Day 18

Go be human. Go art. Twenty minutes. Go do it now. (I definitely overran on the 20 minutes with this one)

I have had the pleasure of working in a number of different special schools and have consulted with staff in mainstream schools to support learners with additional needs. The majority of learners I work with will have an Education, Health and Care Plan in place. In an ideal world this document should be based on the needs of the individual and be a plan to specify exactly what the different professions can do, working together, to maximise that learner’s potential. 

In my experience this is rarely the case. There are many many eloquent parent bloggers who give vivid accounts of just how adversarial this can get. As a professional I can only offer my sympathy and say that we too feel frustration when we can see that the plan that is put in place does not meet the needs of the learner. 

I absolutely understand how we have got to a place where the plan is entirely focussed on the needs and strengths of the individual. On paper this looks like the fairest way of allocating resources - unhampered by contextual pressures or constrained by the economic restrictions in the child’s school. To create a document that focuses entirely on the support the individual needs in order to achieve seems like an effective strategy to stop that support being chipped away by broader concerns about school provision. However, learners do not develop in a vacuum and to ignore the context in which they are learning is not only detrimental to the individual but to the actual structures of provisions themselves. 

Special schools and mainstream schools are very different environments. I will be focussing mainly on special schools here, as I am more familiar with how they worked in the past, how they work now and how they could work with a bit of will and more multi-disciplinary planning. 

On paper it looks eminently reasonable to specify the number of contacts/hours (depending on where your EHCP is written) each professional should be allocated to help the individual develop. I can absolutely see how this is helpful in a mainstream school where, if the contact are not specified, services may struggle to ensure adequate intervention is offered. However, due to the completely different nature of special school funding and special school teams, this system can be actively detrimental for learners in special schools. 

The majority of special school funding for speech and language therapy is co-funded through service level agreements - this means that the funding does not match to the individual EHCPs - money is not allocated according to the need specified at the level of the individual, it is more amorphous than that. I think this is a good thing. 

A special school environment is one where the staff all have a higher level of understanding of complex needs and how to support learners in developing their movement, communication and ability to learn that is typically found across the board in a mainstream school. The classrooms themselves are adapted to ensure a higher level of support for basic skills that are fundamental to learning, such as constant access to specialist equipment in all lessons, a Total Communication environment, calm down spaces within the class itself. All of these are fundamental to the learner’s development but are almost erased from consideration when identifying support in an EHCP, 

In my experience, the focus of families and a lot of SEN workers is almost alway the hours /number of contacts provided by health professionals. To have EHCPs that specify the need for a trained professional to have direct contact with a child in order to help them achieve is in most cases a gross oversimplification of how that child learns. A child with severe learning disabilities will gain far more from regular ongoing contact with teaching staff who has received specialist training than from half an hour weekly sessions with a therapist. The work that needs to be done is the building of effective integrated multi- or trans-disciplinary teams that ensure holistic support is offered throughout the school day. 

The lack of discussion around the fundamental importance of environment and staff skill sets when reviewing  EHCPs is a real problem.   If we highlighted the things that special schools do that mainstream schools are not achieving such as calm down spaces within the class room, then we may start to value the things these wonderful schools can offer. I believe it is detrimental to the needs of all learners with additional needs to focus on what a specialist is offering rather than placing their day to day lived experience at the heart of this document. We have created a system based on mainstream provision which accounts for approximately 25% of mainstream school pupils whereas usually 100% of pupils in a special school will have an EHCP. Yet the documents enshrine what the individual is entitled to are far more focussed on the structure of a mainstream school rather than celebrating the successes and trying to identify the more diffuse ways of working that are supporting the majority of learners in special schools. 

EHCPs anatomise learning into different sections with different professionals linked to each. People working in special schools know that it is far more helpful to work on these things together - child feeling frustrated in their stander? Do some work on play and interaction at the same time. Child unwilling to walk across the room? Have a chat to the Occupational Therapist about what motivators might encourage them to do so. I know so many OTs who are stuck fulfilling specific fine motor programmes because it is specified in the EHCP rather than being able to work collaboratively with teaching staff to adapt the classroom environment so it is becomes a place where the learner is more likely to want to pick up a pen and practice without needing a highly specific programme at all. 

This system also ignores the broader context in which each child lives. The focus on provision in mainstream also means that greater challenges for families of learners in special schools are also ignored. In my experience this tends to manifest itself as highly contentious discussions around the provision of transport for special school pupils. I think this is often a flashpoint for families as the logisitics of getting your children to 2 different schools for the same time is extremely challenging for all families. There is also the isolation that comes with special school provision - you can’t make school gage friends if you are not at the school gates. 

If EHCPs focussed on the provision of support in special schools, where most children with EHCPs are actually educated then it could mean that we could be fighting for a provision that actually meets the needs of these learners rather than trying to fit them all into a mainstream box which actually misses all the strengths that we should be pulling into mainstream provision for learners with additional needs rather than creating a model of expert advice in what should be a place of mutual planning and environment shaping. 

If we want to get good at something we all learn the same way - we start doing something badly and then keep doing it until we get better or we get frustrated and give up. Special schools should be places where we create constant opportunities to give it a go until you get better at it.