Contemporary Issues in Exclusion and Inclusion with Children - Research Paper Example

 Contemporary Issues in Exclusion and Inclusion with Children In the educational institutions, several children face various difficulties and disabilities in the educational field as well as in the process of their overall development. The last decade has seen various studies in the organization and management of approaches in order to mitigate this problem. Rigorous levels of work have been manifested on this domain at the national level and the governments also have adopted various policies with their following impacts on the schools. These students requiring development and care fall in the category of the special educational needs. Many schools have been neglecting in their policies to deliver the students with special educational need. In delivering the utmost care to the students and helping them to attain sustainability, the teachers in the school play a dominant role. But serious negligence of the teachers has been found in this respect. As for instance in England the real focus is given on the bureaucracy of inclusion and managerial approach which somewhat denies the very important role of the teacher in the schools (Farrell, 2003, p. ix).The paper will discuss about the issues involved in the inclusion and exclusion of the children in various schools with the backdrop of the loopholes encountered in the Pilgrim school in London where serious evidences of young students with special educational needs have been the victims of bullying and mal treatment. Backdrop of the Pilgrim school Established in the 1960s the school was built in London to serve a large inner London housing estate. The school is basically a Community Special School in a hospital, maintained by the Local Authority and provides education in diverse fields within the in campus setting of youth centers, children’s centers, libraries and libraries pupils’ homes. Agenda The school is an inclusive school and the governors seek to avoid the need to exclude a pupil. The referring agency provides adequate information for supporting the involvement of the students to the utmost. If there is any emergence of doubts about the absence of the students from the school it will be subjected to further scrutiny. The scrutiny will probe the problem of the students and will thoroughly check whether the problem is behavioral or medical. If behavioral predicaments are identified then the Head teacher will be liable for taking the responsibility in close down the involvement and refer it back to the initiating agency for the formulation of the an appropriate support device. A very basic agenda of the school is focused on the “Improving behavior and attendance: guidance on exclusion from schools and Pupil Referral Units” (Admission policy, 2011). Deviation from the holistic approach Almost 1000 pupils are enrolled in the school but the school is undersubscribed. The recent trends of the school are that a high number of young people as well as their families are seeking to go to asylum. Internal difficulties are there in the recruitment procedure along with high staff turnover rate. The rate of exclusion is also above the national average. Policies like a new lady head have been recruited in order to handle and analyze the situation with close scrutiny. She is also inclined in crafting the policies of the school in a more inclusive methodology. The next segment provides the snapshots of the types of difficulties faced by the students of the school. Types of difficulties unleashed A British African Caribbean by origin, a 14 year old student of the school, Elizabeth reads in the school but she has been known to be belligerent and provoking. She was also a victim of bullying by a gang of girls of her age. Her prior academic performance was praiseworthy but in the present times significant slump in her academic performance has been detected. She complained about her victimization and she also states that her complains have not been seriously taken. This is a great concern for her grandmother. Another student of the school is Calcum who is 13 years old and had completed his first year from the school. The very problem of this boy was that he has been rigorously struggling with reading and writing at the junior school level. But the fact is that despite of his problems he never received additional support at the secondary school. He also became victimized and has seldom been held for fighting with his peers in the school. He has been most frequently absent from the school. His case has been taken up by the Education Welfare Service and they diagnosed that the boy lacks in supervision in his home and he is often left alone for several days in a time. Recent evidence revealed that the Calcum was seriously engaged in a serious fight with a boy of his class and he is considered to be at the risk of exclusion from the school. Thus having an insight on the common types of the problems faced by the students with special needs we will further develop the paper on the constraints and opportunities available in the schools and will focus on the anti-discriminatory principles and policies required to help these students come up in the mainstream and develop their all round personality with a strong educational foundation. Social exclusion Social exclusion is a contemporary ushering theory which focuses on the understanding of the needs and the experiences of the children who are in various ways disadvantaged. Recent academic analysis addresses to the change of policies and emphasizes on the concept of the social investment. The social investment applicable for the students in the school has been conjectured with various themes in the background. The development of strategies will be such that they should be holistic as well as targeted simultaneously. Real understandings of the children as investments for the future are to be identified and emphasis should be more on the current well being of the children for achieving a sustainable mechanism. Formation of an alliance with the parents should be made through mechanism of support and control and also taking forward the investment strategies. There should be limited recognition of the children as subjects in their own right which would result into the emergence of the ad hoc approaches to maintain the children’s right (Morris et al, 2009, p.30). Inclusion policies Inclusion can be thought of a human right issue which seeks to neutralize the social exclusion and promote and implement the improvement of social cohesion. Among these one of the aspects is the educational inclusion in the society which targets at eliminating the barriers to learning and participation (Special Educational Needs and Inclusion Policy, n.d.). The agenda of educational inclusion is to respect all the students in not only academic curriculum but with respect to all aspects of school life including parent caring evenings, break times, school events and after school events. Constraints faced and their respective way out (emphasized on the Pilgrim school) EBD and tackling strategies Pupils with EBD (emotional and behavioral difficulties) have been a challenge to the teachers in the mainstream as well as special schools (Helping children with emotional and behavioral difficulties (EBD), n.d.). The terms attached generally attached with EBD are ‘maladjusted’, ‘disturbed’, ‘disruptive’ or ‘psychiatric’ implying the fault of the students to adjust to several psychological and behavioral constraints in the school ( Layton et al, 2004, p.138). The characteristics of the students with EBD can be held responsible for various reasons that include neglect of the child due to acute poverty, parental stress, and biological menace like over drinking of alcohol by the mothers and so on (9 Basics of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, n.d.). The symptoms of the pupil with EBD which are often found are difficulty to form friendships, often become victims of bullying, school phobia, and others (Helping children with emotional and behavioral difficulties (EBD), n.d.). The school staff has a widening (teachers forming the major part) understanding of the cause and effect of EBD and they should be held responsible for the implementation of the policies relating to all aspects of life. These policies should include caring and listening to schools students that work closely with individual pupils and their families. Since September 1994, when for the first time special schools where included in the OFSTED's (Office for Standards in Education) school inspection program, various schools were found lacking in the effective implementation of the policies which can attributed to the pessimistic behavior of the school management in delivering these students with actual help. So policies need to be more stringent for the effective evaluation of this process (Principles into practice: effective education for pupils with emotional and behavioral difficulties, n.d.). Supporting the children suffering from the EBD within the mainstream classrooms requires the perfect intersection of the behavior management policies along with optimal schooling policies and drive for raising the academic standards. This policy implementation is apt for the students like Calcum. Manifestation of Black exclusion from the British schools Following the Enoch Powell era within the time stretch of 1960s and mid 1970s there was a high manifestation of the anti- Black discrimination. The students of the school were also left vulnerable to this detrimental juncture. The pupil mainly of African Caribbean heritage experienced significant decline in their academic achievements. Black settlements in Britain have often been viewed in the mainstream White circles and its spillover effect is really harsh mainly on the African Caribbean students in the British schools. In the recent times also the problem is quite dominant in the British environment. The graphical representation below depicts the very evidence of this. Fig.1 (School exclusions, n.d.) The magnitude given in decimals is basically in thousands and represents the exclusion from school. The horizontal axis represents different years. The graph states that the Black Caribbean is the greatest among the exclusion from the schools. Even in the year 2009/10, the greatest exclusion was from the Black Caribbean section. In terms of Black male cultural identity development, a contention is that the British education system still continues to offer very little about the positive contributions of the Blacks in the British society and generally negative depictions of the Black/ African culture are largely magnified in the in the Eurocentric and ethnocentric learning of the British schools. The teacher of the schools plays a predominant role tackling these issues. A large part of the British school teachers are responsible for the exclusion of the Black children. Studies reveal that there are mainly three major root causes for which the black students are having constraints of underachievement. The causes can be viewed as the vulnerability of the Black children being openly prejudiced, patronized and frequently underestimating the child's abilities. As a result their effects on the minds of the Black child are enormous and devastating. The teachers should come up in the forefront, identify the problems of the students, and then execute the policies accordingly in a fruitful manner (Christian, 2009, p. 330). The rate of exclusion of the Afro-Caribbean pupils in the British schools is approximately twenty times as that of the Chinese or the Indian pupils. Researcher Warnock exposits that the inclusion will mean that all the children should be included within the roof of a common educational project with internal set up being designed with the appropriate Special Educational Needs (SEN) (MacBeath et al, n.d., p.4). The Black children problem in the British schools cannot be solved only through the existing forms of learning offered in the mainstream education. The alternative forms of knowledge are required to tackle this ever emerging menace of the underachievement of the Blacks. In other words it can be said that there is an absolute need for a new intellectual approach that should be free from the shackles of the White-led educational policies dealing with the Black underachievement and exclusion in Britain (Christian, 2009, p. 330). ADHD in the schools of UK Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a commonly prevalent childhood neuro-developmental conditions in the schools of United Kingdom .The symptoms of this disorder tend mainly to the incapability of the child to give close attention in their school works. This also includes the disability to listen carefully when spoken directly and sometimes bear tendencies to leave the classrooms without taking permissions. If these behaviors last for long time then these can place the children at high risk of exclusion (Regan, 2010, p.9). ADHD may also lead to the development of anxiety and depression among the pupils in the childhood and in the adolescent. Appropriate treatment of ADHD is absolutely essential before it gets too late. The treatment of this disorder requires medical, educational, behavioral, and psychological interventions. The comprehensive approach to the treatment of this disorder is called the multimodal system and includes the parent-teacher and child education about the about diagnosis and treatment. These policies should also have to be adapted in the schools to tackle this problem. Treatment should be shaped according to the unique needs of each child and each family (Managing Medication for Children and Adolescents with ADHD, n.d, p.2). Another similar symptom found among the children is the Down syndrome disorder which creates difficulties in the development of the close and reciprocal friendship based on mutual understandings and support (Education for individuals with Down syndrome - An overview, n.d.). An English physician John Langdon Down published an accurate description of a person with Down syndrome with remedies. This also needs to be taken special care for the child development in the school (Down syndrome, n.d., p.1). Resource teacher in mainstream schools The new systems are introduced for the allocation to schools of research teacher posts and special needs assistant posts on full time or part time basis in mainstream schools with the focus of assessment of student’s special educational needs. Teachers are also responsible for providing long hours for meeting the special needs of the students (Inclusion of Students with Special Educational Needs Post-Primary Guidelines, n.d., p. 75). The resource teachers are primarily entailed with the task of teaching the students with special educational needs implemented through the methods of one-to-one correspondence, in small groups or by the help of the cooperative help of the colleagues. The teachers can involve them by withdrawing students and provide them additional classes in literacy or in mathematics as needed, give special emphasis on the social and life skill development of the students and so on. Also, noteworthy to mention that the success of the resource teacher process depends to a certain extent on the model of organization adapted by the schools. But it needs to be mentioned here that whatever be the model of the organization, the resource teacher holds an important teaching function relation with students who requires special educational needs. It is also necessary to monitor these students properly in their activities. (Inclusion of Students with Special Educational Needs Post-Primary Guidelines, n.d., p. 74) Conclusion The detrimental effects of the exclusion policies prevalent have imparted highly degenerating impact not only on the child, their families, their careers, as well as the communities as a whole. Disruptive behavior is in the form of exclusion from the school is a well existent phenomena in the schools of the United Kingdom. Although there are Consensus has been lacking in the serious implementation of the inclusion and involvement of the students in the school. Students showing behavioral difficulty in the form of EBD, ADHD, and Down syndrome are to be diagnosed properly and early intervention of the professionals and the teachers will be required to cope up with their problems. Racial discrimination should be eradicated from the roots before escalating further. The teachers of the school should be unbiased in the policy implications within the school so that the utmost benefits are reaped by the students. Strict monitoring should be maintained over the activities of the teachers. The Pilgrim school should adapt these policies to enhance their inclusion and the involvement rates. 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