Examination of Witnesses (Questions 620-639)
MR MIKE
COLLINS, DR
SUSAN TRESMAN,
MS VIRGINIA
BEARDSHAW AND
MR DAVID
CONGDON
1 MARCH 2006
Q620 Mr Chaytor: They are identified
later presumably.
Mr Collins: Yes, sorry. We know
there are around 90,000 children with autism across the education
service. We know that those who are identified make up 14% of
those with statement who are on School Action Plus, so those are
being picked up, but in terms of responding to their needs we
also know that there are only 7,500, I think it is, specialist—that
is the difference, not special but specialist—places for
these children who are often in mainstream schools through either
resource bases that children can access for various times and
so on, or they may be within special schools or specialist schools.
Q621 Mr Chaytor: Could I ask Virginia
about the question of communication difficulties and the link
with behavioural problems and ultimately exclusion. Is there a
strong link? How should schools respond to this failure to identify
children with these invisible communication problems?
Ms Beardshaw: Overall there are
1.2 million children with communication disabilities in the UK.
That is three for every primary school classroom. There are problems
of early intervention and I would agree that the key here is early
intervention. I CAN works inclusively every year with a group
of nearly 12,000 pre-school children to do just this. In the many,
many parts of the country where education and health services
are still not properly integrated children do fall through the
net and there is conclusive evidence that links communication
disabilities with behavioural disorders and it is obvious why
this is so. All of us as parents know that if our children cannot
express themselves they get very, very frustrated and angry and
two things happen. One is that they create mayhem in one way or
another, and these are children that schools find very difficult
to cope with. The other is the left-out bit, they withdraw and
become isolated. I CAN says our worry is for children who are
left out and left behind, either left out because they cannot
be coped with in the classroom or because, in a sense, they exclude
themselves because they cannot understand what is going on and
they cannot make their needs known.
Q622 Mr Chaytor: Is this a significant
factor in the rate of exclusions?
Ms Beardshaw: Yes.
Q623 Mr Chaytor: Is that documented?
Ms Beardshaw: Yes, there is good
research evidence and I can make more available to the Committee.
There is quite a bit in our written evidence. Anecdotally, in
April I CAN is holding a national conference on this very subject
and we have got 600 practitioners beating a path to our door and
we are having to turn them away. That is the degree of interest
among practitioners in this link which is best dealt with by early
intervention. I believe what we cannot continue to do is wait
for children to fail because they have not got the expert help
in the system that they need. If I may, I would underline the
importance of what Elizabeth from RNIB was saying in the speech
and language context. We need a system of national standards with
professionals trained appropriately to meet those standards. We
outlined in our written evidence to you what we believe those
national standards should be. On the point about local democracy
that was made earlier, it is not democracy for children to miss
out on learning and literacy and to miss out on making friends
because their needs are not met by techniques and skills that
we know about now, we can put in place now and we must put in
place now.
Q624 Mr Chaytor: Could I just pursue
that and pick up on a comment from Elizabeth Clery in the previous
session because she argued that certain children have such profound
needs that it is completely impossible to expect that they should
follow the National Curriculum. My question is, is not really
the heart of the problem why should they follow the National Curriculum?
Do you think that the proposals in the Education Bill published
yesterday for the changes to the curriculum will in any way help
the process of inclusion for the kinds of children we are describing?
Mr Congdon: I will try and answer
it but I think it is a very broad and very important question.
Our stance would be—echoing some of your earlier evidence—the
goal should be to try to include all children but we have an awful
long way to go and we could dwell on that in further answers.
There are all sorts of issues about quality of teaching and too
great a dependence on teaching assistants. Taking the specific
aspects of your question, we know there are a larger number of
children with complex health needs entering the education system
and they do pose an amazing challenge for the education system.
We know that their health needs in school settings are very badly
met, there is a lot of evidence on that. We have recently done
quite a bit of work with the DfES and produced a guide for teachers
called Including Me designed to deal with some of those
aspects. If you cannot get the health needs right you are certainly
not going to get the educational needs right. Whilst the goal
should be to get more inclusion, the reality today is for a lot
of those youngsters with profound and multiple learning disabilities,
struggling with their health difficulties, struggling to learn,
the challenge is how can you improve their education in the broadest
sense but recognising you have probably got to have a differentiated
curriculum for them. You have got to be realistic. Equally, we
would not want to go back to the days when they were necessarily
just stuck in a school miles from anywhere learning very little.
You have got to be challenging. There is nothing wrong in being
challenging and saying you do need to have a differentiated curriculum.
The biggest overall challenge is to get schools to take their
educational needs seriously. We would want to echo some of the
points you heard earlier. There is a need for all schools to try
to be inclusive but that should not be at the exclusion of retaining
choice of special schools for parents. I think that is the biggest
challenge now facing the education system and how can they deliver
that.
Dr Tresman: In terms of dyslexia,
the biggest challenge to including those children who we would
argue for placing in the mainstream is adequate training for their
teachers. I absolutely support the line of a welcoming ethos,
a socially welcoming and open environment, but I would say without
access to literacy, without access for those with dyslexia and
other communication difficulties to the written word, there will
be no connection with learning or very limited—I was very
struck by Elizabeth's comment—and without that there can
be no inclusion for these children in the written world and, therefore,
no access to learning. The key challenge is we have to build capacity
within the system. We know what works and we know how to do it.
The great benefit is what is good for learners with dyslexia is
good for all children, so we are in a win-win situation.
Q625 Mr Chaytor: The sections in
the Education Bill about the greater personalisation of the curriculum
will be helpful in particular to children with dyslexia and communication
difficulties.
Dr Tresman: They will be helpful
and very powerful but only if those who are charged with facilitating
those understand how to look out for children with problems caused
by dyslexia or other learning difficulties and deal with them
before they become a difficulty or a disability. Then those things
will be very powerful.
Ms Beardshaw: That is exactly
right. It is about skilling up the whole system to be able to
use the techniques and the expertise that does exist but patchily,
that is why you get the postcode lottery that Elizabeth referred
to and we referred to in I CAN's written evidence. It is about
bringing the rest up to the standards of the best, as everybody
has said, and I do not think you can do that without some national
standards which must revolve around the basic skills that children
need to access the curriculum.
Q626 Dr Blackman-Woods: This is a
follow-up question for Susan particularly. You are probably aware
of the research from Durham University that I think is based on
a lot of Canadian research challenging the whole notion of dyslexia
and it is saying instead of putting efforts and money into the
diagnostic testing and following up with resources for this particular
group that, in fact, the issue is about a whole range of learning
and reading difficulties across the population and what we should
be doing instead is having a wider availability of reading schemes
in school, more personalised learning, so that their problems
are picked up much earlier. I just wonder what the opinion of
your organisation is on that research because you seem to be coming
to similar conclusions about the way forward.
Dr Tresman: Thank you for that
question. It does offer me the opportunity to refer you to the
comments raised by Lord Adonis in the Lords debate on 7 December,
who I met this morning in this very building, in fact, where he
was pleased to put on record the Government's unequivocal support
for the existence of dyslexia certainly as a spectrum condition
but one that can be well-diagnosed. The key point to mention beyond
the Durham hypothesis is that dyslexia ranges far beyond reading,
so while there are many interesting and well-developed tools that
will enable teachers to teach reading, along with their assistants,
to a wide spectrum of children, we are talking here about building
capacity for a system that can spot when things are not working,
can spot when phonics is not working—we would all support
that as an approach to reading—when children are not able
to absorb those systems because of their spectrum of learning
needs. One has to have capacity in the system of skilled professionals
to know how to deal with those and provide solutions. The tools
alone, the reading schemes, the 12 weeks of phonics teaching,
will not do that. It is very much a step in the right direction
which we would support but there is the greatest consensus ever
around the neurological basis of dyslexia and related learning
difficulties as a condition and I think it is quite, quite unhelpful
that the Durham hypothesis is put forward that really detracts
energy away from where we should be concentrating our efforts,
which is to build capacity in the system to deliver inclusion
successfully.
Q627 Chairman: Is that because you
do not like the research? It makes it easy not to like a bit of
research because it goes counter to the existence of some of your
work.
Dr Tresman: I think it would be
fair to say in terms of the Durham episode, which is the one we
are thinking of here,—
Chairman: You are talking to the MP who
represents Durham, so it is going to be a sensitive area.
Q628 Dr Blackman-Woods: Can I just
say I asked a very specific question which was although they are
challenging the existence of dyslexia I thought you were coming
to the same conclusion which is the way to tackle this is through
a general availability of a wider range of reading schemes, more
effort being put into how all children learn to read, to more
personalised learning, and that would deal with a lot of the problems
of dyslexia without having to label a separate group of children.
Dr Tresman: We are talking about
matching need and, however we label it, those children who are
currently labelled with dyslexia have needs which extend far beyond
reading and their learning is not met by a particular reading
scheme. If you look at evidence such as the Clackmannanshire study,
when that phonics-based reading scheme was introduced with the
children, 14% of children who worked with that scheme were not
able to improve their reading comprehension, 10% could not improve
their spelling, 5% could not improve their reading accuracy, so
in a sense there was still a significant proportion of children
who were not able to access the sorts of approaches that the Durham
research is purporting to provide the solution to. If we are going
for inclusion we are not including 14% of the children in terms
of reading, comprehension and learning if we deal solely with
the outcome. I think the research does not stack up in terms of
that approach.
Dr Blackman-Woods: I saw it and I happen
to have read a bit about the research, but their point is there
are a lot of resources going into identifying dyslexia and diagnostic
testing that would be better spent on the very types of reading
schemes that you are suggesting and they should be available to
all children from an early stage because children learn to read
in different ways.
Q629 Chairman: In a sense all of
you have a vested interest, do you not, and as a Select Committee
we have to say we understand where you are coming from but is
there not a temptation for you to exaggerate the problem of dyslexia,
say, in that you will take the best survey of how many people
suffer from dyslexia who are diagnosed or undiagnosed. If you
were sitting in our seats you would have to take with a pinch
of salt that all of you will say that the problem is rather worse
than it is.
Dr Tresman: I can quite see where
you are coming from and maybe offer just a couple of examples
in terms of are we exaggerating this. Within our prisons, and
we work extensively within our prisons, 20-25% of prisoners have
undiagnosed dyslexia. That is a piece of action research that
is now being reported on.
Q630 Chairman: You agree with that
bit of research but you reject the Durham research because it
does not help you.
Dr Tresman: I am not rejecting
it. The Durham research is about learning to read and what I am
saying is dyslexia is about far more than reading.
Q631 Chairman: You do understand
this Committee likes to check that you are basing what you are
saying on good research.
Dr Tresman: Yes. The Durham research
is research about reading and the research I am referring to you
is research about incidence of dyslexia in prison. For those people
who have been marginalised and made vulnerable through their dyslexia
that would be—
Q632 Chairman: We have done a recent
inquiry into prison education where we picked that up very strongly
indeed. What about the rest of the vested interests? Virginia?
Ms Beardshaw: In terms of young
people and children with communication disabilities, I would like
to build on the point that Susan made about building capacity
for children who find communication hard, that that builds capacity
that is needed for all children. There is a lot of quite worrying
evidence that communication skills overall are slipping in schools.
Again, all the parents in the room can think of lots of reasons
why that might be true which basically come under the heading
of modern life. If you have good techniques and good ways of encouraging,
involving and including children for whom communication is difficult
with the attendant literacy and emotional and behavioural
problems that brings, you improve the life of the whole school.
It is building capacity for everybody at the same time as you
are avoiding the downstream problems that Susan so ably talked
about in terms of prison and real exclusion from society.
Mr Congdon: I would say our vested
interest, to use your terms, Chairman, is simply to ensure that
all children with a learning disability fulfil their potential
in education. We are delighted at the progress that has been made
over the last 20 years in having more children with a learning
disability included in mainstream schools but relying on research,
say the Audit Commission report, which I know has already been
quoted, which talked about: "Not enough use is made by mainstream
schools of the potential for adapting the curriculum and teaching
methods so that pupils have suitable opportunities to improve
key skills". In other words, there is a lot more to do. Although
we do not do a lot of research, we have not got the resources
to do large scale research, a few years ago we commissioned
a report from the University of Birmingham called On a Wing
and a Prayer to look at the role of teaching assistants. One
of the problems is in classrooms up and down the country too little
responsibility is accepted by the ordinary school form teacher
for the responsibility to ensure all children develop their potential
and the responsibility is loaded entirely on to teaching assistants
who are often untrained and not involved in planning the curriculum.
The challenge is to raise the game. We see our role as trying
to challenge to ensure the game is raised in education to give
those children the best possible education. The final comment
I would make is that most children with a moderate learning disability
are in mainstream schools, which is good. Most children with a
severe learning disability or a profound learning disability are
in special schools. Certainly we want to see more of them have
the opportunity to get involved in mainstream schools but that
is going to take a long time for the reasons I alluded to earlier.
Stephen Williams: I do not think we have
covered exclusion from schools as we did with the previous witnesses.
Chairman: You are free to ask anything
you like.
Q633 Stephen Williams: Mike, some
of the evidence that has been given to us suggests that 23% of
children with autism have been excluded from school more than
once, in fact, and 4% have been excluded once. Why do you think
that is the case?
Q634 Mr Collins: I was going to respond
to the Chairman's comment. In terms of evidence, of research,
we can show it to you but we can also give you hard facts. If
you look at the children who are educated directly in the six
schools run by the National Autistic Society, which is just over
400 children, a significant number of them have been excluded
from every form of mainstream school, and in that I include mainstream
special schools as well, before they have arrived with us. The
reasons why that may well be are that it is this lack of understanding
and lack of capacity and, in some instances, lack of will and
intention to look at why these children are being excluded. It
tends to be because their reaction to situations is unusual in
that they may panic, they may become very distressed and then
engage in behaviours that are inappropriate for a mainstream school
setting. The system as it currently is then excludes them and
then they begin to make their journey through PRUs and wherever
they end up, sometimes with us, as I say. The flipside of that
is where schools are aware of the need and take the time to look
at why a child might be excluded. I can think of one where the
young man did not get the right plate in the dinner queue that
he always had flipped completely, ended up in a brawl with the
deputy headteacher and the school excluded him, but the school
then worked closely with the parents and with the young man himself
to go through the reasons why, so justice was seen to be done.
They then recognised this was a problem they could deal with,
sort out and get him back into school, which was what they did.
That is the difference. You can either get on to this road to
exclusion based on lack of understanding, lack of time to respond
to that child's needs and understand why they have reacted in
the way they have, and most of the time it is because they do
not understand, they are panicking, they are anxious, they are
distressed, it is not a deliberate intention on their part to
cause mischief.
Q635 Stephen Williams: Are these
exclusions concentrated in any particular point in the autistic
spectrum or are they across the spectrum?
Mr Collins: They are across the
spectrum and it might be for a child who is in a maintained special
school that the level of perhaps self-injury or aggression or
what appears to be aggression towards other children is at such
a level that the other children are not deemed to be safe. In
the mainstream settings again the ethos of secondary schools can
be quite challenging for young people who are often of at least
average ability and intelligence, but find the whole way in which
secondary schools operate, which can often be on a very confrontational
basis which children with autism do not understand, it is all
to do with the empathy and so on, that they are being challenged
by teachers and it passes them by. That is seen as passive, I
have lost the word, but challenging the teachers' authority, so
consequently they find themselves being short-term expelled and
so on.
Q636 Chairman: You are all mentioning
this difference between the cut-off at 11 going into secondary
school and somebody mentioned that was to do with training. Is
it to do with training? Are the early years' teachers better trained
or is it a sense of size?
Mr Collins: It can be both. The
case I gave is of an inner-city, split-site school with over 2,000
young people on the roll with very, very high achieving academic
standards, yet they took the time to work with this particular
individual. I think what we are finding, certainly with autism,
is that over the past five or 10 years firstly children were being
identified as they entered school, so primary schools were beginning
to react and respond, and specialist provision and resource units
were established and outreach teams from local authorities. Those
children then arrived at secondary-age education, so in a sense
a number of local authorities, even though they have seen them
coming, have been caught on the hop, and certainly much of the
work I have been doing over the past two or three years has been
working directly with secondary schools who have established,
or are establishing, specialist resource bases within the main
body of the school.
Q637 Stephen Williams: I would follow
that up with a general point. I do not know whether the witnesses
were listening to the previous evidence session, but it just seemed
to me, and I hope this is not a caricature, that the witnesses
who were from a more general campaigning standpoint for disability
rights in general, the Disability Equality in Education Association,
appeared to favour phasing out special schools, whereas those
representatives who came from a specific disability or learning
difficulty seemed to favour the retention of special schools.
Can I just ask the witnesses whether that is reflected in this
evidence session as well?
Dr Tresman: If I take primarily
dyslexia and talk from that standpoint, we do believe, as an association,
that for dyslexia and related perhaps dyspraxia and dyscalculia,
almost all children, if the capacity was there in the system,
could be educated and reach their potential in the mainstream
and they could be included, but that is a very long way from where
we are at the moment. I really want to pick up on comments which
Elizabeth made, that, taken where we are at present, we have a
fraction. We did a small piece of research with our colleagues,
Extraordinary People, and 96% of teachers said they had had three
hours' training or less either in their PGCE or in their three-year
undergraduate teacher-training to cover all special needs, so
they are desperate for additional training in order that they
can remove the barriers to achievement and fulfil that agenda.
Therefore, with that proviso, I would say we could meet the needs
within the mainstream.
Ms Beardshaw: I CAN believe that
much more can, and should, be done to include children with communication
disabilities. We think there are particular problems at secondary,
but also that problems emerge, and this came up in the evidence
earlier, as children begin to struggle with literacy. Where those
are not addressed, then you get the problems of exclusions. I
would agree with Susan, that I would like to see a world, and
I am working for a world, where all children can be included,
but I do believe in, and support, parents who send their children
to schools, like the I CAN schools and the I CAN FE college where
they can get the very specialist help that they need to access
the curriculum and have some hope of getting the skills to engage
in 21st Century life.
Q638 Chairman: Virginia, that is
all right if you come from a supportive home which would partially
help with identified problems and special needs, but what is your
research, and I have not heard this yet, though it may have been
in some of the stuff you sent to us which I have not seen yet,
but what is your research on which kinds of children are more
prone to having these communication difficulties? You mentioned
modern life. Well, is it modern life where no one talks over the
dinner table? Is it modern life where nobody drags the child away
from the television or ever talks to them? What sorts of homes,
for example, are more prone to producing a child with dyslexia
or with other communication difficulties? Do we know? Have you
done that research?
Ms Beardshaw: We know a good deal
about it. As for dyslexia, there is a very strong genetic base
for all communication disabilities.
Q639 Chairman: It is equally spread
across all social classes, dyslexia, and you have got the research
to show that?
Dr Tresman: Yes.
Ms Beardshaw: In fact there is
a genetic base, and I know all about that because I am one of
those families, middle class, as I am sure you will see that I
am.
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