It’s been 6 years since my last blog post. We’ve had a lockdown, Brexit and this week a new government. I’m now a Headteacher and a mum to an adolescent moving through the CAMHS system and a son with dyslexia. The outlook for those children with SEND is no better, in fact it’s worse. Notably the situation we are in with special schools informing local authorities that they cannot meet the needs of a pupil that is currently attending a mainstream school where the needs are not being adequately met, hence the request for a special school. Parents are told that private special schools are to be explored. Now, as a parent I have a grave experience of the private sector when it comes to adolescent inpatient units, so I’m wondering whether the same lack of care and monitoring of the care transfers to private special schools too? I hope not, but that blog is for a different day. During lockdown, I also made the decision to send my son to private school because his mainstream school was not giving him the time and attention he needed to learn to read. He can now read, so that was a positive private sector decision. So, I’m now confused. The new government fills me with confidence, but there is so much to do and I do have concerns that they are convinced that throwing money at the situation is the answer. Yes, I will be impacted if my son’s school charges me VAT and I understand the thinking behind this. But that won’t resolve children with SEND not having their needs met. Systemic change is the answer. Reviewing Ofsted is a great start and I am really hopeful. Especially as my poor daughter undergoing treatment for a severe mental health condition asks me every day whether ofsted have called! That’s just dreadful. Ofsted reform needs to align with the mental health agenda! My other thoughts are, let’s review the Code of Practice, the requirement for an EP to contribute to every statutory request is a huge barrier and expense. There aren’t enough of them and where there are plenty of other professionals involved, an EP is not necessary. Then there’s the cost to administrating the EHCP and reviews. We can easily reduce this with AI technology alongside multi agency working. Cut the admin team! The constant copy and paste! But more importantly, is shifting culture in schools. This is hard under the current ofsted regime, but Headteacher’s can offer more bespoke provision for children. Start thinking less about ‘holding’ children and think about how they might thrive in Mainstream. Inclusion is not about forcing children to access the same environment and lesson delivery, that is exclusion. Reasonable adjustments are bigger than a pencil grip, wobble cushion or sensory break. It’s about thinking outside the box, one size fits all meets the need of one. Use the spaces more carefully, deploy staff more creatively. The plan in September does not have to be the plan until July. Adapt according to the needs of your pupils. Shift the mindsets of staff. Try to challenge their thinking on behaviour. The last government really screwed SEND over when they started judging schools on whether children presented with non conforming behaviour. This is exactly what children do when they can’t find the words to tell us they are not OK! They’re not naughty. Why has the penny not dropped that CAMHS are overstretched because children’s behaviour is being met with discipline rather than compassion? And as for social media….well where do I start?

The solution is to connect the dots.

My response to the document, ‘Empty Promises, published this month by the NAHT was a very large sigh.

I have conversation after conversation with my HT and outside agencies regarding the issues discussed. I do not have the answers to the funding crisis, but I would suggest current funds have not always been well spent.

My schools’ finances are stretched very thin and we have many a disruptive day. But with 30% SEN, of which 16 pupils have EHCPs, out of 200 pupils. Not to mention high pupil and pupils with EAL numbers we manage pretty well!

My biggest obstacles associated with the SEN crisis have been coming up against other schools. Don’t get me wrong,  I’ve struggled to get agencies to work effectively together,  I’ve been the punch bag for parents when agencies contradict and things don’t move fast enough, I’ve played the waiting game to access health professionals and come head to head with parents unrealistic demands because they don’t understand the system. It’s tough. But day to day we succeed. When things get suspicious are when a new pupil with high needs starts at our school.

I’ll start with Early Years. I’ve never understood why a SENCO in a nursery setting is not expected to have the same qualifications as a school based SENCO. It is surely even more important for them to pick up the signs of a child struggling to make sense of the world. Also a lot more difficult to do so when so young. All research points to early identification being the biggest precurser to success, but many of the nurseries that I have worked with have very little expertise. This could easily be rectified within our current system.

Then there’s transition from pre school to school. This is so chaotic. Transition records are basic,  too basic for children with SEN. It’s often not even mentioned to the school by the nursery that a pupil has been receiving support. I can only speak for Gloucestershire, but funding allocated in nursery to support a child does not automatically transfer to their reception year. Why not?  There doesn’t even seem to be an obligatory review or transition process. Schools end up starting again.  Resources to support at the nursery are rarely sent with the child to school,  even though the child’s adfitional funding would have paid for them, in a way. How awful for those children that need consistency and routine.

Then there’s the staggered start in Reception. The jury’s out on this one. I see no point, in our school we have a week of half days but that’s overkill in my view. The world has changed. Do we need this gentle removal of the plaster? My problem with it is the fact that it delays early identification. Not every child attends a nursery, or may not have been identified as having additional needs if they did. Research is suggesting that pupils are starting school with much lower standards of spoken communication. Get them in to school day one then! Why add to the problem? In certain situations, with parents on board,  a pupil may require a longer part time start, but this should be a reasonable adjustment,  not the norm.

Then we have the attitude of an EHCP panel allocating support. ‘We’ll start with 15 hours and then you can see how you get on. Hold an early annual review if need be.’ In other words, don’t make it easy for them to succeed. If early intervention is the proven method,  then shouldn’t it be the other way around. As much support as possible,  then reduce at the first annual review. I understand that this is possibly partly down to the fact that sometimes EHCP funds are not used well in a school. Staff allocated may not have the expertise and day to day provision for the child may not be suitable for their needs. This needs more careful monitoring across the board. Annual Review proceses are not robust, in my experience. Schools are left to their own devices and not all should be!

 

 

So we start this year with 8 new teaching assistant members of staff. That’s a lot! An increase of 30%. This is good news as we have also had a 25% increase in pupils with EHC plans. New team members highlight how far we’ve come. How much we’ve invested in CPD and the subsequent knowledge, skills and systems that are instilled in our teaching and routines. Someone suggested new staff would ‘pick it up’. However this would be impossible. It was a journey. Building on the previous, using published research, peer work, debating and learning through making mistakes.

I have a plan. I will repeat what worked last time-an hour a week during the school day. I will start from scratch. The ethos will, I’m sure, just be ‘picked up’ by osmosis. The knowledge and skill, however, needs explicit teaching. I think we’ll get to the destination more quickly, as they’ll see it all in action back in the classroom from the established staff members. They’ll benefit from observing and learning from the experienced.

Here goes- The EEF ‘Making best use of teaching assistants’ resources are the prompt for the first session. Then some peer observations should model this effective practice. Followed by weekly sessions on interventions to support across all SEN categories of need taking us up to half term. External training hosted by the Advisory Teaching and Educational Psycology service for specific classroom needs will also be doloped throughout the term.

I value this CPD more than anything. It has had a huge impact on our pupil outcomes. I’m confident that teaching assistants in our school have a voice that’s influential in how our school develops because this CPD makes them feel worthy!

The first term. Paper, paper, paper. All I knew about how to be a SENCO was based on how the SENCO at my previous schools had worked. The role of SENCO from school to school is so different and they didn’t appear to have any time to do anything. Half a day a week as I remember it. What use is that in a school of 200 pupils?

TIP 1 read the code of practice and get to know your County SEND procedures and policies.

So I embarked on the National SENCO Award and rummaged through paper. I also spent time with some of the pupils on the SEN register and should have done so more. This is how I developed the most. I found out their difficulties by observing and speaking to them and their teachers. Then I made phone call after phone call to find the answers to my questions.

TIP 2 find a knowledgeable SENCO buddy to lean on for answers.

I’m a systems person so the internet is my friend. I decided what was not useful for the children in my school and looked for ideas and templates to suit what I wanted.

TIP 3 look at the school’s current SEN policy and scribble on what to keep and what to change.

Mind map the areas in your school that you want to change and plan what you want to achieve. Break it down and start with what will make the biggest difference for the pupils first. Mine was forget IEPS for every child with SEN that merely had the same curriculum targets on as all the other pupils- back in the day when we talked in targets and target ladders. Additional and different to should be the focus of SEND provision, assuming the basics are good too of course!

TIP 4 Swot, mind map, action plan your way to a short, medium and long term aim for your SEND provision improvements.

Parents. Talk about feeling unwanted. No parent signed up to see me at parents evening. Why would they? Who really wants to talk about what their child is struggling with and how it’s got so tricky they now have a person that wants to talk about it with you again after the teacher? We changed parents evening so we’re all in the hall together and the staff associated with SEN, EAL and pastoral work visit each table to listen and contribute, as parents engage with the class teacher.

TIP 5 find a way to engage parents without stigma.

Time. I started as a SENCO 1 day a week, working up to 2 after 1 year then 3 after 3 years, now 4 days a week. The pupil with SEN list has doubled in numbers, and TAs have quadrupled. Statement/EHCPs have ranged from 7 to 13 over the years. I couldn’t make a difference to the overall strategic provision for SEND until I was working 3 days a week.

TIP staff your department to ensure time not only to complete SEND admin, but to move your practice forward too.

There are various models in which to achieve this. That is for another blog entry!

 

My previous post referred to Quality First Teaching (QFT). I had a think and decided to compile a list of various methods to consider when it comes to the inclusive aspect of QFT:

If following whole class teaching methods then provide resources to support or extend.

Place your TA amongst the children to provide support in the form of questioning, note taking, filling in a task board, prompting the focus points for the pupil to tune into.

The teacher needs to offer targeted, differentiated direct questioning.

Start every lesson from a point that all of your previously low attaining pupils are working within. Once pupils have reached their ‘stretch zone’, they take themselves or an adult prompts them to move onto their task-make this task independent sometimes or the teacher works with this group while the TA continues the whole class instruction.

Bring those making less progress back to you, regularly.

My preferred approach is to pre-teach. Address possible misconceptions, new vocabulary, introduce the text or suggest how to use resources that could support them in the task before the lesson! Prepare to succeed, not set up to fail!

Less teacher talk-set pupils off on a task. Maybe they have selected the task themselves, as you have instilled an understanding of self awareness and growth mind-set into your pupils.

Provide a task in such a way, such as in the mastery approach, where you elicit/provide an anchor task and go from there.

Observe, stand back, challenge through questioning, support through questioning, develop questioning techniques with your TA. Questioning is so important!

Consider how your daily practice could be detrimental to your TA’s development, so in turn to your pupils. If your TA is outside the classroom all/most of the time how can they learn from you-whether that be their subject knowledge development or how to improve their teaching style/questioning.

Back in June, I had just boarded the train back to Liverpool Central after providing a workshop to 26 PGCE students entitled ‘How to work effectively with your TA’. It was a 45-minute workshop and I ran out of time! I have so much more to tell them. Enthusiastic, fresh and ready to begin their journey into the classroom.  

My mind drifted back to a point in the workshop where I used a video from Oxford University Press to share research findings of how TAs are deployed in classrooms, recorded in 2013. Disappointingly the OUP findings of unprepared TAs, less able pupils making less progress, activities occurring outside classrooms with TAs not feeding back to teachers, questioning and TAs always working with SEN or lower attaining pupils are precisely what the graduate students were sharing from their recent teaching practices. Quotes from the students included:

‘ I asked the TA to so an activity on perimeter and she taught them area.’

‘My TA would walk around with a rubber and rub work out, telling the pupil what to write instead.’

‘Teachers writing reams of notes for TAs instead of verbal discussions and preparation’

‘Poor marking from TAs’

20% of the PGCE group had not heard of the Code of Practice, yet  90% had working with TAs daily for a sustained period of time. Who is teaching the new teachers how to deploy a TA well.  

The graduates mentioned that there was no money to train the TAs-I’ve heard that too many times. Although, it’s not just the TAs-what about the teachers and leaders being trained in how to deploy TAs effectively? So are school leaders wasting money employing individuals not able to do their jobs well if they are poorly deployed and not invested in? 

A colleague at the conference asked me what I thought about TAs often being recruited from within the community. She felt if this community consisted of high disadvantage, then may be the TA had a poor education. She felt this may result in their use of language being of an inadequate standard to model to pupils. She feels, and there is research to support this view, that if you can’t talk properly, you can’t write properly. I said the recruitment process should be more robust. Or subsequent training may be needed-INVEST!! 

If the models of effective use of TAs from the OUP, EEF, MITA and many others all refer to Quality First Teaching then why would this be an issue anyway?

Is the problem less about TA deployment and more about a lack of skill and understanding surrounding Quality First Teaching, when it comes to including the previously low attaining pupils and pupils with complex needs?

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton