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Background - The Schools
Beckfoot Grammar School, Bradford, West Yorkshire
Beckfoot is a 13-18 mixed comprehensive school of 1,050 pupils, currently expanding to 11-18 with 1600 pupils, and has designated provision for disabled pupils. The school has a wide catchment area drawing from a diverse socio-economic background. 16% receive free school meals, 18% are from ethnic minority backgrounds and there are 38 students with statements of Special Educational Needs.
Girlington Primary School, Bradford, West Yorkshire
Girlington Primary School is situated in inner city Bradford with a school population of 450 pupils. 96% are of Pakistani origin and speak English as an additional language. 47% receive free school meals. The school is a designated special provision for deaf and hearing impaired pupils. Up to 14 pupils are taught in an inclusive mainstream setting and there is a team of specialists to enhance the class teacher’s planning and delivery of the curriculum. Additionally, the school has a higher than average number of pupils with identified special educational needs. Girlington has increased English attainment at Key Stage 1 by 30% in the last five years.
Cleves School, London Borough of Newham
Cleves School opened in September 1992. The school has a two-form entry, 420 Primary pupils and a 52 place nursery. The school fully implements the local borough’s policy of inclusive education and has 36 places for children with severe and profound learning disabilities. Cleves serves a rich, culturally diverse inner city community which has a high level of poverty, 54% of the pupils receive free school meals. 65% of the roll is made up of pupils from a variety of different ethnic communities. The attendance figures for 1998-99 were 93%; Cleves has very little unauthorised absence and lateness. At present, Cleves has 45 children with statements of Special Educational Needs, 129 pupils on the code of practice stages 1-4, and 33 pupils in the resource provision with a wide range of needs including pupils with severe and profound learning difficulties.
St Cenydd’s, Caerphilly, South Wales
St Cenydd’s School has 1100 pupils - 50 of whom have sensory needs, hearing impairment or a physical disability. Mildred Hughes, SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinator), says, ‘Originally, inclusion began with hearing impaired pupils before the Education Act of 1981.The Hearing Impaired Unit, as it was then known, has been in the school since the sixties. After 1981, the physically disabled students joined us and it became a Sensory Needs department. We’re fortunate here where there’s a low teacher-pupil ratio, plus classroom assistants who work with teacher direction. They take these students through the system, supporting them, linking with mainstream staff and in every way it is a team effort by everyone. We have strong links with the health service and in order to support the inclusion, in the curriculum, students do need some therapies. We have a speech therapist, a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist on weekly visits to the school. We link with the educational psychology service for any assessments and we link strongly with the deaf community and organisations for students with physical disabilities. Their identity must be maintained.’
Brookside School, Stockport
Brookside School has 165 Pupils. Stockport Authority decided to move towards inclusion and in January 1996, Brookside became a ‘resourced school’ equipped to meet the needs of pupils with severe or profound learning difficulties. The building was adapted so that the needs of children who also have physical disabilities can be met and extra teaching and support staff were appointed. There are currently seven such pupils included in the five classes. The children remain in peer groups as they move up the school with friends.
Filsham Valley, St Leonards
Filsham Valley school opened six years ago - a new secondary school to meet the growing population needs in St. Leonard’s and Hastings. There was a small special school which was closing because of the state of the buildings, so the LEA decided to amalgamate the two and have an inclusive secondary school that would be purpose-built to include physically impaired and sensory impaired students. The school has children with a wide range of impairments including spina bifida, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy and visual impairments. All children have a broad and balanced curriculum. The National Curriculum is available for all children. Some have an adapted curriculum because they may be too tired to manage a full school day, for example. Some need therapy, speech and language therapy or physiotherapy - they do that as part of their curriculum. There are very flexible approaches to each child - every single child has an individual timetable that is adapted to meet their needs. Support is obtained from county services. The County Service for Sensory Impaired Children come in to train staff, work alongside staff, and produce materials and equipment for some of the children.
Rawthorpe High, Huddersfield
Debbie Rolls, head of the inclusion team at Rawthorpe says, ‘We are a small school of just under 500 pupils - about 60 children with statements of Special Needs, half of whom are on the inclusive education project and half who aren’t. Without the project there would already be 30 children with statements and another couple of hundred children with some form of special need.
‘Kirklees (our LEA) started integrating children with special needs into mainstream schools a number of years ago, but found problems when children with learning difficulties got to secondary transfer age, and a project was set up jointly between Kirklees and Barnardo’s, the charity. The aims of the project are to ensure that children with learning difficulties were included in mainstream schools at secondary level. Kirklees started integrating children into mainstream schools quite a number of years ago, but found that when children with learning difficulties were getting to secondary transfer age a number of them were being recommended to go to special school because their primary teachers thought they wouldn’t be able to cope in secondary school. Barnardo’s and Kirklees LEA got together to set up a scheme to try and make sure those children were included. At first it was more integration because it was always conditional upon the learning support assistant being there for that particular child. We’ve now moved to a model where the support is there, to support the curriculum and the children are able to access learning through that support being in place.
‘In our last OFSTED inspection, which was about 18 months ago, special needs were seen to be a real strength of the school and the learning support assistants were praised for the work that they did and the way that we were able to differentiate and meet the needs of a large variety of pupils within the classroom. Standards have actually been raised since we had the inclusive inclusion project in the school. The number of children gaining five or more GCSEs at grade A-G went to 95%, which was quite an increase on what had been happening before the project was here. There’s been a real feeling in the school now that the presence of more support generally has been beneficial to all children, not just those with special needs, it’s actually given us the scope to develop our teaching across a whole variety of ways, not just physically for children with moderate learning difficulties.’
Stile Common School, Huddersfield
Stile Common School is situated approximately one mile north of Huddersfield town centre. The school population is socially and culturally very mixed. There are 200 children on roll, age 7-11. There are currently seven mixed ability classes. There are 18 children with statements for Special Educational Needs on the register. The school staff believe strongly in addressing the children’s emotional and behavioural needs through Circle Time and by spending time listening to their reasons for poor behaviour; there is a strong positive behaviour policy. The school works hard to include children in the school even when their behaviour is challenging. By working with the children and not against them, the staff ensure the majority take responsibility for their own behaviour and are able to learn in a disruption free atmosphere. Personal and Social education has a high priority in the school.
The school opened in January 1997 and is semi open plan. Each group of two classrooms share a ‘wet’ area and also an activity area, the classrooms are all carpeted. The hall serves as a gym, dining room and assembly hall. A spare classroom has been developed as a central resource and literacy room.
Lister Community School, London Borough of Newham
‘Lister Community School is resourced for deaf students’, says Jill Kirk, teacher for the Deaf at Lister School. ‘Many of the deaf students and their hearing peers come from a feeder primary school. We already had those links and deaf students would move across with hearing peers who could already sign, they were quite used to having deaf students in their class. So, the hearing pupils are quite deaf-aware already. It is really important we don’t ignore the whole thing around deaf culture and deaf community. Also, we couldn’t run this type of provision if we didn’t employ deaf adults as we do. That’s really important for deaf identity.’
Kaskenmoor School, Oldham
Kaskenmoor School is a purpose built comprehensive with 800 pupils aged 11-16. Over half the students progress to sixth form college or to Oldham College of Further Education. In 1982 Oldham LEA chose Kaskenmoor School to be an adapted comprehensive school as part of its response to the 1981 Education Act. There have been many physical adaptations to accommodate disabled pupils such as a medical area with personal care room and physiotherapy room. There is a lift in the main classroom block plus ramps and rails throughout the school. There are adapted toilets for disabled pupils. Adaptations have been made to Science labs and the Food Technology area. A Special Needs Resource Area was established to act as a social area for both disabled and non-disabled pupils.
Good staffing provision at Kaskenmoor allows effective support; staff are confident and anxiety-free about disability. The pupils are very receptive and sympathetic to the needs of their disabled peers. An effective scheme has been developed for disabled pupils transferring to the school to spend a week in the summer term prior to admission in September.
Hogarth Primary School, Nottingham
Hogarth Primary School caters for children with a range of Special Educational Needs and has developed careful policy and practice for enabling these children to make satisfactory progress. The school makes available individual programmes of work, counselling help, specialist teaching and such support time as resources allow. Parents are informed and consulted about matters relating to their children.
School aims and objectives in respect of Special Educational Needs include:
Admission and transfer arrangements
Facilities for children with Special Educational Needs
The purpose and use of Concern Forms
Involvement of external agencies
The Individual Education Plan provided for each child
Involvement of parents
Arrangements for training of staff
‘We will, through carefully planned programmes of work, help each child realise his or her true potential within an environment which nurtures spiritual, moral, emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, cultural and physical growth.’
‘We will educate and develop all our pupils whatever their sex, colour, origin, religion, social status, ability or disability through equality of opportunity.’
‘We will encourage, through the learning opportunities provided, the development of skills and attitudes to enable each individual to contribute to society in a positive way.’
‘At all times we shall seek to foster a partnership with parents, carers and the local community.’
‘We will encourage everyone within our school community to treat each other with respect and good manners and show concern for the environment.’
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