Examination of Witness (Questions 40-59)
TUESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 2003
MR PETER
GRAY
40. For my own edification, are there any different
streams of funding for SEN children in rural schools, as opposed
to in urban schools?
(Mr Gray) The way that special needs is funded in
mainstream schools particularly is that schools will have some
formula factor that will usually differentiate between schools
on the general range of children they have with special educational
needs. Generally speaking, that tends to target resources to schools
that have got a large number of children with learning or behaviour
difficulties in the general sense, which are probably more likely
to be in more socially deprived areas in traditional terms.
41. Are there any special challenges? I think
we are talking here of a small school problem. Our previous witnesses
indicated some of the challenges of having mixed age, mixed ability
teaching. If you have a child who requires particular and special
attention against the background of the challenge that I have
just described, is there any concern expressed by rural schools
that this will use up a disproportionate amount of time of a particular
teacher, to the possible detriment of children who are not SENs?
(Mr Gray) I do not think that theme is any stronger
than it is in other schools. I think there is an interesting balance,
and I would concentrate on primary really, where a lot of the
smaller schools are. There is an interesting balance between quite
a strong community ownership and traditional inclusion in those
schools with children with a range of needs, as against the need
for staff to feel the need for support, both directly in terms
of additional support within the classroom, but also skills and
professional support in terms of the kinds of work that they might
need to have to do with that child. I do not think that theme
of effects on other children is any stronger in rural areas as
opposed to urban areas. The tradition, if one looks at European
studies on this, in terms of inclusion, is that there tend to
be fewer children in special provision in areas that are more
demographically sparse. That is the case right across Europe,
not just in England. Those areas where there is high population
density tend to have higher numbers of children in special schools.
42. Given that DEFRA, before giving evidence,
will read everything that everybody says before this Committee,
this is your opportunity now to give your message to DEFRA about
rural schools and SEN. What is your gem of advice to them, that
they ought to take note of, and that they must promote?
(Mr Gray) The main messages are that there are some
positives about rural education and children with special educational
needs, particularly at primary level, which are consistent with
national legislation, with some good practice in rural primary
schools. There is some good practice in supporting some children
with very complex needs, as well as those with milder needs. It
is variable in terms of that experience. There is a lot of staffing
stability within rural schools, and if you have a very good teacher,
you get the benefits of that. If you have a teacher who is less
confident in that area, then it is a longer term issue potentially.
I think that the emphasis we would want to make is on the importance
of building on that good practice, and extending good practice
to other schools at primary level, usually through some form of
clustering or bringing together teachers working in small schools
for whom you should support professional development. One recommendation
is to explore the option of pooling and delegating funds, or delegating
to clusters of schools, rather than delegating to individual small
schools, to give the greater flexibility that brings. We have
had some experience of some successful arrangements; and some
authorities work on that basis. The other emphases would be around
primary/secondary transition. For some vulnerable children going
from small schools into much larger schools which can be the case
in rural areas, to a larger secondary school in a town, attention
needs to be given to that transition at some point, so that they
are not suffering issues around social inclusion, whatever their
special educational needs. The other area that is important from
our point of view is post-16. There may be very good provisions
at school level, but when we are talking about lifelong learning,
particularly for some young people with more complex needs, the
danger is that at the end of formal education they go back to
living at home with their parents, with very limited options and
opportunities, particularly those young adults with more severe
difficulties. We have a restricted range of options, which is
particularly more the case in rural areas.
43. It is often the case that a child with a
statement will not always be able to have delivered all the things
that the statement said they should have. This can range not just
from facilities within schools, as you will appreciate, but also
the benefit of services outside—educational psychologists,
occupational therapists and the like. Are there any particular
problems for children in rural schools in obtaining those additional
services?
(Mr Gray) In terms of additional services, the pattern
is more stable in rural areas. In those kinds of networks of agencies
there tends to be more staffing stability. They tend to stay in
those posts and the networks remain more stable than in some urban
areas. There are some national recruitment issues, and speech
therapy is a particular one that presents difficulties. Generally,
in terms of rural areas, the networks tend to be more stable and
potentially more supportive.
Chairman
44. Special educational needs provision is not
just provided in special schools; it is also provided in mainstream
schools, with the same code working for a specialist teacher.
You made the point that European-wide surveys have shown that
areas that are less densely populated tend to have less provision
of separate provision.
(Mr Gray) Yes.
45. Can you say a little more about that? I
was, a long time ago, a special needs teacher, when I did have
a proper job! One of the things I noticed was that places like
Cornwall had no separate provision for special needs, and it was
rural; but metropolitan areas like Cardiff and the West Midlands
had plenty. Have you done any work on looking at and mapping out
where the separate provision is; and is there a noticeable lack
of it in rural areas?
(Mr Gray) Separate provision partly depends on your
definition of that. Separate provision I was using in terms of
special school provision.
46. Yes.
(Mr Gray) But in Cornwall, for example, there will
be provision that is focussed on a particular mainstream school,
which may be called a mainstream special needs' unit or a mainstream
resource base, to which children go from a much wider area than
their local community. Those might be for a whole range of difficulties.
It could be a unit for children with autism or a unit for children
with severe learning difficulties. Children will attend and participate
to some extent in mainstream classes. They will be coming to that
school from quite a large area. The pattern that we are experiencing
in rural areas for some other difficulties which are milder and
which might have had some of that separate provision in the past,
is that it is becoming less common as local schools develop their
own capacities and abilities to deal with a wider range of children.
It is a changing picture.
47. What about those children that show educational,
behavioural or emotional problems, because special education is
not just about a learning disability in one way or a physical
disability. It can be a problem about educational behaviour. Can
you say something about that in rural provision, because that
is more difficult?
(Mr Gray) Yes, absolutely. In terms of a rural primary
provision, I have mentioned earlier about the community ownership
that you may get in rural primary schools with a diverse range
of needs. The difficulty with some cases of very difficult behaviour
is that when that breaks down, the child has very few options
available. In an urban primary school, you might try moving the
child to another primary school with a new staff.
48. Or just another class.
(Mr Gray) Yes, but if you have got, particularly in
primary, one teacher, and there are fairly few options available
to you, if it goes badly wrong, then you have got quite a few
problems in the rural areas. There are also similar problems for
children who may be being looked after, or in public care who
come to live in that area, who are not necessarily regarded as
part of that community in terms of acceptance within the community.
If you are accepted as part of the community and you are seen
as living there, you have a high chance of feeling included. I
think that behaviour does present particular challenges in terms
of the lack of flexible alternative options.
49. The Government's policy of inclusion is
coming through fairly fast and thick. Have you noticed that local
authorities with large rural areas have been looking to cut back,
or closure of schools for children with moderate learning difficulties?
(Mr Gray) In the very rural authorities that provision
for moderate learning difficulties probably never existed. I started
off working in Herefordshire in the early eighties, and then there
were things called Slow Learning Units in mainstream schools,
so we never had moderate learning difficulties schools, special
schools, in that particular authority. I do not think the closure
of moderate learning schools in rural areas is potentially as
significant as it would be in urban areas, where the children
go into moderate learning difficulty schools are not substantially
different from those children who did not go.
50. Your implication from that is that the provision
was never there in the first place in rural areas.
(Mr Gray) If it was there, it would have been in the
mainstream unit form, concentrated on a particular school, or
else the child would have been supported additionally in their
local mainstream school.
Mr Curry
51. I think that perhaps I ought, for the record,
say that Conservative Members do think that they have a proper
job, and I would not like it to become too widespread a notion
that somehow this is some sort of accident that we have found
ourselves doing this; but I can quite understand my Labour colleagues'
point of view that they may occasionally feel like that! A country
school: you get three statemented children in the school, and
the teacher says, "I am not looking forward to league tables"—and
that immediately reflects itself—it looks as though the
whole school is not doing very well. Given that no government
is going to walk away from the concept of league tables or performance,
are there particular problems that present themselves in small
rural schools in regard to children with special educational needs
and the impact that has on the perception of how well they are
doing?
(Mr Gray) That is a difficult one. For example, I
am familiar with one school which had a 100% record on the number
of children at Key Stage 2 that reached the threshold for three
years; and then a child with a statement came in, who was not
going to meet the 100% target. That potentially affects their
scores and results. The question is how far that determines parental
attitudes in those who know that school, and in terms of that
school's overall performance. If they know the school well and
are confident about the teacher, my guess is that that is what
predominates. The other thing to say about statements is that
children with statements can be disapplied not from the National
Curriculum but from the National Curriculum assessments; and therefore
their results do not necessarily figure. For a child with significant
learning disabilities, that might well occur, and therefore their
results do not go forward to the way results are reported.
52. We are looking at the role of DEFRA. One
of the main instruments of DEFRA for so-called rural proofing—indeed
it has got something called a rural advocate—is the Countryside
Agency. Have you ever had a conversation with the Countryside
Agency?
(Mr Gray) No.
53. Have you any idea what they do?
(Mr Gray) We endeavour, as an organisation, to have
links with Government departments. Our main link is through the
DfES. That is the main emphasis.
54. I am speaking with some experience here,
but the DfES has always been the worst department in Whitehall
for co-operating with everybody else. It stood outside of the
regional structures for a very long time. It always fights its
own corner like mad as far as local authority spending is concerned.
The Government is saying "we are ending all this proscription
on how you spend your money". The DfES is constantly, persistently
telling local authorities to passport their money straight to
the schools, even though that may mean passporting through more
than the entire amount of the additional funding. How would you
describe joined-up government in so far as it affects the areas
for which you have responsibility? Would you describe it as fully
joined-up, partly joined-up, semi-dislocated, not joined-up at
all? How would you—for one minute, without hesitation, repetition
or deviation, describe how the Government supplies children's
special educational needs in rural schools?
(Mr Gray) I would probably distinguish between children
with special educational needs and disabilities and some children
whose problems might be more around the behaviour and non-attendance,
truancy kind of area. With special needs and disabilities, there
has been some effort already to differentiate the kinds of responses
for different areas. With social inclusion and behaviour and non-attendance,
there is a dominance of an urban social inclusion agenda. Perhaps
there is a need for further development around what social inclusion
means for young people with a range of needs in rural areas. That
area, and the degree to which those two areas come together—special
needs and disability and more of the social inclusion area—probably
can benefit from further development.
Chairman
55. You obviously have not had a meeting with
the Countryside Agency, and you have to read lots of documents
presumably that come from the DfES. Your answer possibly led us
to believe that Government is not doing a very good job on focussing
on education in rural areas. Do you find that it is almost too
segmented and that it finds it too difficult, having to think
about special education provision, and government cannot divide
that up further into another category, which is special education
provision in rural areas as opposed to urban? They are just not
flexible.
(Mr Gray) No, I do not think it is that. With special
needs and inclusion, there is recognition of the differing contexts
and differing needs of individual children with special educational
needs. The more one talks about special educational needs, the
more you are talking about individual needs and having to plan
for individuals in their own contexts and circumstances. That
is almost inherent in the whole planning for special educational
needs; that you need to differentiate your response to different
circumstances and needs. The emphasis I made about social inclusion
is that there tends to be a stereotype about children who are
on the streets or children who are living in urban areas. There
are some quite differing challenges in relation to social inclusion
in rural areas. For example, the Government has developed the
Connexions Agency for planning a transition into adulthood for
young people, particularly those who may be vulnerable to that.
It is too early to say yet, but one would hope that Connexions
was differentiating its response to children in that situation
in rural areas, as opposed to urban areas. It is too early in
that organisation's development to see how that is going.
56. I think you are a bit too early there because
the Connexions for Gloucestershire has only got one mobile unit,
and that is going to cover the whole of the Forest of Dean and
the whole of the Cotswolds and Stroud valley; so I am not quite
so optimistic about that. The point I was trying to get at was
this. You made the point in your submission to us that rural schools
are smaller; therefore, they do not have the ability to do the
economies of scale, and consequently a SENCO might be doing three
other jobs.
(Mr Gray) It might be the head teacher.
57. It may well be, and regularly at least.
There is not, in the funding that comes through, recognition that
the provision for special education in rural areas does need extra
funding, because in an urban school there will be a dedicated
SENCO, or even two.
(Mr Gray) Maybe. In terms of the amount of time devoted
to SENCO duties by different schools, whether it is urban or rural,
is down to the governors in terms of the amount of time, and that
varies substantially. Even in some large urban primary schools,
the amount of time is the same, but perhaps their duties may vary
significantly from one school to another. We think that the time
that is required for that duty needs to be recognised and is significant.
In our submission we have said that in small rural primary schools,
head teachers have to do a lot of different things, and that drawing
schools together in clusters provides some of the economies of
scale that by being a single school you might not have. It does
not account for everything. We believe that every school and every
teacher—and the National Curriculum expects this—should
have a certain amount of competence in dealing with children with
special educational needs because they are in all classrooms.
In terms of particular areas of knowledge, and having that available
at a cluster level rather than expecting each individual school
to do that, can be an advantage.
58. What are the problems with clustering? You
have painted a picture that it can be very advantageous and you
can share best practice and help share out the workload; but why
is it not more widespread if it is the answer to problems in rural
areas?
(Mr Gray) I think because it needs pump priming and
encouragement centrally. People are busy and teachers are busy—they
have got full lives. Head teachers are busy and have got full
lives. To ask people to go that extra step of coming together
or pooling budgets, for example, is a challenge. If you can encourage
it at the local authority level—Nottinghamshire, for example,
pump-primed it and provided buses to schools with a certain amount
of devolved money as a family or cluster budget—then it
is more likely to happen.
David Taylor
59. Can I say how much I agree with that. My
daughter is a primary school teacher in Nottinghamshire, and that
is a very important point. I would also like to congratulate the
NASEN on their submission, which I think is intelligent and concise,
and thought-provoking. Would that they were all of that type!
Can I move on to the use of ICT, Chairman, because there are two
points that NASEN highlights the potential for. One is in relation
to clustering and the opportunities that gives for continuing
professional development, and secondly in relation to e-learning
and enabling children to stay at their local schools. There are
difficulties. Diana referred to the fact that special education
needs co-ordination is difficult where there are small numbers
of staff. Most of them have between 50 and 100 children on the
roll and two to four teachers, each wearing several hats. If there
is one hat that is worn more reluctantly than special needs, it
is probably ICT because it is very difficult to get the appropriate
skills, is it not? How can you therefore improve the quality of
special needs provision in the rural primary context when you
are not able to get the appropriate skills very readily for teachers
within that school. What should the LEAs and the Government be
doing to improve that?
(Mr Gray) I was listening to the previous answers
in terms of the importance of encouraging development of ICT and
local authorities' potential role in doing that. I think certainly
from NASEN's point of view, we see a lot of potential in the use
of ICT in children's special educational needs. There is an increasing
range of material that children can use. Our main concerns about
it really relate to individual children working in quite an isolated
way using new technology with their support assistant, and the
degree to which that is separately organised and separately planned
and does not necessarily encourage the pupil to be working with
other children or the class teacher to be taking responsibility
for planning for that child as part of the overall whole of what
they are trying to do. We are positive about the use of ICT but
we are also keen to ensure that it is used in an inclusive way
with children which does not keep them apart, because one of the
benefits for children with special educational needs is about
children learning with others and others learning with them.
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