tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3019828684971971203.post4971908276972157096..comments2024-03-14T02:53:31.171+00:00Comments on Tom Bennett's School Report: When everyone’s special, no one is: how inclusion went sour. Tom Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03211959016018081924noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3019828684971971203.post-35622590642760812632013-02-17T08:49:53.301+00:002013-02-17T08:49:53.301+00:00Wonderfully astute commentary Tom. The more I thin...Wonderfully astute commentary Tom. The more I think about it these days, and when I read an intelligent, experienced analysis like yours, the more I want to jab the finger of blame not at the politicians, techno-zealots or ideologues but at the...English teachers. <br /><br />If English was taught in schools well. Not the naive politics or social engineering NATE exemplifies, and children left schools aged 16 with the kind of linguistic skills commonly found in other countries (Germany, Russia...)maybe we wouldn't as a nation be so vulnerable (as Ken notes) to the deployment of marketing when we have the right to expect intelligent insight.JoeNhttp://joenutt.squarespace.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3019828684971971203.post-1130352089184833302013-02-13T21:10:16.349+00:002013-02-13T21:10:16.349+00:00This is a good article which I think does an admir...This is a good article which I think does an admirable job of summarising the issues from a teacher's point of view. However, I wonder if you are conflating statements with medical diagnoses. A statement for a child with behaviour problems does not need to come with a assumptions about the origins of their difficulties. The statement should simply detail what their difficulties are, the objectives for their development and the provision that is required to meet those objectives. A statement of SEN also carries with it funding for support from the local authority so they are often very desirable for schools. In my experience the prevalence of statements for exclusively behavioural issues vary greatly from area to area, in some authorities they are almost exclusively issued to children when they go to a special school. Whether a child gets a statement appears to have more to do with how local funding is organised and prioritised in many cases. <br /><br />I think that the problem with the Inclusion that you describe is that it is simply a soundbite, a weasel word, a piece of marketing for a oversimplistic idea (when people say words like "Inclusion" or "Academy" I often think of the Monorail episode of the Simpsons). The fact remains that being included is a social experience which has little to do with the room you are educated in. I have seen some of the best examples of inclusion in special school settings or in mainstream schools which operate specialist units. However the prevailing state of affairs has been unwittingly concocted by a combination of management money counters who see a cost saving and naive idealists who have a fervent beliefs that it is a right for all children to be educated in the same classroom, no matter how impractical, unworkable or unhelpful it actually is to do so. I agree that this state of affairs has undermined effective education for many troubled children and their peers. However, I believe that there is an increasing recognition among those who work in this area that troubled children need to learn increasing peace with the world before they can be properly educated in the conventional sense. Ken Lastimernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3019828684971971203.post-79443079810409928562013-02-13T13:34:35.399+00:002013-02-13T13:34:35.399+00:00You have correctly described the poor implementati...You have correctly described the poor implementation here. And you do, eventually, recognise how well 'good internal inclusion' works.<br /><br />Part of the problem is the binary nature of the language (it's either inclusion or exclusion) which gives people some very fixed ideas of what it should be. Sadly, it leads many to the conclusion that 'inclusion' doesn't work. To me, inclusion is not a strategy, it's a principle. It's the idea that schools need to reflect society so that we don't segregate children on any basis. Notice that I say 'schools'. The same does not necessarily apply to 'classes'. Classes are merely sub-groups within a school that should be sized and composed appropriately for the children's needs. The best inclusion I have seen ensures that pupils with SEN are always notionally attached to the mainstream (e.g. as part of tutor groups and year groups) even if most of their learning occurs apart from their (social) peers. <br /><br />BTW, I never actually encountered a SENCO that endorsed the 'let-them-be' approach (even if the IEP may have implied it). This was much more likely to come from SMT who didn't want to deal with the behaviour issue. Nic Pricehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16937086981231677709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3019828684971971203.post-44911668337520321532013-02-12T13:37:47.693+00:002013-02-12T13:37:47.693+00:00Tom, this is - as ever - spot on. The way that mo...Tom, this is - as ever - spot on. The way that most schools deal with this issue is not fair on anyone; the staff, the pupils themselves and the rest of the class. More and more have I become convinced that "inclusion" actually means" EXclusion" for the rest of the class, and in these days of mixed ability classes for almost everything, even moreso.<br /><br />I've worked in tough schools, from one in special measures to those that just about scraped through the old "satisfactory" barrier - and they, of course, tended to have a higher proportion of SEN than other schools. I regularly had classes where the number of kids on the SEN register was greater than the number who weren't - and had no classroom support whatsoever.<br /><br />When I raised issues like this, I was ignored and I often got the feeling that I was then looked on as someone who just wanted an easy life. But that wasn't it at all -I felt bad that I could often do NOTHING for those kids, because some of them just weren't able to access the lessons, no matter how carefully I differentiated. I mean, try teaching a 13 year-old pupil with a reading age of 6 about cognates in MFL - you're on a hiding to nothing because he's got so few reference points in English!<br /><br />My husband has recently become one of those TAs you talk about, and indeed, he's already wondering how on earth he is supposed to help some of the pupils to whom he's been assigned. (And he works in a top-end "good" school).<br /><br />I read the TES article and was very surprised about the part you have quoted. I'd have thought parents would be glad to think that their child was getting some one-to-one attention.<br /><br />I'll stop before I bore you to death - thanks for posting this.Cazhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726906665336131367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3019828684971971203.post-42197970895780108292013-02-12T12:32:25.037+00:002013-02-12T12:32:25.037+00:00What should I do, I wondered, with a student who d...<i>What should I do, I wondered, with a student who doesn’t speak English, but has no interpreter in the class? </i><br /><br />This illustrates the issue. It's not inclusion, per se, that's the problem it's the fact that it's not adequately resourced, or it's not resourced at all.<br /><br />Which doesn't mean that all children should be in all classes eg <i>a pupil who frequently assaulted or insulted teachers</i>.<br /><br />As I understand it one motivating factor for "inclusion" was that young people excluded from the school grow up excluded from society, and the behaviour persists into and throughout adulthood. Fine: "include" them, but resource it properly.<br /><br />All of this reminds me of a judge sentencing an offender to prison with the idea that they will be rehabilitated but the reality that they won't.<br /><br />As for who's to blame, I think as a society we're pretty good at allowing ourselves to be lied to and comforted whilst denying harmful realities. (See house price bubbles and the like.)<br /><br />Also, and this is a really serious point: since, say the early noughties over the course of ten or twelve years, hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of children and young people have had their education blighted, by "included" pupils. Thousands of teachers stand in front of their classes confronted by this the most obvious and damaging issue. They say what they see...and nothing is done about it. Why not? And that's not a moan, that's a question.<br /><br />If I recall Channel 4's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae1gmuKeuXw" rel="nofollow"> Undercover Teacher </a> attempted to address this issue and, as usual, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/5050754/Whistleblower-who-exposed-school-violence-is-banned-from-the-classroom.html" rel="nofollow"> the whistleblower was disciplined. </a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com