Can Twenty Percent of Schoolchildren Really Have Special Needs No, says SEN coordinator - Essay Example

? Special Education Corse: Introduction The article “Can 20% of schoolchildren really have Special Needs? No, says SEN coordinator” is an article discussing the nature and status of specific education needs students in the United Kingdom. In this article, Garry Freeman (2012) tackles two major issues with regard to special education. The first issue that he tackles is the belief and the accusation that schools in UK are overstating the number of special education students in their school in order to get more funding from the government. This assumption and accusation comes from the fact that schools stand to get more funding from the government if they have more special education needs students. In this regard, it is assumed that schools are more likely to label more students as special needs students so as to acquire more money from the government. However, as Freeman (2012) says, this is not only incorrect, it is also impossible. He argues that this accusation is incorrect because of various reasons. First, in any school, just one qualified teacher can have a child into the special needs status. This member of staff, who should also be a qualified teacher, and the special education needs coordinator would at the same time have to communicate and consult with so many other parties before he or she is finally able to have the child labelled as a special education needs student. These other parties include the board members, the parents of the child, the head teacher, a government body and many others. This means that the school cannot just decide to make a certain student a special needs student and start getting funding for the same. Secondly, Freeman (2012) argues that this claim is wrong because even if it was possible for schools to decide to label a child as having differentiated needs, this does not necessarily lead to the school getting lots of money. He argues that even after a school makes a certain student or group of students special needs students, this does not necessarily lead to the government increasing funding to the school. In such a case, the school may be required to meet the special needs of the students within the already existing resources. Again, even in the rare cases where the government may increase funding to the school, the increase in minimal and not so much as to be seen as a improvement of the students that the school gets. To counter this belief that schools and teachers are getting into the habit of unnecessarily labelling students as special needs students in order to get more money, Freeman (2012) argues that schools have over time tried their best to improve the learning environment of students with disability. This means that contrary to the belief that teacher and schools are using special education needs students to get more money, they are actually more interested in helping these students and do so with or without increased funding. Thirdly, Freeman (2012) argues that this argument is incorrect because even in cases where a school gets more support from the government for helping in taking the needs of these students with special education needs, this increased funding is usually in the form of teaching staff as opposed to cash money. In the article, he also looks at another issue that is more fundamental. The Second issue is that it is not the labelling that is important but how challenges of special students are dealt with. He looks at how the history of taking care of students with special need has changed. In particular he argues that teachers and school in general have turned to not caring too much about labelling but to coming up with different ways in which to assist students. He stresses that the label that the child gets is not important to the school staff, both teaching and the other members of staff because what matters to them is identifying the barriers and coming up with sensible practical solutions to help these students. Freeman (2012) stresses at least two things here. First he stresses the fact that labelling students as special needs students is not what is important in looking after the needs of special education students. In this regard, Freeman talks about the fact that classifying these students as special needs students is not what is important in any way, but rather the need to ensure that their special needs have been met. Freeman (2012) seems to be addressing one important issue here. That is, the fact that just labelling these students does not necessarily lead to the students getting the students getting the help they require. In fact, he seems to argue that the labelling may not be accurate. For instance, he points out that the label such as dyscalculia, dyslexia or if the child has been labelled to have ASC is not important, but that the teaching staff and the support staff in the school taking care of the child and doing everything and aid the student to be able to overcome their barriers to education. In this regard, if the teacher and the support staff decided to help the student, it won’t matter the problem the student will have been labelled to have, rather, what will matter is the kind of help the child is getting and whether or not this help is making it possible for the child to overcome their barriers and learn (Weston, 2003). Secondly, Freeman (2012) stresses the fact that teachers and schools in general have not in any way tried to stress too much in labelling any students as special needs but have both consciously and subconsciously tried to come up with solutions every time a student is seen to have education needs that should be met in a different way. Although Freeman (2012) does not say it openly, what Freeman seems to be pointing out in this article is the fact that almost every child has a special need that in one way or the other needs to be met in order for the student to be achieved in the classroom. In this regard, Freeman suggests that teachers have developed a way of meeting these needs without necessarily having to call for extra help from the government or the school (Freeman, 2012). Part II Special education has changed a lot in the past 150 years. In fact, education in general has seen significant change over the last 150 years through numerous legislations, policy development and general attitude change among educators and policy developers (Mortimer, 2001). In particular, numerous legislations and policies made in the past few years have seen the nature and status of special education change a big deal to the extent that the current status of modern special education is so different from what it was a hundred and fifty years. One can therefore argue that special education has changed significantly in the following important aspects; Legislations Although special education has been seen to change significantly in the last a hundred years, most of these changes in terms of legislation have happened in the last 75 years. The first significant legislation regarding special education was done in 1944 when the 1944 education act was developed and legislated (Mitler, 2000). This act took significant interest in general education but in particular looked at the need of children with special needs. However, this act classified special students in class according to their medical conditions and did not consider other psycho social issues. However, the act was a significant step towards making sure that students with these needs were taken care of. In this act, which formed the dawn of special needs legislations, students with needs were classified and given labels such as uneducable, educationally subnormal, and maladjusted. This kind of labelling may today look gross and uncalled for, but it formed the basis and the dawn of the legislation of special needs and raised awareness of the need to have these students considered with regard to helping them get the best opportunity to be just as educated (Mortimer, H. (2001). As Wall (2006, 199) says, “The ensuing Education act (1981) adopted many of Warnock's (1978) Report recommendations for special education, however, there were many critics”. This is important because as Westwood (2010, 187) says, “there are many ways of approaching the complex task of teaching children with special needs.” This act led to the integration and inclusive approach being adopted as the main and most practical method os satisfying the requirements of the child with special education needs. This act can be seen as one of the most important legislation in the history of special education needs legislation because unlike the earlier legislation such as the 1944 special education act, this act diverted into more important issues that took care of not only the education needs of students with special education needs, but also looked at other various considerations. In this regard, by promoting integration and inclusivity, the act geared towards making sure that these students could access education within the normal environment with other students (Nutbrown and Clough, 2010). It is probably this that changed the attitudes towards students with learning needs. This act was developed towards having common education goals for all students regardless of their education needs. In this regard, this act was different from the 1944 education act which tended to create the impression that it is ok to have different educational requirements for those students who were given the various special needs labels. The Warnock (1978) framework was incorporated into the education system throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and this saw the number of special children in special schools decline a lot as the education system embraced the inclusivity and integration approach with regard to the way students with special educations needs were treated. As Mitler, (2000, 88) says, “a policy is inclusive in so far as the onus is on the school to modify its provision to meet the needs of individual children who are experiencing difficulty.” As also says, Nutbrown and Clough (2010) “early childhood education and care policies across the UK in 1990s and 2000s brought radical change to curriculum and pedagogy and to state funded systems and services and the pace of change in the 2010s has continued.” The special education needs and disability act of 2001 was an amendment of the disability discrimination act (Nutbrown and Clough, 2010). This act revived and highlighted the need to increase the way people with disability are able to access education. In 2010, the Equality act 2010 was developed and designed to integrate all the special education laws and acts that had been legislated over a long period of time. This act looked into two important issues. The first issue was the need to have a consolidated special education law that helped to guarantee that these students can access education. The bill tried to enhance and at the same time simplify laws regarding special education needs. The second issue that the 2010 equality act sought to solve was the issue of making sure that even as the policy of inclusivity and integration of special needs in education was taken seriously, these students with special needs should be accorded different and in most cases favourable assistance in order to helot these students to access education equally (Westwood, 2010). The 2010 equality bill was therefore advancement of the 1981 special education act in terms of looking at how the special education can include those with special education needs can access it. Public policy Attitudes to general education With regard to the attitudes towards education in general in the last 150 years, there are a lot of things that have been happening and this has affected not only education in general but special education in particular. To understand this, it is important to understand that it is only through the development in the general education that development in special education was made. A hundred years ago in Britain, and most part of Europe, public education was not seen as a basic need. Education in fact was seen as a thing of the elite, and the working class was not really involved in the education system (Westwood, 2010). As time went on though, it became very important for the government to deliver education to the general public, and with time, education became not only a basic need but a universal human right. It is crucial to comprehend that it is only by defining education as a basic need and a human right that the issue of special needs education came to the lime light (Wall, 2006). Education has been seeing various critical changes, and this has also laid the foundation for special needs students. Attitude to special education The Warnock(1978) Report and the legislations that it inspired was important in setting the way forward in the education sector and especially in the implementation of special needs education. The Warnock (1978) Report was the dawn of inclusive and integrative special education, and this was a very important step in the delivery of special education needs. Since the first Warnock (1978) Report in the late 1970s, it has become apparent that schools and educators have not only changed their attitude towards the need of students with special needs, but have been more creative in the way students with special needs have been helped to access education. The Warnock (1978) Report was important in introducing the theory of inclusivity and integration and therefore can be seen as having overturned the earlier attitude of exclusion. This theory of inclusion and integration can also be seen as important in a number of ways. The theory of inclusion and integration has the following important aspects; Social and emotional development of students with special education needs Inclusive education of students with special education needs was intended to replace the earlier exclusive approach (Weston, 2003). The main argument for the importance of this was the fact that including these students with special needs in the normal classroom would be much better in making sure that they are able to interact with the other students. Excluding the students is seen as likely o leave the students more aware of their disability and thus lead to them feeling more secluded from the social radar. Inclusive education was therefore geared towards helping these students feel that they were not any different from the other students. This has been seen as a very important way of helping the children overcome their disabilities and thus be able to gain from the education system just as much as the other students. Placing the students on special schools on the other hand was seen as a way to brand these students as having critical issues and the can be a big setback to their emotional and social development (Weston, 2003). The policy of having these students mixing with the other regular students is seen as a way of reinforcing the message that they are not different from the other students but rather that they have different needs. This has also been reinforced in the 2010 disability act which is geared towards ensuring that students with education challenges are able to access education as much as everyone else. Having these students with a disability be integrated within will also mean that these students are able to benefit from the other students who do not have a special need (Tassoni, 2003). For instance, a student with a physical disability is better off when in a normal environment because these students can aid him in overcoming the challenges that his or her physical disabilities give him. On the other hand, when these students are in a special school teacher in most cases becomes the only physical assistance that the students can get, and this can be overwhelming to the teachers. Reduced costs of delivery Apart from inclusivity and integration has also been seen as a way manage the price of education to the students. Placing them in special schools would require new and extra resources for special education. Yet, even setting up new resources does not guarantee that this will improve the way the students with special needs will get to access education (Tassoni, 2003). Inclusivity and integration on the other hand mean that schools and educators can take advantage of the already existing resources to make the delivery of education much easier and much better. This is especially important with regard to the fact that eventually, almost every child has a special education need, albeit small. In this regard, just as Freeman (2012) suggest, the important thing is not to label the students as having certain disability but identifying the specific need of each student and meeting this need. This is one area that has been one of the main shifting paradigms in the way the special educating has been changing over time. Currently, just as Freeman (2012) claims, schools and educators have reverted to not concentrating too much in labelling these students or segregating them in different learning institutions but actually in identifying their special needs and meeting these needs within the normal environment where the rest of the students are learning. Apart from giving a holistic education to students with special needs and reducing the cost of delivery, this approach also means that more and more students can benefit. There are so many students who may have special education needs which cannot be identified or classified into the various categories which have been identified in the past (Mortimer, 2001). This would mean that these students may not benefit from special education policy. However, when a school and specific educators adopt the inclusivity policy, it becomes easier for these students to be able to benefit and be able to access education in a better and more equalized way. Conclusion The nature and statues of special education has changed a lot in the past 150 years. This can be seen through the numerous legislations and policies that have been put into place. Legislations in this area have also led to a change in attitude. The Warnock (1978) Report can be seen as having a significant game impact in the way special education is looked at in the United Kingdom. This is because the Warnock (1978) Report brought a new paradigm in the way students with special educational needs were regarded. The Warnock (1978) Report also linked special education to human rights as can be seen in the 2010 disability act. This act was derived from the Warnock (1978) Report (1978) which had over time been redelivered. The 2010 equality act is also seen as a game changer in delivering special education. Reference list: Freeman, G. (2012, May 19). Can 20% of schoolchildren really have Special Needs? No, says SEN coordinator. Retrieved May 20, 2013, from The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9270639/Can-20-of-schoolchildren-really-have-Special-Needs-No-says-SEN-coordinator.html Mitler, P. (2000) Working Towards Inclusive Education: Social Contexts. London: David Fulton. Mortimer, H. (2001) Special Needs and Early Years Provision. London: Continuum. Nutbrown, C. and Clough, P. (2010) Inclusion in the Early Years. London: SAGE. Tassoni, P. (2003) Supporting Special Needs. Oxford: Heinemann. Wall, K. (2006) Special Needs and Early Years. London: Sage. Warnock, M. (1978). The Warnock Report (1978) Special Educational Needs . Retrieved June 12, 2013, from Education in England: http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/warnock/warnock03.html Weston, C. (2003) ‘Educating All: Inclusive Classroom Practice’ in Alfrey, C (2003) Understanding Children’s Learning. London: David Fulton. Westwood, P. (2010) Commonsense Methods for Children with Special Educational Needs. London: Routledge. Read More