Too many slower-to-learn pupils are placed under the main care and supervision of teaching assistants - and, I suggest, often the teaching assistants themselves are not given sufficient support, and/or not provided with high-quality, high-content programmes of work - or sufficient training and supervision in how to provide for the weakest and slowest-to-learn children.
Too often, if a pupil's special needs amount to some form of stress or behavioural issue, too many people turn a blind eye to the realities of the care and education provided for individuals. How often is it a case of merely 'coping' (or barely coping) day after day?
It is possible for pupils to attend school day after day, and yet day after day be taken no further forwards than the day before that and the day before that? (This happens for other pupils sometimes - not just those with 'special needs'!)
Is it too easy for schools to provide 'intervention groups' without a close enough examination of what teaching and learning occurs in such groups - and whether something else would be much better still?
I have long since maintained that all teachers should be 'special needs' teachers - and they should be allowed to work very closely with colleagues and senior managers to ensure that, as the class teacher, they are properly responsible for all the children in the class and know fully what the provision is day by day - and that this is worth providing in the first place.
I'm speaking from a place of plenty of experience having been a primary teacher for many years including in some very challenging schools, and a special needs teacher and headteacher in a special measures school.
I have found that far too often, the difficulties of providing for children with special needs are not adequately provided for and this fact is swept under the carpet - or lip-service paid to the provision for the children.
It is the teacher who can benefit most from teaching assistants to be the 'right hand man/woman' - to delegate according to the teacher's preferred management of the pupils and the class - and too often teaching assistants are directed away from supporting the teacher to support the children - and instead they are required to provide multiple intervention programmes (often by those with the greatest authority) of very dubious content and quality.
Without doubt there are excellent teaching assistants and I know quite a few fantastic people, but in theory the teacher should have had the level of appropriate training and should have the greater expertise to educate the pupils.
Thus, how often do we leave the slowest-to-learn and neediest children with the less well-paid and less qualified adults squeezed into little nooks and crannies across the school?
How many just 'get by' day after day?
http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-netw ... CMP=twt_gu
Relying on teaching assistant support for SEN students is a false economy
We must help parents understand that relying too much on teaching assistants prevents special educational needs students getting enough quality time with their teacher
With the best of intentions, schools arrangements for SEN are heavily reliant on TA support. They support or encourage a parent's case for TA hours because it allows everyone to feel more confident about the likelihood of the child coping in a mainstream school environment. As the SEN process offers families and schools little alternative, it's small wonder TAs are seen as a prerequisite for successful inclusion.
The new code of practice, however, suggests a move away from the widespread default model of one-to-one TA support. It emphasises the significance of "high quality teaching" and gives a coded warning about how "special education provision… is compromised by anything less".
Behind this warning appear to be findings from the recent Making a Statement study, which I co-directed with Peter Blatchford, on the day-to-day teaching and support for students with high-level SEN. We tracked 48 statemented pupils in mainstream primary schools and found they had a different educational experience compared with their non-SEN peers, characterised by having fewer interactions with teachers and classmates, and almost constant and lower quality support from a TA.
Put together with results from our previous research, which found that students with high-level SEN receiving the most TA support made significantly less academic progress than similar pupils who received little or no TA support, we see a worrying trend: students with statements are negatively affected by the very intervention intended to help them.
The new code is encouraging because as it reinforces teachers' responsibility and accountability for the development and progress of all students in their class. TAs have a very useful indirect role to play in making this principle work in practice, but it also requires a fundamental rethink about how schools manage teaching and provision for vulnerable learners.
