Educational Issues and Special Education Needs - Essay Example

Educational Issues and Special Education Needs (SEN) Two Essays What is understood by the term 'inclusion' Describe the move to inclusion with in UK policy since 1997 in terms of excellence for all. Include a few recommendations from the 1978 Warnock report. Inclusion in education is defined as the process of enhancing the participation of children and young people in the cultures, curriculums, and communities of the local schools and at the same time reducing their exclusion from the same. It can only be achieved through practices in education that can overcome barriers to access and participation in delivered education (Howley, Preece and Arnold, 2001, 41-52). The major policy development in the field of special needs education in England and Wales in the 1990s was the introduction, as a consequence of the 1993 Education Act, of the Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs. This was replaced by a revised version which was issued in 2001, coming into effect in January 2002 (DFES 2001). The nature of provision for special educational needs has changed drastically over the last few years following the Warnock Report and the 1981 Education Act, with an increased awareness of educational needs and a consonant focus on improving the quality of provision for much larger numbers of children (Griffiths, 1998, 95 in Quicke, 2007, 2-15). This implies improvement of education of all and specially of those with special needs that would impart knowledge and power to all (QCA/DfEE, 2001). Department of Health has recently published a White Paper for people with learning disabilities in 2001 (Department of Health, 2001, 1-10). The United Kingdom has separate educational systems for England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. As far as education is concerned, the countries are split up into so-called local education authorities that carry a large part of the responsibility for organising education at local level. Historically, for a long time, England and Wales had separate systems for regular and special education. Since the Warnock Report in 1978, it has been assumed in the UK that about 20 per cent of school-aged children will have special educational needs requiring additional help at some point in their school careers. Furthermore, approximately 2 per cent of children will have severe physical, sensory, intellectual or emotional difficulties, some of which will remain with them throughout their lives. Historically this 2 per cent of children have been excluded from mainstream schools, receiving their education in special schools instead. In recent years, a growing sense of injustice regarding the idea of segregated special schooling for these pupils has led to calls for more inclusive educational opportunities as a matter of human right and equal opportunity (Amatea, 1988, 174-183). By the Education Acts 1981 and 1993, which latter consolidated into the Education Act 1996, the policy of parental choice in the field of special educational needs has in most respects been merely built on key recommendations in the Warnock Report in 1978, namely that the education system should pay heed to parental knowledge about their child's needs and respect parental wishes regarding the child's education (Farrell, 2001, 3-9). Warnock's other recommendation was to integrate the education, meaning pupils with special educational needs should, as far as possible, be educated alongside other children in mainstream schools (Lewis, 2004, 3-9). In relation to this, this process must acknowledge the diversity of needs of all students creating opportunity to support learning of all students inclusive of those who have impairments or needs for special educations. While the White Paper was explicitly a response of the authorities from the concerns to promote better life chances for people with special needs for education, it identifies the many barriers that such children and their families face in fully participating in their communities. This paper promotes the benefits to be obtained by these children through educational opportunities, good health, and social care while living with their families. It was evident later that constructive and sustainable relationships between pupils with special educational needs and their peers involve mutual perceptions of shared experiences of a kind that may require the provision of well-planned collaborative learning activities. This increased recognition of interconnectedness between categories of social and functional integration has led, perhaps, to the Green Paper which states that: 'By inclusion, we mean not only that pupils with SEN should, where possible, receive their education in a mainstream school, but also that they should join in fully with their peers in the curriculum' (DfEE, 1997, 44). The Education Reform Act 1988 introduced major changes to state education in England and Wales. Though the Act has little to say about pupils with special educational needs, it is likely to have a major impact on special educational provision. Special Educational Needs Code of Practice (DfES, 2001, 57-79) indicates that, 'Most children with special educational needs have strengths and difficulties in one, some or all of the areas of speech, language and communication.' Under the 1981 Act, a child has special educational needs if he or she has learning difficulties which are significantly greater than those experienced by the majority of children of the same age or if they have a disability that prevents or hinders them from making use of the educational facilities generally available to age peers (Aylott, 2001, 512). This act is unique and different in the sense that this makes a critical distinction within the group characterised in this way. While inclusion is an important aspect for high standards for all learners, the level of government activism in developing national SEN policy has been really extraordinary (Lewis and Norwich, 2001). Following the Green Paper, the Government issued a 'Programme for Action' in 1998. In 1999, the Disability Rights Task Force issued a report calling for the right to a place in a mainstream school for all children, including those with statements of special educational needs (Department for Education and Skills, 2001a). From January 2002, new anti-discrimination legislation, the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 (SENDA), marks another step on delivering this promise (Disability Rights Commission, 2002). A culmination of all these have led to the new statutory guidance in DfES 2001, and that lays down some principles on the premise that inclusion is a process where institutions and authorities would develop their cultures, policies, and practices to include people. The Green Paper is a proof for this. The authorities while safeguarding the interests of the children, will actively seek to remove barriers to learning and participation (Department for Education and Skills, 2004a). Reference List Amatea, E. (1988) Brief systemic interventions with school behavior problems: a case of temper tantrums, Psychology in the Schools, 25, pp. 174-183. Aylott, J., (2001). The New Learning Disabilities White Paper. Did it forget something British Journal of Nursing. 10(8). 512 Department of Education and Science, (1978). Special Educational Needs (The Warnock Report), London: HMSO. Department of Education and Science, (1981). The Education Act of 1981, London: HMSO. Department for Education and Skills, (2001) Special Educational Needs Code of Practice, London, DfES, 1-217 . Department for Education and Skills, (2001) Inclusive Schooling. London: DfES, 1-33. Department for Education and Skills, (2001) The Special Educational Needs and Disability Act. London: The Stationery Office 1-13. Department for Education and Skills (2001a) Special Educational Needs and Disability Act. Nottingham: DfES Publications. Department for Education and Skills (2004a) Removing Barriers to Achievement: The Government's Strategy for SEN. Nottingham: DfES Publications. Department for Education and Skills (2005b) Education Improvement Partnerships: Local Collaboration for School Improvement and Better Service Delivery. Nottingham: DfES Publications. Department of Health, (2001). Valuing People: A New strategy for Learning disability For the 21st Century, London. Disability Rights Commission (2002) Code of Practice for Schools: Disability Discrimination Act 1995, Part 4. London: Disability Rights Commission. Farrell, P. (2001) 'Special education in the last twenty years: have things really got better', British Journal of Special Education 28 (1) 3-9. Howley, M., Preece, D. and Arnold, T. (2001) 'Multidisciplinary use of "Structured Teaching" to promote consistency of approach for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder', Educational and Child Psychology, 18 (2) 41-52. Lewis, A. (2004) 'And when did you last see your father Exploring the views of children with learning difficulties/disabilities', British Journal of Special Education 31 (1): 3-9. QCA/DfEE (2001) General Guidelines: Planning, Teaching and Assessing the Curriculum for Pupils with Learning Difficulties. London: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. Quicke, J., (2007). Inclusion and Psychological Intervention in Schools: A Critical Autoethnography. Springer, 2007, 2-15 Special Children (2002) Practice Makes Perfect: The Revised SEN Code of Practice Special Children, January 2002, pp. 20-5. Outline Brahm Norwich's argument that the move to global inclusion can be described as a series of 'dilemmas' (Norwich, 2008.) Use materials from at least three countries to illustrate you answer. a) Explain what he means. b) Global inclusion: Refer to UNESCO Salamanca conference in relation to the move towards inclusion. c) Identify the dilemmas such as definition, identification of SEN, curriculum, etc. The idea of inclusive education has become part of the discussion on developments in education at an international level. Inclusive practices are a reality in at least some schools in many education systems. It is considered legitimate that looking at concepts and practices across countries and cultures might help identify common themes, suggest emerging concerns, and explore ways in which schools might teach all students in their communities, eliminating barriers to participation and learning (Aefsky, 1995). Inclusive settings are always challenged by diversities and differences. It is also evident that within countries there are different views on what inclusion is, suggesting that complex influences are at work in the development of this field. The theme of inclusion is a particularly important one: the 1994 Salamanca Statement from UNESCO called on national governments to adopt the principle of inclusive education for all children. The term inclusion is, however, open to different interpretations in different countries at the global level (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, 1994). Special education is conceived differently in different parts of the world, and practice varies accordingly. The familiar variation in the use made of special schools is just one example of the diversity that characterizes special educational provision globally. However, there are some convergences and one of the most significant of these relates to inclusive education. In many countries the effort to achieve a more inclusive system has resulted in the education of special needs pupils in regular schools and in a declining number of pupils placed in separate, special schools (Norwich, 1990). The attempts to realize more inclusive education have resulted in very different educational arrangements in different countries. Countries and their education systems differ from each other in so many aspects that it is always possible to find differences that seem to be linked to the dependent variables under consideration. Comparative research should contribute to the knowledge of the effects of different arrangements in inclusive education. The question here is which factors in inclusion are relevant in realizing inclusive education. Despite all the educational innovations of the past decades, it is clear that education mainly focuses on the average pupil. If there are too many pupils with specific needs in the classroom, teaching becomes a complex problem (Norwich, 1993b). Efforts to realise more integrated settings have resulted in very different educational arrangements in different countries. These arrangements have been the focus of much attention in debates on integration and in turn necessitate changes in organisational structures, the curriculum, teacher training, and the legislative framework. There has been considerable exchange of information about developments in these topics. However, very little is known about the success of integration in regular education settings. This gap of knowledge is remarkable because the integration of students with special needs within regular education is strongly promoted and generally accepted as a desirable goal. Countries differ in their educational systems, in the educational goals set for students, in the history of education, in student populations, in teacher training, and so on. More than this, countries also differ in very many aspects outside education, for instance in population composition and density, gross national product per capita, legislation and moral values. These differences affect education in one way or another and thus affect integration. The question is not what the pure facts are and what kind of instructional arrangements are made for the handicapped, but what effects the different arrangements have. Only then can a knowledge base be developed and decisions taken about the usefulness of these arrangements in changing one's own system. Therefore, description of factors important in integration must lead on to an account of the relationships between these factors and their implications for integration (Norwich, 1994). Brahm Norwich in his book, "Dilemmas of Difference, Inclusion and Disability: International perspectives and future directions" examines theoretical and empirical aspects of these differences and the dilemma that they create in implementation of actions in special education needs in different countries. What can be found in other countries is information about the factors relevant in realizing inclusion in education, and comparative research does not end with the description of practices in other countries. It is important to note that there would be contextual differences between countries that could lead to difference in approaches for implementation. All these emanate from the basic dilemma, "whether to recognise and respond or not to recognise and respond to these differences." By this, he means when the concept of equality comes in to play, it would involve wide relevancies to other areas of diversity that include gender, ethnicity, disability, employment, housing, and education. These are closely related to national policies, and the dilemmas would be of ideological nature, rather than contextual. Thus, he examines theoretical ideas relevant to dilemmas of these differences between countries from "philosophical, political, sociological, historical, psychological and educational perspectives" (Norwich, 2008) The Netherlands The concept of special education in the Netherlands applies to a relatively large and separate school system. This school system comprises fifteen different types of schools of which the schools for the learning disabled and the schools for educable mentally retarded contain the highest proportion of children with special needs. Recently integration has become a central issue in Dutch policy making. The most important characteristics of this system is freedom of education and the centralised education policy. Taking into account the provisions of the Constitution, the central government controls education by means of legislation and regulations. 'Special education' usually refers to the entire separate system of special education. This also includes the peripatetic supervision of a relatively small number of pupils in regular education. Separate primary and secondary special education are intended for children for whom it has been established that a mainly orthopedagogical and orthodidactical approach is most appropriate. Generally, the different types of special education are classified into three categories. Group one consists of provision for the learning disabled, the educable mentally retarded and children with developmental difficulties (Norwich, 2008). Education in special schools is based on a school work plan, which contains an overview of the organisation and content of education. The curriculum has to contain the same subjects that are taught in regular primary education. It is possible, however, to adjust the curriculum to children with multiple handicaps. Proposals to adjust the curriculum have to be submitted by the school board and approved by the Minister for Education and Science. There has been a remarkable growth in participation in separate special education the past few years. Although the absolute growth in the number of pupils is relatively small, there has been a considerable relative increase, given the large decline in the total number of children. Integration in this system is often defined in terms of mainstreaming: the extension and intensification of measures and activities, especially at group and school level, for the purpose of a pupil care that is as intensive as possible, in particular for those who show specific needs. Despite the legislation, facilities and projects, this policy has not yet offered many positive results. The statistics even show that the number of referrals to special education continues to rise (Pijl. and Veneman, 2005). This indicates that children in segregated settings still constitute the majority who has special education needs. This is also a separatist system. In the context of the Netherlands, this appears to be legitimate due to this country's tradition of centralised policy legislation and decentralised administration and management of schools with separate funding, regulations, and training of the teachers. There is a general opinion that segregation has gone to a concerning extent. There is a general wish to implement the integration policy in practice. Parent organisations for the learning disabled, however, doubt the possibility of integrating these pupils under the present circumstances. They think regular education is not yet capable of catering for these pupils and they are afraid that integration will exacerbate the problems. Educational factors, system characteristics and policy factors seem relevant to this problem. Children differ and these differences seem to increase. Schools are not able to deal with these growing differences. As a result more and more children end up in the danger zone. It is to be remembered that the situation is different here in comparison to the other two countries, the USA and the UK, since the parents in the Netherlands do not have rights to get legal redressal for any breach. However, recent findings are demonstrating that parental interference and awareness are gradually increasing demonstrating a positive attitude and diminishing social exclusion. The introduction of common national curriculum for schools did not include any framework for special schools. This indicates that there is a curriculum dilemma. There many other contextual and operational dilemmas that have hindered the integration development in the Netherlands. The fact that the two educational systems, such as, regular and special education, are separate, is one of the biggest problems in the integration process in the Netherlands (Norwich, 2008). At all levels this distinction is present: financing, legislation, teacher training and so on. In terms of costs per pupil, special education is much more expensive than regular education. The financing system, however, inhibits integration. The two educational systems are financed independently, so there are no incentives for regular education to spend extra time and attention on pupils with special needs. On the contrary, the financing system makes it attractive to refer pupils to special education. Moreover, the amount of time allocated to teachers and other experts in special education depends on the number of pupils in the school for special education. This can be considered an incentive for admission to special education. In addition, special education is not motivated to refer pupils back to regular education either, which has changed somewhat by the introduction of peripatetic supervision, it is still unattractive to return large numbers of children to regular education. Thus there is strong dilemma in which while the need of the hour is to implement integration, schools lack inducements to pursue an integration policy (Pijl and Van den Bos, 2001). The USA It is difficult to obtain an accurate picture of regular and special education in the United States, not only because the organisation and practice of education differ from state to state, but also because education in the United States changes continually. Elementary education in the United States comprises one or two years' kindergarten and six to eight years' primary education. In general, children enter kindergarten at the age of 5 and the elementary school when they are 6 years. Each state defines the compulsory school age, ordinarily guaranteeing at least nine years of schooling. In the United States, a child with a disability is vested with the statutory right to a free and appropriate public education. Public school districts fulfill this right with an individualized education program designed to address the educational needs of the child. In all societies, persons with disabilities have suffered from prejudice and exclusion. Such discrimination is so endemic to most societies and cultures in private interactions, that the device of government must be employed to remedy and repair the wrongs visited upon persons with disabilities. The public schools are foremost among these mechanisms of government that have been responsive to the needs of persons with disabilities. The situation in the USA, there has been an uncertain relationship between the Federal and State levels to cooperate. The state has an obligation to the individual with a disability to provide the positive support necessary to mitigate incapacities that may be a limitation on his or her liberty and autonomy. By virtue of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a child with a disability has a right to an education and does not need to show that he or she would benefit from an education in order to attend public school. Rather, the inherent dignity of the individual entitles the child with a disability to obtain an education (US Department of Education, 1997). In the USA, as a consequence of the dynamics of a developing society, education has always had a pragmatic character, thus making it possible for important social movements to leave their marks on education. Native Americans, immigrants, and others specially African-Americans in the population made a situation, where from the start, education has been multicultural, and has always been considered a means to create unity out of a diverse population. The process of organization of the education systems has strongly determined the features of the current educational system, especially the high degree of decentralisation of educational government and administration (US Department of Education, 2003). In 1965, the ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) led to a great breakthrough. The effort to achieve equal opportunities in education was no longer focused only on children who were deprived through poverty, race or cultural backgrounds, but also on the mentally and physically handicapped. Poverty and school performance are closely related in the US. Special education, therefore, cannot be seen apart from the compensatory programmes. The belief that it is possible to remove social disadvantages by means of education is riddled with many dilemmas. Over the entire US, the identification, classification, evaluation and assessment procedures concerning handicapped children were criticised and became the subject of lawsuits and legal actions. It turned out that pupils were often misclassified, resulting in wrong placements. On the one hand, this was ascribed to inadequate evaluation instruments and procedures. There was also strong evidence to indicate that referral and placement were a function of administrative convenience rather than being based on the child's individual needs. Although American education under PL 94-142 is generally seen as integrated, there is little curricular integration in the practice outlined above. Pupils with educational needs that deviate from the average are taken out of the classroom and are supported by special teachers. In the regular programme little or nothing changes. For pupils in the self-contained classroom social integration is also hampered. A crucial problem in all this seems to be that regular and special teachers have limited contact with each other. Since their training and experience are very different, they also have different interpretations of their tasks in practice. A problem in the integration of pupils with learning problems into regular education is that the problems did develop in regular education, and regular education has not built up expertise in educating these pupils because it tends to pass them on to others (Will, 1986). Teachers in regular education also have doubts about the need for and feasibility of educating students with special needs within the regular class. It is evident that the dilemmas centre around the system that focuses on identification of individual difficulties. The existing model of identification itself is separatist since it draws heavily on a medical deficit model that indirectly reflects a process of stigmatisation and dehumanisation. This dilemma has called for an educational system which is responsive to the needs for all children with and without disabilities (Norwich, 2008). The UK Understanding the UK system is difficult since there are for countries in it. Recently the Government has started taking different policies for these four different countries. An important feature of the educational system of England and Wales is that the responsibility for education is decentralised. As far as education is concerned, the countries are split up into so-called local education authorities that carry a large part of the responsibility for organising education at local level. Traditionally, there were separate systems for regular education and education for special needs. However, with modernisations, the classification of children according to categories of handicap was no longer considered satisfactory, because it ignored individual differences, social backgrounds and developmental stages. Moreover, there were problems in placement of multiply handicapped pupils who did not fit into one category. Once a child had been placed, the dangers of labelling and of stigmatising arose. This resulted in an increasing resistance to segregated education and a growing preference for integration. In 1974, a Committee of Enquiry under the chairmanship of Warnock was set up to review educational provision for handicapped children in Great Britain (Department for Education and Science, 1978). Many of the Warnock recommendations were embodied in the Education Act 1981. The Act built on the recommendations for identifying and assessing pupils with special needs and placed a new emphasis on making appropriate provision for them in regular schools (Department of Education and Science, 1981). The dilemmas in this process are evident from the facts that education policies, including policies of inclusion, operate within a regime of accountability which is inefficient, ineffective and socially unjust. It was suggested earlier that ideas about integration were in need of refinement in the UK. One is that, over time, the term integration had become too narrowly interpreted as a placement without any regard to the quality of that placement. The second and more complex reason has to do with a critique of the concept of normalisation, a key influence on integration policies throughout the world. Twenty years ago, the influential Warnock Report described the process of integration as locational, social or functional. These qualifying terms referred to the sharing of the same site by special/ordinary school provision, shared out-of-classroom activities, and joint participation in educational programmes (Norwich, 1993a). The task of integration was thus about how to join in the mainstream, how to become like others and normalise. This appears to a dilemma in itself which has further been aggravated by the Education Reforms Act, and the implementation of the national curriculum and its associated assessment arrangements could marginalise pupils with special educational needs even more than previously. According to the competitive ideology, the effects of such actions led to limited amount of explicit attention paid to pupils with special educational needs, adding further to the difficulty of providing education of high quality for pupils with special educational needs (Lewis, 1991). There are considerable differences between local education authorities as regards the use of special schools and units. Policies are affected by past practices, budgetary considerations and specific local factors. Although legislations and consensus favour integration, arguments against integration tend to focus on the present deficiencies of regular schools and their inability to cater for pupils with special educational needs (Norwich, 2002). Conclusions One of the most significant points to note about integration in England and Wales is the growing acceptance of integration as a matter of school reform, as opposed to the accumulation of individual programmes for particular pupils. As in most countries, the traditional view of special education based on a deficit model of handicap went unquestioned until the end of the seventies. When pupils' education was defined in terms of their handicaps, integration tended to be viewed as a matter of facilitating the placement of individual handicapped pupils in regular schools. As teachers and others came to realise that many pupils failed to learn because they were taught inappropriately, the deficit model of handicap gave way to an interactive model of special educational needs. This reflects the international moves in the 1994 UNESCO Salamanca World Statement on Special Needs Education which calls for the inclusion of pupils with special educational needs in mainstream schools with demands for stronger links between special and mainstream schools. The appearance of this type of rhetoric in government policy documents has put pressure on special education professionals to undertake a critical examination of the methods and means by which they work. The 1994 UNESCO Report on the education of children with disabilities (Salamanca Statement) affirms the rights of all children to equal education without discrimination within the mainstream education system (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, 1994). Although this means different things in different places, there is universality to the underlying human rights philosophy of inclusion which suggests that the concept is destined to persist rather than represent the latest educational problems. Reference List Aefsky, F. (1995). Inclusion Confusion, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Department for Education and Science (1978). Special Educational Needs. Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People (The Warnock Report), London: HMSO. Department of Education and Science, (1981). The Education Act of 1981, London: HMSO. Lewis, A. (1991). Primary Special Needs and the National Curriculum , London: Routledge Norwich, B. (1990). Reappraising special needs education. London: Cassell. Norwich, B. (1993a). Reappraising special needs education. London: Cassell. Has 'special educational needs' outlived its usefulness in Visser, J. and Upton, G. (eds) Special education in Britain after Warnock. London: David Fulton Publishers Norwich, B. (1993b). Ideological dilemmas in special needs education: practitioners' views. Oxford Review of Education, 19(4), 527-45. Norwich, B. (1994). Differentiation: from the perspective of resolving tensions between basic social values and assumptions about individual differences. Curriculum Studies, 2(3), 289-308. Norwich, B. (2002). LEA inclusion trends in England 1997-2001. Bristol: CSIE. Norwich, B. (2008). Dilemmas of Difference, Inclusion and Disability. International perspectives and future directions. New York. Routledge. Pijl S.P. and Van den Bos, K. (2001). Redesigning regular education support in the Netherlands. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 16(2), 111-19. Pijl, S.P. and Veneman, H. (2005) Evaluating new criteria and procedures for funding special needs education in the Netherlands. Educational Management and Administration and Leadership, 33(1), 93-108. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (1994). The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education, Paris: UNESCO. US Department of Education (1997). Nineteenth annual report to Congress on the implementation of the IDEA. Washington, DC: Office of Special Education Programs US Department of Education (2003). Twenty fifth annual report to Congress on the implementation of the IDEA. Washington, DC: Office of Special Education Programs. Will, M. (1986). Educating Students with Learning Problems: a Shared Responsibility , Washington DC: US Department of Education. Read More