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News Bulletin
February 2015
Volume 1, Issue 2
Open Consultation
Funding for children and young
people with SEND
Events
Friday 24th April 2015
London
Early Years Workshop
With Elaine Ellis, Early Years
Consultant, Swindon Borough
Council
Tuesday 12th May 2015
The University of Manchester
Massage in the Special School
With Kathryn Crosby, Teacher and
Educational Consultant
The DfE are inviting interested
individuals and organisations to help
them work out better ways to distribute
special educational needs and disability
(SEND) funding.
To help with this they have a pack of
data about children and young people
with SEND and are interested in any
conclusions that you can draw from this.
They are also interested in any local
knowledge that could inform the
national debate on how best to allocate
this funding in the longer term.
Wed. 23rd & Thurs. 24th Sept 2015
Newcastle upon Tyne
Rebound Therapy for SEN, Open
College Network, Level 2
For packs and ways to respond visit
SEND Consultations - Gov.uk
Consultation closes on the 27th February
2015, 5pm
With Chris Rollings, Headteacher,
Hadrian School
National Conference
Friday 13th November 2015
London
A New Approach to Teaching
Maths and English in the
SLD/PMLD Classroom
With Peter Imray, Consultant
Visit www.equals.co.uk for further
information & to apply
EQUALS
C/o Hadrian School
Bertram Crescent
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE15 6PY
Tel: 0191 2721222
E-mail: [email protected]
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Innovative Implementation of SEND
Reforms (Central London)
EQUALS is holding a national
conference ‘Innovative Implementation
of SEND Reforms’ on Friday 26th June
2015, with top keynote speakers from
the DfE, DoH and SEN sector.
Delegates will have the opportunity to
listen to Matthew Hopkinson, Assistant
Director in the SEN and Disability Unit,
DfE and Gareth James, DoH evaluate
the first few months of implementation
and look at ‘What next?’
Find out how Transition2, a college for
young learning disabled adults in Derby
shares the SEND approach to transition
planning for the 18 to 25 age group and
how it impacts on young people.
Finally, listen to Jacqui Warne,
Executive Head for the Learn to Live
Federation (Bidwell Brook School and
Ellen Tinkham School) talk about Learn
to Live, an effective and efficient
method for hearing the voice of
children, young people and their
families in order to inform the decisions
about them. For full programme and to
apply visit Conferences - EQUALS
Current Research
update
The Latest on Curriculum
Development
The DfE have recently announced that a
number of schools have been awarded
grants for research undertaken on
assessment and pupils progress within
the broad framework of Assessment
without Levels, now that the National
Curriculum (NC) Level indicators have
been scrapped. The P levels are of
course, remaining, but two special
schools who might traditionally be
termed SLD schools have also been
given the awards. These are Frank Wise
School in Banbury, Oxfordshire and
Swiss Cottage School in Camden, north
London. Both schools are serially
graded by Ofsted as outstanding.
The Frank Wise information is not yet
in publishable format, but seems on the
surface, to be an exhaustive, teacher
tested, linear, P Scale related, skills
based schema. Perhaps more interesting
is the material from Swiss Cottage, an
all age 230 or so pupil school ranging
from PMLD to quite high functioning
MLD.
The new Swiss Cottage Curricula
covers a range of learning needs, from
Informal (broadly PMLD) through
Semi-formal (broadly SLD) to Formal
(broadly MLD). These follow the
guidance of Penny Lacey, who was
working with the school just prior to her
untimely death in January, and we
would suggest are far and away the best
thought out models for the following
reasons.
1. Both the Informal and Semi-formal
models do not take the National
Curriculum as their foundation, but are
appropriate models in their own right.
Leadership teams may reference the NC
if they feel the need, but the ‘subjects’
such as My Creativity or My Thinking
are stand alone ‘subjects which will take
into account how pupils / students with
PMLD or SLD learn. It has been
argued for some time (and the inference
is here) that if persons with PMLD and
SLD learn differently, we should be
teaching them differently and indeed,
teaching them different things. The
Formal curriculum (MLD) is a slightly
adapted NC model, but then as this will
only apply to those consistently and
over time working within the NC levels,
this may be acceptable.
2. The simple addition of ‘My’ before
each ‘subject’ allows for the broad
curriculum to be personalised as an
integral part of the approach. This is
tremendously powerful because it
automatically mitigates against teaching
whole classes or whole year groups
generically. There is a strong argument
for suggesting that if a special school
has 120 pupils, it ought to have 120
curriculums.
3. The models have their own built in
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raft of assessment strategies covering
both formative and summative
assessments ranging from qualitative
(videos, reports, profiles etc.) to the
quantitative (Pivats) and more
importantly Routes for Learning and
MAPP. It is central to note, that P scale
based assessments, such as Pivats are
not used for formative assessments.
4. Having recently won a national
school award from the DfE relating to
Assessing with Levels, the model has
DfE approval, which in turn, gives it
considerable credibility.
Author Peter Imray, February 2015
Literacy, Phonics and the SLD
Learner
There seems to be a considerable
amount of interest surrounding details
of articles relating to literacy (especially
reading) and the SLD learner, and
particularly the use of phonics and we
thought it might be useful to appraise
members of some very interesting
research that has been conducted over
the last three years.
Whilst not too much has been written
specifically about those with severe
learning difficulties, there have been a
number of studies related to children
and young people with Down Syndrome
(DS) and it is (we believe) possible to
draw some conclusions from these.
Whilst we should remember that DS
covers a range of learning difficulties
including severe and even occasionally
profound, most individuals with DS
function in the mild to moderately
impaired range of cognitive ability
(Chapman, 2003).
Research on reading in DS has typically
offered the view that children with DS
are better able to read whole words as
opposed to decoding words using
phonic skills (Roch & Jarrold, 2008;
Lock, 1999). A frequent interpretation
of this tendency is that the children are
relying on good visual memory skills to
build a sight vocabulary. In order to test
this hypothesis, a longitudinal study was
set up to compare the progress made by
a group of DS children with a group of
typically developing (TD) children after
extensive 1 to 1 tuition in phonic skills.
The numbers in the study were large (49
DS and 57 TD, roughly equally divided
by gender) and the study took two years
to complete. All children were being
educated in mainstream schools. From
this study at least three articles have
been written, namely Burgoyne et al
(2012); Burgoyne et al (2013) and
Hulme et al (2013) from which we can
attempt to draw conclusions.
Key points
1. All of the reported studies found
three prime factors which predicted
progress in reading: namely (i) age
(with younger children making more
progress) (ii) language, with integrity of
speech production, vocabulary
knowledge and especially receptive
language being key (those with higher
levels making more progress) and (iii)
the number of intervention sessions
children received (those who received
more intervention made more progress).
2. The studies are clear that DS
children, on average, make better
progress using phonic teaching
techniques than those who were taught
in more conventional ways, given
exactly the same amount of 1 to 1
instruction over the same amount of
time
3. Two of the studies (Burgoyne et al,
2013 and Hulme et al 2013) report on a
'a very high degree of longitudinal
stability in reading skills in children
with DS' though they do not explain
exactly what this means. We have
therefore taken this to mean that
children with DS do not on the whole,
make much progress in reading over
time. This is highly significant (see
point 4).
4. None of the studies makes a direct
comparison in rate of learning over time
between the DS groups and the TD
group. In a personal email discussion
with Dr. Kelly Burgoyne, the lead
researcher, she claimed that ‘this is not
a useful comparison to make.
Comparing the progress made by
children who have mild-severe learning
difficulties to that made by typically
developing children automatically
places them at a disadvantage, and tells
us nothing useful about whether or not
particular instruction is useful for them.
We accept this point, but it
automatically assumes that spending a
considerable amount of time learning to
read generally and spending a
considerable amount of time learning to
read using phonics specifically, is a
justified use of that time for every
pupil, irrespective of the level of their
individual learning difficulties.
The facts are that in the Burgoyne et al
(2013) study, the average improvement
using specifically taught phonics was
4.5 additional words over a 20 week
period of 1 to 1 instruction every day
for 45 minutes. This compared to an
average improvement of 2 additional
words for those not receiving the
instruction. Yes, this is better, but does
it justify the time and staff allocation?
Taking this as a whole year’s work of
45 minutes a day and 1 to 1 instruction,
we can expect 9 new words to be
learned for the average DS child as
opposed to 4 new words without the
phonic specific instruction. We have
already established that all of these
children were being educated in
mainstream schools and we must expect
the average ability to be well above the
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P8/L1 of the high flyers in special
schools, and still they will only make on
average, 9 new words over a year.
This is an inordinate amount of time and
resources. What else could we do with
this time and these resources, especially
if we devoted this time to improving
speaking and listening for example
(Grove, 2013)?
5. All three studies mark on a consistent
lack of significant improvement in
decoding non-words among the DS
population, irrespective of their ability
levels, but much more markedly so at
the lower intellectual levels. This is
highly significant because it implies that
phonic decoding skills are not
established in this population as has
been surmised by the studies noted
above (for example Roch & Jarrold,
2008). The studies do recognise this
point but do not perhaps, give it
sufficient emphasis and it is entirely
plausible that the children are using
basic rote memory techniques without
having the level of working memory
required to be consistent in phonic
blending as a generalised reading
technique.
Conclusion
The researchers involved in the writing
of these three articles are clear in their
contention that children with DS can
make progress in reading using
specifically taught phonic techniques,
and such is the thoroughness of these
longitudinal studies that we cannot
doubt what they say.
But…..our interest lies in the contention
that for those with DS and severe
learning difficulties (rather than mild or
moderate learning difficulties) where
SLD is defined as working consistently
and over time at or below level 1 of the
National Curriculum, teaching phonics
in whatever form is largely pointless.
This is because whilst those with SLD
may well attain a number of individual
words of reading, they will never, by
definition, become functional readers in
any accepted sense of the word. They
will in effect, remain at the literacy
levels expected for an average 5 or 6
year old, and that is a very low literacy
level. This does not mean that we
should not be teaching reading, but we
should be confining our instruction to
everyday words in everyday reading use
by the individual children and young
people concerned.
It may therefore be of merit to take
the view that if we as educators, take
a rounded, collective and considered
view that an individual pupil is highly
unlikely to achieve above L1 of the
NC, taking time in continuing to
teach children to read is of itself,
highly contentious.
We hold the view that those with SLD
learn entirely differently from neurotypical conventionally developing
pupils, and as such we ought to be
teaching them differently and teaching
them different things. If one accepts this
case, teaching children to read as a
blanket prescription which fits all
children, is very precious time wasted.
We accept that the studies are clear in
their assertion that both the receptive
and expressive verbal skills which
children bring to the table before
intervention are crucial, but we do not
believe that they are clear enough about
how different this distinct group of
learners is. Overarching statements
referring to learners with DS may
therefore become misleading. We don't
doubt the veracity of the statement that
'(c)hildren with DS can learn to blend
phonemes in words when provided with
targeted instruction. Developments in
phoneme blending skills can potentially
transfer to gains in word reading. Thus,
there is significant potential for
prescriptive teaching to boost phoneme
blending skills.' (Burgoyne et al (2013)
pp 281) but we do very much doubt it
when applied to children, young people
and adults with DS and SLD.
Author Peter Imray, February 2015
(article with full bibliography available
at Membership EQUALS )
School of the Month;
Wightwick Hall School
have a Sensory
Experience Cooking up
Ugandan Cuisine
Latest Resources
from EQUALS
Classes 3 and 4 at Wightwick Hall
School would like to introduce
you to their good friend Jobogo
Matondo Pascal.
Pacal originally from the Congo and
Holistic Music for Children
now living in Uganda where he runs
This consists of The Discovery Box &
Body Awarenesss - a selection of music
suitable for Pre-School children with
additional needs and Moving Sounds –
a music and movement session for
children with PMLD. Read More at
Publications, EQUALS.
his own travel business, was in this
country on holiday. It was an
opportunity not to be missed as they
were studying Uganda for Moving
On Traveller (EQUALS 14-19
EsSENtials).
Joy and Pascal arrived at Wightwick
Hall School, having been shopping
in Wolverhampton for all sorts of
Top: Jobogo Matondo Pascal from Uganda
Below: Chicken, garlic & ginger and beans
in tomato sauce.
wonderful ingredients and the pupils
Holistic Music for Children is available
to purchase from EQUALS and costs
£70 + VAT for a set of 4 CD Roms.
Visit EQUALS - Holistic Music .
had a very sensory time exploring
Method
the different fruit and vegetables.
1.
Pascal went on to use the
Cost: From £70 + VAT
It was a great experience for the
pupils who helped with the food
The EQUALS Guide to the English
Curriculum (for pupils working below
age related expectations)
The EQUALS Guide to Literacy has
been updated into the EQUALS Guide
to the English Curriculum. The
document is divided into the key areas
noted in the new National Curriculum
documentation of 2013 / 14. That is
Spoken Language and
Communication, Reading and
Writing. Further information is
available at www.equals.co.uk .
Cost: Members £150 + VAT, Nonmembers £180 + VAT 4|Page
preparation and then enjoyed the
experience of tasting typical
Ugandan food. Here is a recipe for
a classic Ugandan dish.
ginger into the meat and
mix in the oil.
ingredients in several different
recipes.
Crush onions, garlic and
2.
Marinate the meat for 4
hours.
3.
Fry until golden in the
frying pan.
4.
Put in the oven for 45
mins until well cooked.
Classes 3 and 4 are studying Africa
Chicken, Garlic and Ginger
as part of the Foreign Cultures
Ingredients
Traveller. Moving On offers an
subject area in Moving On
6 chicken legs
easy-to-use, flexible, all-inclusive
5 garlic cloves
accreditation for students between
2 onions
Ginger
Oil
Salt
curriculum with national
the ages of 14-19 years who
experience difficulties in learning.
To find out more visit EQUALS –
14-19 EsSENtials.