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Memorandum submitted by Afasic

 

Summary

 

· Currently, teacher training, both in the initial course and ongoing training, does not equip teachers adequately to teach children with SEN.

· ITT should include a grounding in SEN.

· Teachers need to be able to identify different forms of SEN.

· Teachers need to know how to teach effectively a class of around 30 children all with varying levels of ability and disability.

· Clarity is needed about the respective roles of classroom teachers and specialists.

· The current shortage of many specialists needs to be addressed.

· Clarity is needed regarding the respective roles of teachers and teaching assistants.

· TAs should have mandatory training and only be appointed to positions for which they are qualified.

 

Introduction

 

1. Afasic is the UK-wide charity representing children and young people with speech and language impairments. Afasic welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to this inquiry.

 

2. Afasic primarily represents children with specific speech and language impairments, that is to say their impairment is not caused by a physical or sensory disability, such as hearing impairment or cerebral palsy, and their intelligence is within the 'normal' range.

 

3. Speech and language may be impaired in any or all of the following ways:

· The child may have difficulty articulating speech clearly

· The child may have difficulty understanding language

· The child may have difficulty learning and remembering words, and putting words together to make sentences and paragraphs

· The child may have difficulty using language appropriately in context.

 

4. Speech and language impairments may be associated with other cognitive impairments, including:

· Poor memory

· Difficulties with social interaction and relating normally to other people

· Poor organisational skills

· Poor reasoning skills

· Difficulties with generalising knowledge and learning from experience

· Poor predictive skills

· Difficulty understanding cause and effect.

 

5. As a result, although they are of normal intelligence, children with speech and language impairments often function and perform at quite low levels and have real difficulty with many aspects of daily life and learning, including acquiring literacy and numeracy skills.

 

6. Speech and language impairments affect 6% of school-aged children. The majority of these will be at the lower end of the age range, as most children's speech and language skills improve as they get older, especially if they are given appropriate support by speech and language therapists and teaching staff. However, even where a clinical diagnosis of speech and language impairment is no longer appropriate, children and young people may still have any or all of the cognitive difficulties described above which will affect their learning and performance at school. It should also be noted that 1 in 500 children has a persistent, life-long speech and language impairment, which will affect them throughout their time at school and beyond.

 

7. Afasic 's contribution to this inquiry reflects the experiences and aspirations of families with children who have speech and language impairments.

 

Comments

 

8. The Select Committee asks about the extent to which existing ITT provision adequately prepares trainees for entry into the teaching profession, with particular reference to SEN among other things. Our submission focuses on the SEN issue, as this is a matter of common concern to families of children with speech and language impairments.

 

9. In our experience, many, perhaps most, teachers are not able or willing to meet the needs of children with SLI adequately. So, clearly, initial teacher training has not prepared teachers for this task. Very recently, there have been moves to include more about SEN in ITT, but it is too soon to know how successful they have been (or indeed whether anything essential has been lost to make room for the new SEN modules).

 

10. Afasic's view is that ITT for all teachers, including those taking PGCE courses, should include a grounding in SEN. This should include learning about normal and abnormal development in children and the range of SEN and other disabilities they may encounter. The SEN Code of Practice expects teachers to be able to identify the needs of children with SEN and provide appropriate support. This can be extremely difficult to do, as several different types of SEN can look very similar superficially, and skilled assessment is required to determine the child's precise needs. Few teachers have the necessary skills to do this and so too many children, including a significant proportion of those with SLI, fail to receive appropriate support. Equipping teachers to identify needs more accurately is essential.

 

11. Training needs to go much further than this though, either in ITT or subsequently, and address the practicalities entailed in supporting children with SEN effectively. In particular, teachers need to know how to meet a full range of needs in a class of around 30 children, some of whom may be able to progress very quickly while others, including many of those with SEN, may need very intensive support to make only small steps forward. At the moment, too few teachers are able to do this effectively.

 

12. Clarity is needed about how much support mainstream teachers are expected to give children with SEN themselves and when they should involve specialists. By specialists, we mean not only teachers with various specialist skills, but also therapists, especially speech and language therapists for children with speech and language impairments.

 

13. Mainstream teachers need to be able to identify what specialists are required in what circumstances and then be able to access the appropriate specialist(s) readily. Sadly this does not always happen at the moment. Children with speech and language impairments may inappropriately be referred to behaviour or literacy support, often because the true nature of their needs is not recognised, or sometimes because of the difficulty in accessing speech and language therapists or other specialists. The current shortage of highly-skilled specialists of all types, therapists and teachers, must be addressed. Years ago, local authorities often funded teachers to take one or two-year courses on teaching children with specific types of SEN. Now this rarely happens. Short 'twilight' sessions are held to be sufficient and teachers wanting to do more in-depth courses often have to fund them themselves. Not surprisingly many are unable or unwilling to do this, and we now face a 'time-bomb' of specialist teachers approaching retirement age and not being replaced.

 

14. Clarification is also needed regarding the use of teaching assistants to support children with SEN. Paradoxically, perhaps, they may, in different situations, be both over-used and undervalued. All too often teachers have little direct interaction with children with SEN, leaving them almost entirely in the charge of their teaching assistants. This places an unreasonable burden on teaching assistants, particularly if they lack expertise, and penalises children with SEN who then receive an inadequate education. It also means that teachers themselves fail to develop expertise in teaching children with SEN. On the other hand the school 'pecking order' can mean that recommendations made by skilled and experienced teaching assistants, who may know and understand the needs of the children with SEN in their charge much better than their teachers, are ignored or over-ruled by teachers with a poor understanding of SEN issues, again to the detriment of the children concerned.

 

15. One problem is that the competencies of teaching assistants can vary enormously. Some have considerable expertise, drawing on years of experience and/or high-quality training. Others have only recently been co-opted into their positions and may have been given little or no training. This means that there is huge variation between schools and among teachers as to how they see the role of teaching assistants.

16. Teachers need to know how to make best use of teaching assistants to support children with SEN in order to optimise their own performances and the progress of the children. This should form a part of ITT, and be monitored and reinforced throughout a teacher's career.

 

17. There should be mandatory training for teaching assistants to different levels and covering different skills and types of SEN. The requirements for each teaching assistant position should be clearly set out, and teaching assistants should not be appointed to posts for which they are not qualified, or expected to undertake tasks not specified in their contract. The management structures within schools should acknowledge the specific expertise and contribution made by teaching assistants to the support of children with SEN.

 

29 January 2009