion is not the static set of circumstances we have come to accept as the outward signs of being a school that does something (anything!) for our students with SEND.  Inclusion is the journey, the steps we are taking towards the real goal of educational equality for all.  Inclusion is a process.  Justice is the destination.

As long as we continue to ‘include’ our learners with SEND through second rate and segregated provision, by making them an educational offer that lacks any evidence base and keeps them separate from the things that we know work, we are at a standstill on the journey towards where we actually need to be. 

The separate conversations that persists around lack of funding for SEND, the difficulties of navigating an overly bureaucratic system, and the need for extensive specialist knowledge, and even the ones around best deployment of TAs or which literacy interventions are best to buy in, all miss the point entirely.  They are all based on the assumption that SEND is something different, difficult, expensive and specialist.  An inconvenient aside to the real work we are doing.  But these are not the problems but the symptoms of the problems.  First and foremost, our learners with SEND are just learners, and we know what a high quality, evidence based learning experience looks like – we do it every day for our students without SEND.

This isn’t to say there aren’t problems; there are.  But until we step back from the received wisdoms, bad habits and externalised blame culture of the current, bizarrely entrenched (considering its relatively short history) approach, we will not be able to see them for what they are.  Until we see and accept them, we will not be able to begin the work to resolve them.  Inclusion is a journey, and we will only start to make progress when we stop walking in tight circles. 

The real problems:

• The issue of inclusion in education is both a cause and a symptom of disability discrimination in wider society
• Schools and the education system were already established before the concept of inclusion was introduced
• The current approach is based on the fairly arbitrary notion of there being distinct SEND and non-SEND learners
• Inclusion itself is a barrier to a high quality education

The adult society we have now – the teachers and leaders, parents and employers – were educated under these circumstances and now make the decisions, set the parameters, and measure the accountability based on what they learnt.  We recreate the same set of circumstances and teach the next generation the same thing.  We were raised in a flawed system and now we are marking our own homework.  This is why learners with SEND are the students we get away with not working for.

Unfortunately, if your plans for improving the learning experience of students with SEND in your own school involves more withdrawal intervention, more TAs, a bigger inclusion base etc., you’re circumventing the real issues and facilitating the problems to loop around again.  It isn’t your SEND provision that needs to change, it’s your whole school.  Having students with SEND is not exactly a surprise to us.  We know they are going to be there.  It’s about time we start designing our schools like we do. 

As long as acceptance of the current system continues, our learners with SEND continue to be the victims of injustice.  Their right to a high quality education is unmet and, in this being true, we double down on the problem being repeated again.  They are denied the education they are entitled to and the learning opportunities that might equip them to challenge the injustice.  They are segregated from the social situations that provide opportunities to develop their understanding and skills for being part of a community, even just feeling entitled to be part of the community, and all of us are denied the experience and benefits of functioning in a truly diverse and egalitarian society.  It is no wonder we keep walking in circles.

So, how do we move things forward?  It is clear that this is not a situation with an easy solution or quick fix and it may even feel like we aren’t ready – the cracks in the system loom large and, of course, with more funding, better training etc. we would be able to do more – and I certainly aren’t advocating pulling the rug out from under anyone’s feet.  What we are, though, is ready to start.  And the first steps are simple and free.

We can start be seeing inclusion for what it really is; a fight for our learners’ human rights.  It is a means, not an end, and it is a responsibility of ours as educators of children.  This isn’t an inconvenience, aside or additional responsibility; it is our job.  The school is the children, all of them, and it needs to work for them.  We work for them.

The only conversations about inclusion that will move inclusion forward are the ones that happen within the conversations about every single other aspect of school life.  The conversation about staffing in maths has to be about staffing in a way that reaches and teaches every child, not just most.  The talks about routines at lunch time or break time need to be talks about how those times are going to work for all students, not just most.  This may mean that the decisions made result in more change than we are usually comfortable with, but that is what this is; the current design – even with tweaks and add-ons – does not work for every student.  It doesn’t work for the students who need it to work the most.  We either want it and we are willing to work for it, or we don’t and we aren’t.  Change on this level won’t happen overnight, there’s a lot to do and there’s a lot to undo, but change can start straight away.

Ask yourself this: what would the end of the inclusion journey look like in your classroom, lessons, school, MAT or LA?  What’s the dream for you learners, SEND and all?  Once you are clear where you are aiming, you can share that vision, share it again and share it some more.  Share the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, but – just as important – the ‘why’.  As with many issues of social justice, there are those who have the privilege of being able to disengage from it, and may be many more who are genuinely unaware of the issues.  Knowledge can be powerful.  Information can be motivation. 

Do the teachers in your school know the statistics for adults with disabilities, including learning disabilities, look like? Would they teach your students with SEND differently if they did? Clarity, consistency and communication of the mission and the vision is key.

Book recommendations:
– ‘Don’t Send Him In Tomorrow’ Jarlath O’Brien
– ‘Crippled’ Frances Ryan

Then there is the management of the new artefacts and routines of SEND and inclusion in education on the basis of this renewed understanding.  These things are behind the scenes, subtle and seamless compared to the outward signs of inclusion that we are used to.  They do not necessarily serve that ableist desire to be seen to be doing something.  Because real inclusion – the destination of that journey – is built in.  It is everyone able to get what they need, with equality and equity, and as part of the main.  Real inclusion is invisible. 

So, who is going to make this happen?  The children in our schools right now don’t have time to wait for review and reform and, based on our history of this, they’d be waiting longer even than that.  They don’t have the option of waiting for society to change – they are the potential for society to change, if only we can facilitate it.  We can’t rely on the systems in place to hold us to account.  Yes, there have been some recent improvements in this area, but also the accountability measures in education were written for a system, and by those (probably unknowingly) entrenched in that system, that accepts SEND as ‘other’ and less as enough for some people.  These things all need to change as well, I know, but we don’t have time to keep waiting for that to happen.  The bad and the good news is that this will need to be a grassroots movements.  It’s bad news because we are the people that need to make it happen.  It’s good news because we are the people that can. 

It is true that I rarely, if ever, meet people that don’t recognise that great change is needed for inclusion in mainstream education, or that are heavily invested in the current systems, but it is also true that I rarely, if ever, meet anyone that is angry enough… or at all… about the injustice.  We are talking about the rights of our learners that need us the most to have access to a high quality education.  We are talking about the rights of all learners to have the opportunity to learn first-hand the value of living in a diverse community, where flexibility, responsiveness, kindness and understanding are the very culture.  We are talking about our own chance to begin to make tomorrow’s society a little bit better for a few more people.  And all we need to do is start.

I originally wrote a blog about SEND and social justice in November 2015.  In fact, it wasn’t a typical blog post but a copy and paste of an email conversation I’d had with @SENcollusion about a book she was in the process of contributing to (now published).  To this day, this is the page on my blog that gets the most hits, both cumulatively and day by day, even though it is old and even though I never really promoted it on social media at any point.  It is also the only page that is mainly found through search engines, not social media.  I’m a passive observer of the stats page on my website, but the original SEND and social justice post stands out and it got me thinking – how and why are people finding that page?  The only conclusions that I can come to are that people are searching the terms ‘SEND’ and ‘social justice’ together and that there is so little out there they are ending up on my blog.  They must be so disappointed! 

The link to the original post is here, and I’m not going to say it isn’t worth a read because @SENcollusion posed some really interesting questions, but this newer version is my attempt to make something that is worth the click-through from Google.  I’ve tried to lay my thoughts out more coherently but, more importantly, to signpost and link to some more substantial related information.  I hope people continue to search the internet for SEND and social justice, and I hope that, if they find themselves here, that it is at least a starting point for them to keep searching. 

Inclusion itself is a barrier to a high quality education

We know what a high quality education looks like, we do it every day.  We insist on a certain level of qualification and training in order for someone to be considered a teacher, we have accountability measures and we follow curricula that is designed and debated to the nᵀᴴ degree.  We have set benchmarks for progress and attainment that are measured and published nationally, and we sit exams that are then asked about in applications and interviews for decades to come.  I know there are ongoing debates about many, probably all, aspects of what I have just listed but, really, this is beside the point.  It represents the established best offer we have for our students right now.  It is our best endeavours, and all the discourse really tells us is that it is worth debating.  So if this is what we have decided is right, the most right we can currently offer, why would any of our students sit outside of it?  Why would any child not be entitled to it?  At very least, if we are separating any student from what we have deemed to be our best offer, it had better be for good reason.  It had better to be something genuinely equitable.  And that in itself raises some questions, because it may be the case that we feel that the things we remove our students with SEND to are somehow a better option for them.  But how do we know?  Remember that, for all students, it is education and not inclusion that is the aim.  For each intervention your students with SEND access, every withdrawal from timetable or separation from the main vehicle for learning (including accessing their lesson / teacher via a TA or similar), ask yourself these critical questions:

1. On what basis have they been identified? 
2. What learning will they be missing? 
3. Is what they are getting instead genuinely better for them?
4. Is what they are accessing instead led by a qualified and accountable member of staff?
5. Is what they are accessing instead evidence based?  Is it likely to lead on to equitable adult outcomes?
6. What social opportunities does it impact? 
7. How has it been framed to them?  To others?
8. What would a truly ‘social model’ (deficit in environment) approach look like?

Too often these questions aren’t asked, or they’re asked but not answered honestly, and our ‘additional and different’ ends up being based on received wisdoms, bad habits, and teacher convenience, and then we wonder why some students make less progress than others.  Wouldn’t we expect any learner to make less progress if we constantly blocked their access to the teachers and lessons?  What are we really saying by letting some learners – probably the very ones that need the most qualified, experienced and accountable input – sit outside of our systems, our current best?  There aren’t children who came to learn and children who came to be looked after; they all need both.  It’s our schools that need to change to make that happen.

The Inclusion Delusion

The current approach is based on the fairly arbitrary notion of there being distinct SEND and non-SEND learners

I have a couple of concerns about this particular aspect of our current approach to inclusion in education.  Firstly, it forces a dichotomy between SEND and non-SEND learners that I think simply does not exist.  The abilities and needs of our students exist on a vast and always evolving matrix of spikes and troughs, clusters and gaps, that cannot be usefully polarised or made linear in a way that makes any sense to me.  Of course, I know there are students who have needs that are met through additional and different to our standard offer, but that distinction is made on the limitations of our offer, not – as we behave like it is – the ‘deviation from norm’ of the child.  This is a medical model approach if ever I’ve seen it, but that is a whole other rant for a whole other time.  Ultimately, the line between SEND and non-SEND depends on the scope of the school’s universal offer as much as it does on the needs of the children and, at very least, it is a concept with a degree of relativity at its borders.  And yes, some students needs are unique within that school and needs are met through provision that is bespoke.  This does nothing to sway my assertions.  We know that this is going to be the case and could design our systems to incorporate high quality flexibility as the norm if we wanted to. 

My second concern is this: as SENCOs, senior leaders, teachers and TAs, we need to recognise the weight of the decisions we are making about our students.  As education professionals, we make decisions about whether or not a student is on the SEND register, in this intervention or on that alternative pathway… as education professions we do that.  Not doctors or psychologists.  Not future tellers or psychics.  We make decisions that may change the course of a child’s life on our limited knowledge of this flawed and arbitrary notion of SEND.

The Us and Them Effect

How Far From the Medical Model Have We Actually Come?

Unlearn Everything

Schools and the education system were already established before the concept of inclusion was introduced

Schools and education were designed and evolved without the presence of, and expectation to be accountable for, the diversity of needs we now seek to include.  Inclusion as we know it, if we take Warnock’s 1978 report as a starting point, has a relatively short history.  Inclusion as we know it is the range of afterthoughts, add-ons and annexes we have bolted on to an education system that simply wasn’t designed to work for the range off children we now teach.  It’s a sticking plaster and should never have been seen as a permanent solution.  What we need is a redesign, but it is difficult to turn a moving ship.  It isn’t going to happen overnight, but it can and should be happening incrementally through every decision we make.  If we set our sights on the right horizon, anyway.  Because now our learners with SEND are not a surprise to us.  We know that a proportion of our students will have needs that require additionality against our current standard offer.  Isn’t it time to start planning everything we do like we know they are going to be there? 

Another Brick in the Wall?

The Enterprise of Putting All of the Children Into the Same Building

The issue of inclusion in education is both a cause and a symptom of disability discrimination in wider society

There is no way that inclusion in education can be usefully separated from the issue of disability discrimination in society; they are one and the same issue.  The ableist bias, unconscious (probably), of the decision makes and leaders results in the segregated systems and spaces in schools, and the next generation learns that that’s just the way it is.  The cycle could be breakable at any point and there is work being done at societal level as well, but change will never come if we all just continue to wait for it.  In education, we have a unique and important opportunity to provide a full and balanced enough education and childhood experience to enable them to think and do things differently when it is their turn to be the decision makers.  I have highlighted the word ‘experience’ for a reason.  The lessons, schemes and curricula we teacher are just one thing and, without doubt, our students with SEND are often denied access to those things, but what about the hidden curriculum?  Breaks and lunchtimes, social experiences, trips and events, and even just moving around the building with peers and as part of the main?  These are all learning experiences too and they are experiences that our learners with SEND often have reduced access to.  If they miss out on those experiences they still learn something, but what?  That ‘all’ doesn’t include them?  And how will that learning affect their ability to thrive and to feel able to fight for their rights as adults? They are being deskilled before they’ve even started.  But wait, there’s more – what do we all miss out on in these segregated systems?  A truly inclusive society is one that can flex and respond to everyone’s needs.  It has range and variety, smart infrastructure, empathy and understanding.  Don’t we all need those things at times?  We miss out on those things and we miss out on the learning we can take from them too.  Through our current segregated approach we teach all of our students that different is problematic, someone else’s problem and nothing to do with us.  We are teaching this to the policy makers, employers, neighbours and parents of tomorrow.  We need to stop.

The Revolution Will Not Have Disabled Access

Toilet Talk

Special Needs Jungle

Scope Disability Perception Gap Report

Grassroots Inclusion

“High quality teaching that is differentiated and personalised will meet the individual needs of the majority of children and young people.”

“The leaders of… schools… should establish and maintain a culture of high expectations that expects those working with children and young people with SEN or disabilities to include them in all the opportunities available to other children and young people so they can achieve well.”

“The class or subject teacher should remain responsible for working with the [SEN] child on a daily basis.  Where the interventions involve group or one-to-one teaching away from the main class or subject teacher, they should still retain responsibility for the pupil.”

SEND Code of Practice 0-25 (DfE / DoH, 2015)

All teachers are teachers of SEND.  I think (hope) that all teachers, newer or more experienced, know and accept this, although it seems to remain easier said than done.  Maybe the world of SEND, especially for a non-specialist practitioner appears vast and daunting and, despite the Code of Practice being very clear that classroom teachers and whole school systems retain the bulk of the responsibility for SEND provision and outcomes, the established and accepted systems in place to support inclusion reinforce a message that SEND is something that can only be managed by specialists, experts, and through separation and segregation.  The good news is that no one teacher needs to know everything there is to know about SEND. Each individual teacher just needs to get to know their students (and their students’ parents!) and know who to ask / where to find more information about the specific additional needs they are supporting.  It is easy, though, to see how classroom teachers would get the impression that they need their SEND learners to be supported by teaching assistants and withdrawn from their lessons for other provision in order to get the special things that they need that are different to what they, as the classroom teacher, are offering the rest of the class.  When it comes to inclusion, I think it is fair to assume that most schools are pretty much using the same approach and that they are striving to do the things that it entails – teaching assistant support, withdrawal intervention, etc. – as best they can offer, but the outcomes for SEND students (both within education and, where reasonable comparison can be made, in their adult lives beyond – see links at the end of this post) remain poor and certainly not equitable with their non-SEND counterparts.  So where are we going wrong?  We say that all teachers are teachers of SEND, and that is certainly the right thing to be saying, but until we acknowledge and overcome the barriers to teachers actually achieving that – the bad habits, received wisdoms, and misconceptions of what inclusion should look like – those outcomes for our SEND learners are unlikely to improve.  The legislation in place already allows for this.  In fact, the wording of the Code of Practice makes it clear that whole school approaches, not separate provision, is the first step and majority share of meeting SEND need.  Lack of funding for SEND is an easy out for teachers and school leaders and defaulting to blaming it is in itself a barrier to making things better for our SEND students.  Undoubtedly SEND is underfunded and there’s a battle being waged on that front too, but increased funding is not the answer to our inclusion issues and even if additional funds are provided you can be sure that there will still be work to do to make things right because, like the legislation, it isn’t actually the problem.  What’s more, the SEND students we are teaching right now don’t have time for us to wait for a magic money tree to appear. 

So if it isn’t that we each need to know every possible incarnation of SEND that we may ever encounter, it isn’t an issue with the legislation, and it isn’t that we need to wait for further funding to be provided… what is it?  It is something that is much, much simpler but, somehow, possibly harder to achieve than any of these things, but the good news is this; it is within our control. 

Perhaps the biggest barrier to inclusion in mainstream schools is the misconception that SEND students are something different to students in general.  Schools were well established long before the concept of inclusion, initially called integration, was introduced and the things that we see representing inclusion now are the add-ons and exceptions introduced to try and make education work for a wider range of needs than it was originally intended for.  This might have been the right thing to begin with, but it is this approach that keeps some students ‘special’ and in need of something different to their peers; true inclusion would be a system designed to meet the full range of needs as part of the main offer.  As long as the current approach is in place, it is inclusion and not a high quality education that will remain the aim for SEND students. The first thing we can each do to start to make things better for our SEND learners is to understand this and start to adjust our own choices accordingly so that our children in our classroom start to benefit.  The problem of how SEND students are disadvantaged by the current approach is huge, and there is no use throwing ourselves at a brick wall, but we can all chip away at the bottom of it and eventually the wall will fall.

I appreciate that this is hardly a practical guide to being more inclusive in the classroom, there are plenty of those kinds of things out there, but – although I’m not saying that these things don’t have value – I don’t think those books necessarily have the answer either.  Strategies and systems that work well in one school, or even a few schools, won’t necessarily work in all schools.  When we, either as classroom teachers or maybe department heads or senior leaders, are planning and designing what our lesson, schemes of work, routines etc. are going to be for our students as a whole we look at what is available – what’s working well in other schools, what new ideas and trends are emerging – and we borrow and adapt, mix and match, to make it right for our own setting.  Meeting the needs of our SEND students isn’t just doing this for SEND provision as well; it is not needing to because those children were included in your thinking when you were planning for your class, subject, year group or school as a whole. 

This isn’t to say that there aren’t students who need additional and different in order to succeed; there certainly are.  But the more intrinsically inclusive your overall approach is, the more you design things from scratch to meet the needs of the full range of students you have (our SEND students aren’t a surprise to us in mainstream; we know they are going to be there!), the less additional and different you might find that you need.  Crucially, any additional and different that is in place should be of equitable quality, minimise disruption of their access to education, be for their benefit and not someone else’s convenience, be evidence based (or advised by an outside agency expert e.g. educational psychologist) and regularly reviewed, not just a habit (i.e. “we have always done this for our SEND students instead of them going to MFL / art / music…”).

It also isn’t to suggest that anyone should just be winging it and hoping for the best!  As with so much in education, success in this area boils down to positive relationships, communication and a willingness to move with the times, even if the only thing changing is your own knowledge, experience and confidence.  No one teacher needs to (or can! – anyone that claims otherwise is terribly, terribly underestimating!) know everything there is to know about every possible type of additional need that might be present in their classroom; we each just need to know, and be willing to learn more, about our children.  Getting to know, and listening very carefully to parents and carers, as well as the children themselves, doing a bit of research about specific needs they may have, speaking with the SENCO or previous teachers etc. will get you to where you need to be quicker.  And believe in yourself!  You’re the teacher, subject specialist person who chose to put yourself there for these kids; your SEND students need and deserve to be with you too. 

There are a couple of things I would advocate for all teachers, at every level, and not just for SENCOs and others with a special / specific interest in inclusion, to do though.  The first of these is to read the SEND Code of Practice (link) and find out what the statutory musts and shoulds of inclusion actually are, what your role is and where you sit in the network of systems designed to support our more vulnerable learners.  The Code lives solidly in the domain of the SEND specialists, but it shouldn’t; this is a document for all of us to read, understand and use to better meet the needs of our students.  Secondly, find out more about what the educational and adult outcomes for your SEND students are likely to be if we don’t actively improve things for them.  A little bit of context and understanding of the bigger picture can help us to understand why our role as inclusive educators is so important and why it is crucial that we get it right and continue to get it more and more right in the future.  I’ve included some links and suggestions below.

Finally, question everything.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that everything, or even anything, that is already in place for your SEND students is wrong, but so much of what we call ‘inclusive’ is actual habitual; received wisdoms that we assume, because everyone does it, must be the right thing.  Ask yourself if it is equitable to what their non-SEND peers are getting.  Ask yourself if it is yielding the outcomes that the children involved need.  Ask yourself if it could change for the better, and if it could… change it.  Ultimately, we know what a high quality education looks like and we do it every day for our students as a whole.  If your SEND students are getting anything other than that, if they are getting ‘inclusion’ instead of their education, there are still questions to be asked and changes to be made. Changes that can be made by you.

https://www.scope.org.uk/media/disability-facts-figures/

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/learning-disabilities/help-information/learning-disability-statistics-

https://www.mencap.org.uk/learning-disability-explained/research-and-statistics

Click to access papworth-trust-disability-facts-and-figures-2018.pdf

EEF SEN in Mainstream Schools

Five recommendations on special education needs in mainstream schools

I can’t help but feel that this EEF guidance report on supporting SEN in mainstream has slipped under the radar a little, probably because it coincided with an unprecedented global pandemic, but maybe because it doesn’t really offer anything new or different.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree with (most of) the main premise of the report, it is evidence based (although it is disappointing to find that there is no research into the impact of the graduated approach in England), and it may be that it brings those same messages to new audiences – a good thing, because I’m not sure many more people than SENCOs and other SEN practitioners engage with the Code of Practice or the Regs.  A broader range of educators are, I think, likely to engage with the EEF guidance, though.  The frustration, for me, is that this is not a new message, that SEND learners basically need the same things that all learners need, that all teachers are teachers of SEND etc., but, as always seems to be the case, it just doesn’t go far enough to actually make it happen.  I don’t think I can ever read a report like this from the perspective of a non-specialist, but I’m also not sure it even delivers a clear and consistent message within its own pages.  I am all for anything that promotes the key messages that SEND learners need the same high quality teaching and learning experience as their peers, but I’m also very cautious of anything that perpetuates things that are currently a barrier to that becoming a reality.

Certainly a main theme of this guidance is that SEND learners need, and are entitled to, high quality teaching and learning, and access to time with their class teacher(s), and yet one of the five recommendations is still focused on maximising the use of TAs, and states that the individual and small group interventions are ‘often’ delivered by them.  Surely, if we really want our SEND students to receive equitable high quality teaching, then those interventions should be delivered by qualified and accountable teachers (unless it is a non-academic intervention, in which case it should be delivered by an appropriately trained individual).  If there was a high attaining student with a gap in their knowledge, or they simply weren’t clicking with a new concept or skill, I’m pretty confident that the subject teacher would be the one to sit with them, either individually or in a group with others having the same issue, and provide that intervention, not a TA.  What is it that keeps stopping us from offering that same high quality teaching intervention to all students?  The guidance report itself states that students with SEND ‘have the greatest need for excellent teaching’ and yet still advocates for the most targeted teaching to be delivered by non-teachers.

Another core premise of the report is that the evidence based strategies that are proven to best support SEND in the classroom are actually really simple and, if not already in use in many classrooms, would be easy to introduce.  Again, this aligns with the message that all teachers are teachers of SEND and that what SEND students need is, mainly, within classrooms and lessons.  The report also, however, perpetuates the misconception that SEND is too complex, with too many requirements that have to be externally sourced, and that it is too broad to expect teachers to learn every possible permutation of SEND that might be present in their classroom.  I know there are elements of truth to this.  I know that some children are more likely to need the input of outside agency specialists, and that EHCPs form part of an LA, and national, system that remains – despite reform – pretty bureaucratic and statute bound.  But, perceiving this as complex and specialist is still a symptom of a segregatory, us and them understanding of disability; it isn’t the problem it is being made out to be.  We bring outside agency individuals in to support aspects of behaviour, social care, to deliver PSHE and to deliver music lessons, and it is not considered to be unmanageable or complicated.  We adhere to strict, externally accountable and high stakes requirements in order to be able to host GCSE examinations, usually for large groups with different combinations of subjects and papers, without considering it so complex that it can only be managed by specialists.  And teachers are not required to have an in depth knowledge of every possible additional need that they might one day teach any more than they are required to know every possible socio-economic or environmental factor that might have impacted on any learner who enters their classroom; you only need to get to know the children you actually have.  We can stop making this into a problem that we don’t need.

I have a couple of other little niggles with the report (I have already blogged about funding for SEND here – Money Where The Mouth Is – and I don’t think this blog is big enough to cover the ‘SEND student’ or ‘student with SEND’ conversation, or the report’s lean towards the biopsychosocial model of disability and my concerns about that) but, ultimately, if the message that students with SEND need the same things as all learners and that these things are, largely, already available in our schools, is being repeated and extended to new audiences, then that can only be a good thing.  Until, though, we can shake off the shackles of the prevailing and entrenched approach to inclusion that is in place in most schools, reports like this are not going to be the revolution our children actually need and deserve.

How far from the medical model have we actually moved?

How far from the medical model have we actually moved?

It has been playing on my mind for a while now, that what seemed so clear cut in the earlier stages of my time as a SENCo,  is not actually the reality of what I see happening on a day to day basis, both in education and beyond.  How far from the medical model approach to understanding disability in society, and specifically in education, have we actually moved?  A quick twitter poll – always an excellent way to grossly oversimplify a complex and emotive issue – did demonstrate that I am not alone in feeling this way.  Mainly, though, it demonstrated that most people are not willing to continue to simply accept the limiting rhetoric that exists around disability and inclusion.  That might be for a different post.  The reality, though, remains too far deviated from the ideal for us to get away with not thinking about it.  My twitter poll and subsequent conversations also highlighted a lack of clarity around definitions so, for arguments sake, this is what I am using for the purpose of this post:

Medical Model – The person is disabled by aspects of their own body.  They are, effectively, ‘broken’ and therefore should be fixed or simply they cannot access society, or at least not all aspects of it.  The ‘problem’ lies within the individual.

Social Model – The person is disabled by barriers and deficits in society.  Those barriers and deficits could be physical or social / attitudinal.  All people have the same right to access society so these barriers and deficits must be addressed.  The ‘problem’ lies in society and the physical environment.

I do think, at some level, we talk the talk of the social model.  The Equality Act is explicit in its assertions of equal rights and the leveling of the playing field and, in education, CaFA and the Code of Practice secure the rights of learners who require additional and different.  Just typing out the retrograde concepts in that definition of the medical model made my skin crawl.  I’m not so sure, though, that we walk the walk of it.  Not quite medical model, maybe, but not really social model either.

Take, for example, the use of teaching assistants (I know, I’m obsessed) when a student has an additional need that prevents them from accessing the lesson without that support.  Where does this provision place the ‘problem’?  What is it that needs to change in order to address it?  I’m not saying that it is a medical model approach – the child might not even be in the room if it was – but I am saying that it is not quite social model either.  The ‘problem’ is that the environment or something within it (teaching style, pitch, content) is not fit for purpose and so it is the environment that needs changing.  Putting a TA with the child facilities the environment to stay the same.  More like papering over a crack rather than properly fixing it.  Putting a stepladder next to the barrier instead of dismantling the barrier.

It isn’t just the TAs.  Most of the artifacts of inclusion – the SENCo, the SEN Register, provision maps and IEPs – place the change, the difference, the deviation from the norm, in the child.

Maybe we have halted here on our journey to properly achieving a social model approach and, with it (or maybe a few steps beyond it) true equality, equity and justice for all sections of society, because real structural and systemic change is hard.  Maybe it is because too many people, power holders at various levels, have accepted not enough as good enough for some people.  Maybe it is because the able majority like those visible signs of inclusivity because it makes us feel good about ourselves.  Whatever it is, we have a mammoth task ahead of us if we are going to change things.

No one thing is going to make that change, but each and everyone one of us can make a start.  Evolution, not revolution.  When things aren’t working for one of the children we teach, we should be asking ourselves, ‘where does the problem actually lie?’ and then doing something about that, not scaffolding the child into the existing, not good enough situation or space.  This may require big change, but it will also facilitate access and inclusion for more than just that child and for more than just that day.

This may require big change… but that is exactly what needs to happen.

Not Ready But Ready To Start

When I first started writing my blog, Twitter was an important but a rather negative place for me.  I can remember stopping my car, pulling over, because I’d hear my phone trill – the Twitter notification – and not being able to bear having the response sat there without my justification, explanation, clarification or retaliation to go with it.  With hindsight, it probably wasn’t as bad as it felt at the time.  Writing a blog about something that matters to you feels a bit like putting your heart outside your body for a battering and, if I’m honest, I still experience anxiety every time I put something new on my blog.  I feel very differently about Twitter though; in fact, I love Twitter and it plays a huge role in shaping and reshaping the provision in my school, how I describe and explain it, and how I understand its place in the wider conversation.  I no longer stop the car to look at Twitter notifications (but I do look at them straight away when I do stop!).  Over the years, the demographic of who I follow on Twitter has changed from being mainly SEND related organisations and other SENCOs / teachers, to increasingly being parents of children with SEND, support groups for parents of children with SEND, and adults with disabilities, and it is this, I think, that has influenced my actions the most.

The first thing that the Twitterverse has got me thinking about is the place of my opinions about inclusion and disability rights in the wider discourse.  I think my opinions have a place – as a SENCo, as a teacher, and as a person in society who feels strongly about how I want the society I live in to be – and I talk about the things I talk about because they genuinely matter to me, they impact on people who are important to me, and they impact on me personally; we all benefit from the diversity that a fair and just society affords us.  I know, also, that I’m shouting from the edges.  I am not a person with a disability, nor am I a parent of a child with SEND, but I am learning, I hope, to spend more time listening to the voices that are shouting from the middle and, perhaps even more importantly, to the silences that come from that same place.

That isn’t to say that I don’t believe there’s a role of us at the edges… far from it.  Every marginalised and oppressed group in history has attained their entitlement to equality through the strength of their combined voice from the middle with the support of their allies at the edges and, in the same ways, the drive for disability equality (including true educational inclusion) is no different.  But, in other ways, I think it is different.  I have long been asking myself why the inequality and oppression of those with disabilities – in education and in society – is so widely accepted and, in some cases, even openly celebrated (e.g. schools celebrating having loads of TAs or a building being proud of having disabled ramp access around the back) and I don’t know the answer… but I do have some thoughts.  There is always the presence of an unequal power dynamic between an oppressor and the oppressed but, perhaps, more so when the oppressed group is those with disabilities.  The things that have been put in place in the name of inclusion are a step in the right direction but rarely go far enough.  Not far enough to actually meet the needs of the full diverse range of people that make up our society (e.g. the limitations of a standard disabled toilet facility for those requiring an adult sized bed and overhead tracking / hoist systems).  So what do they go far enough to do?  To make an able majority feel that they’ve ticked a box? Made an effort? Get that feel good factor and sense of self-congratulation that we’ve done something nice for those we perceive as less fortunate?  The word ‘disability’ represents such a diverse and broad spectrum of people and such a significant proportion of society that any sweeping statement to describe those with disabilities is likely to be homogenising and alienating, even offensive, and that is not my intention.  By the very nature, though, of disability, it includes people for who mobility, communication, processing of the world around them, seeing or hearing is a challenge and, as a result of this, creating that unified voice to shout from the middle is going to be that bit harder than it has been for other oppressed groups.  The role of the allies at the edges is crucial.

A second thing that Twitter has got me thinking about is disabled identities and how my views and way of working relate to this and, again, I can only approach this from where I stand.  I have often said, when trying to make my stance clear, that there is no such thing as SEND children and children; only children… or that there’s no such thing as disabled people and people; only people.  I stand by these statements but only so far as to mean that there is no dichotomous, two types of human and there’s no way of dividing us that should negatively impact on the way in which people access society, or their human rights and entitlements.  This is not about erasing disabled identities, in fact, the very opposite; this is about celebrating the creativity, interest, progress and joy that living in a diverse and just society gives us.  We all benefit from living in a diverse and just society.  Of course, in my own school we have students with identified learning needs, diagnoses and physical, visual or hearing impairments, in the same way there are students with different abilities, skills, eye colours, religions, socio-economic backgrounds and shoe sizes – the point is that all of these things should be embraced as part of what makes that person unique.  None of these things should result in a young person being denied access to their full high quality education as part of the main of their school community.  ‘Inclusion’ operates on the basis that some people would not be included in what was happening if it wasn’t for this thing we call inclusion.  Have an inclusion department is like having a ‘not racist’ department; shouldn’t it go without saying?

My third thought for 2018/19 is about how we can synthesise two dissonant themes that run concurrently through the discourse around inclusion and SEND provision that I see, and dip in and out of, on my Twitter feed every day.  On the one hand, there is a sense of urgency – our young people have waited too long; there are children whose needs are not being meet right now; this is the time for change.  And, on the other hand, there’s the recognition that society and education is not ready – teacher training doesn’t prepare them, school funding doesn’t facilitate it, and societal attitudes, systems and structures don’t allow it.

We aren’t ready.

But we are ready to start.

It would be easy to become overwhelmed by the enormity of the task ahead and clearly nothing is going to happen overnight.  There are lots of structural and systemic changes that need to take place that aren’t even on the cards right now, but each of us is only responsible for our own attitudes, behaviours and choices.  And I really strongly believe that, if we all take control of what we can take control of  – our own selves, our families, how we interact with the community, our school, our department, our classroom – that change will start (or continue to start) to take place.  There’s no use throwing yourself at a brick wall, but you can chip away at the bottom of it and, eventually, that wall will fall.  Specifically thinking about inclusion in education, it can be difficult, particularly with the constraints of the LA, funding et cetera, for a lone voice to implement change even at the school, department or classroom level.  But we can all, regardless of our situation, make a difference to the one thing that constitutes the first step and the bottom line of inclusion and disability equality: attitudes.  The moment you stop seeing children and SEND children as two different types of student, and start truly celebrating and maximising on diversity, change can start to take place.  The high quality and high expectations we bestow upon the most able is the entitlement of all students.  The individualisation and care we afford our least able and most vulnerable student is the right of all children too.  If you wouldn’t deal with a gap in the understanding of your most able child by putting them with a TA, don’t do it to your least able.  If you wouldn’t exam factory and push your least able, most vulnerable students to the very limits of their mental health, then don’t do it to your most able student either.

We are each just a complex mishmash of abilities and needs trying to function in a best fit but evolving world – each of unique and that’s what makes us the same – and maybe there’ll never be a big revolution… but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep working on change for the better.