UK Government Against Teaching Reform - Essay Example

Extent which UK Government has Opted Fundamental Reform of the Education Provision with SEN For many years, special education needs (SEN) have beenignored in many nations of the world. However, there have been efforts in the recent past aimed at ensuring that special education needs are achieved particularly in the UK. Cases of students with these needs have been on increase pegged with biological and psychological characteristics of individuals. Government policies on special education have failed to link politics of disability with special educational needs. These makes the linking of special educational needs with disability issues by New Labour in the 2001 Special Educational Needs and Disability Act very remarkable .Despite being advocated for many years by the Disabled People's Movement, the move has been largely ignored by politicians and professional agencies who work with children in educational settings. These have raised two arguments from the disabled Activists who want the society to include the disability clause in the policies. The first focuses upon the ways in which disability and learning difficulties are problems created socially by the society's power structure. The arguments clearly points out that physical and also mental impairment are there to show the large diversity of human nature and should not be viewed as disabilities. Mistreating people with physical and mental impairments is what transforms the impairments into disabilities. Isolated Special education institutions are viewed as oppression to the disabled. The New Labour initiative which supports inclusive schooling has been the Strategy for special education needs which remove barriers to educational achievement (DfES, 2004). The importance of this strategy is that it takes special education within the wider policy initiative of the Green Paper Every child matters (The Stationery Office, 2003) 144 D. Armstrong offers the most comprehensive expression of inclusive education policy within New Labour's wider ideological vision of the inclusive society. With its origin being the Victoria Climbie Report (DOH/Home Office, 2003), Every child matters shows its commitment to reform children's services to prevent helpless children from falling and also recognise that protecting a child goes hand in hand with policies aimed at improving the lives of the child. SEN (DfES, 2004) strategy by the Government seeks to signify inclusive education in the same cocoon of protecting the child and promoting learning activities for those children with special needs. The four essential areas of activities for chid protection are; Parents of children with special needs should be given access to suitable healthcare and children with learning problems should receive help in the early stages Inclusive practice should be adopted in early years in every school which will considerably remove barriers to learning. Developing and improving teachers' proficiency and policies for meeting children with special education needs which will raise expectations and the general school leading to the learner's progress. Involving parents in delivering which will help parents develop confidence on the education needs obtained by their children. Pursuing this child protection model of inclusion, the Strategy for special education needs locates special educational interventions within the broader context of social disadvantages experienced by young people whose origins lie within 'risk factors' associated with educational failure, community breakdown, parenting inadequacies, school disorganisation and individual and/or peer group difficulties. These risk factors have been widely proclaimed as giving rise to concerns for the welfare of young people across the domains of education health, social welfare and youth justice (Lupton, 1999; Bessant et al., 2003). The risk factor model is one that has been instrumental in promoting an interventionist strategy of risk reduction to be delivered by cross-agency childhood services. The DEE, (1994) Code of Practice came up with a five steps procedure which included preliminary classroom monitoring at the first stage to statutory assessment at the fifth stage. This created a new post in each school of the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO). Their responsibility were to come up with detailed individual education plans expected to incorporate short -term education targets , strategies on good teaching techniques, some special resources on what is to be studied , inclusion of review dates among others. The Labour government introduced a revised code of practice in the year 2001. This revised code was for the replacement of the fifth assessment stage with two pre-statutory stages which were the school action and the school action plus. School action were to be applied if there is poor students progress associated with performance and emotional problems , physical or sensory difficulties and even some communication problems which might occur even after the child receives normal set apart opportunities in the general classroom learning. There ought to be specifications of the actions taken reflected on the said individual's education plan. The second pre-statutory stage (School Action Plus) contains a formal request for assistance from the external multiagencies making a follow up of the continued slow or complete lack of progress on the learner's part regardless of the measures taken in the first pre-statutory stage. In the past referring a child with special needs to the external multiagencies resulted in frequent placement of the child in a special school and a statement of special education needs. However, the above code of practise introduced well laid down procedures to evade all these by ensuring a clean assessment record, intervention and also review at each given stage. The aim is avoiding any form of management crisis experienced by students with learning difficulties. The code resulted in increased responsibilities to classroom teachers and mainstream schools directed to learners with special education needs. According to Armstrong, 2003b the code will help teachers address various issues under special needs. Bullying and discrimination (both racial and gender) can curtail. SENCO'S have played a greater role since for instance At least 5% of Age Weighted Pupil Unit (AWPU) is expected to be spent on SEN. AWPU is about 2000 for a primary school pupil and 3000 for a secondary school pupil. Special Educational Needs and Additional Funds for Additional Educational Needs (AEN) are weighted for schools by using groups of Learning Difficulty. Funding for students with rare and rigorous special education needs is channelled via statements from a centrally held fund. Strategic Facilities can be found in authorities where resources have been targeted on schools with a long tradition of a good special education needs practice. These schools, at sometimes described as 'additional resourced mainstream schools', then work as magnet schools, attracting extra funds, qualified staff and specialized equipment such as a sensory room, disabled access, physio equipment and changing facilities for example. In rural areas the geographical spread of the various Strategic Facilities can, however, disadvantage some families or incur significant travel time. It may also be seen as letting other schools 'off the hook' and also creating a new form of imbalance within schools across a region. A head teacher described the ease with which some schools could refuse children and rely on others to pick up the responsibility. Working with students hand in hand can build a strong relationship between that key worker and the pupil. If the pupil become too troublesome or the class activity was judged not be appropriate the TA (or SNA) would withdraw the child from the special education needs program. Dyson (2001) has argued that ideas of risk and resilience are now needed for linking educational difficulty to broader issues in social and economic disadvantage'. The same view is in the Strategy for SEN (DfES, 2004, p. 8) where we are told: We have never been so well placed to deliver such a wide-ranging strategy to transform the lives and life chances of these children. The reform of children's services set out in Every Child Matters, with its focus on early intercession, preventative work and combined services for children via Children's Trusts, will deliver real and lasting benefits to children with SEN and their entire families. And our commitment to reducing child poverty, investing in early year's education, childcare and targeting support at areas of social and economic disadvantage will enable us to address the underlying causes of children's difficulties. I strongly agree with Dyson because every child has his own needs and for these, different review strategies ought to be applied to suit the various student needs. However, in the recent past these review strategies have been (and are still) applied in the United Kingdom resulting in improved efforts towards special education needs References Armstrong, D. (2003b): Partnership with pupils: problems and possibilities, Association for Child Barton, L. (2003): Professorial Lecture. Inclusive education and teacher education: a basis for hope or a discourse of delusion, Institute of Education, London. Department for Education (DfE) (1994): Code of practice on the identification and assessment of special educational needs, DfE, London. Fulcher, G. (1989): Disabling policies: a comparative approach to educational policy and disability, Falmer Press, Lewes. Mason, M. & Rieser, R. (1990): Disability equality in the classroom-a human rights issue, Disability Equality in Education, London. Pritchard, D. G. (1963): Education and the handicapped 1760-1960, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Read More