As a school Governor, I am involved in staff appointments. We are currently looking for an Assistant Head Teacher for Teaching and Learning; Curriculum Development, our previous, very good AHT having been promoted in another school. What such an activity does is to create opportunities for broad and deep discussions about the details of teaching and learning, particularly in the context of the school and its point of development, both before and during the interview process. It was during one interview that this thought was generated.

I have touched on this idea before in a blog entitled “Tribal memory”, where staff loss can be debilitating.

Teaching and Learning and curriculum development have been the bread and butter of my whole career. You decide on a range of “stuff” that you consider children need to know at particular points in their lives, then decide the best approach to making sure that it “sticks”. Knowledge is broad and the accompanying pedagogies are equally broad.

Schools therefore have had to make strategic decisions. Some of these are likely to be general, in that the “knowledge” in different curriculum areas has been relatively consistent throughout my career, in Primary this can be broadly summarised as variations on Maths, English (R,W,S&L), Topic (H,G,Sc lead, Art, DT interpretation), Music, PE, RE, MFL.

In school and curriculum development terms, the key can be the availability of colleagues with appropriate background to be able to, at least, map out curricular development statements, if necessary, drawing on broader collegiate expertise within and outside the school. This may be particularly acute in smaller schools.

One interview raised the question of personal ambition as a potential drag on development. It is conceivable that, after a period of leading development in one subject area, an experienced teacher might be asked to then oversee an area that had received less attention, in so doing relinquishing responsibility to another. Equally, another teacher might be brought into a school and will wish to “make their mark”, with an eye to their own future promotion prospects. In either case, there will be a hiatus, as stock is taken and proposals made for “improvement”. This could be seen as “change”, a regularly used word in education.

Whereas improvement implies a strategy, unless a comprehensive strategy is articulated, change can become distracting; wholesale change can mean abandoning what went before. As a result, nothing gets fully understood or embedded.

This can be as a result of Government decisions. I'd quite like Government to hold back from initiatives, allow teachers to take stock, to be able to plan securely, in order to put in place structures that can stand the test of time, by allowing consideration of improving parts rather than wholesale alterations every few years. 

​I would still contend that much of the 2014 changes wrought on education were change for change’s sake. After five years, the impact has led to poor implementation in SEND and Ofsted altering their 2019 approach to look at the broader curriculum. Strategy is complex, a bit like a Gaia principle of “wheels within wheels”. Knee-jerk alteration in one area has a knock on into another, often causing unintended, or unforeseen consequences.

School managers need to plan development with care, mapping clearly how different elements work together, seeking to avoid duplication of or wasted teacher effort.

Distraction destroys continuity. Continuity and progression were by-words of my school career; progressively building from one phase of education to the next, within an overall aspiration for all children.

To illustrate this, I now draw on the “Learning and Teaching” policy that was my school’s articulation of purpose. It was set as a central plank that supported developmental colleague dialogue, enabling discussion of detail without distorting the whole, or the proposed learning journeys through a child’s life at the school.

While no statement is perfect, it gave clarity to teachers appointed to the school. Communication is key to development, from overall strategy to the detail of a specific area. If teachers are informed, they can support the strategic direction.

The "class of 1993"; stability supported development, embedding qualities that survived change.

Learning and Teaching Policy (first articulated 1993, developed to 2005)
A Statement of School Vision

Everyone involved with the educational process at X School is a partner in progress
This, in terms of children, is encompassed in the motto Thinking, Working, Playing Together.
Educationally making guided progress, through individual and group effort.

Our Aim
A typical child leaving X School will have these attributes
Confidence in themselves, as people and learners.
Awareness of the world around them, locally and wider, showing sensitivity, an enquiring approach, and a developing sense of awareness of themselves as spiritual beings.
Capable of working in many different ways, with different grouping of others, and be able to sustain effort when required.
Solve problems with different, but developing, levels of independence.
Think creatively and reflectively when appropriately challenged, organising their needs, and being able to talk clearly to anyone with an interest in their activities.
Accept guidance to achieve the best they can, with a clear understanding of their strengths and areas for further improvement.

A policy for learning, achieving the vision
Children, their thinking and learning, are our core purpose, within the context of a broad, balanced and relevantly challenging curriculum. They are to become active producers of learning, rather than passive consumers of teaching.
Children will start as information gatherers, capable of clear description.
Children will progressively become problem solvers, applying a range of relevant skills, able to articulate clearly in speech and then writing, the detail of their learning, and to have a developing repertoire of presentational skills through which they can show their ideas.
Careful consideration of information, and logical thinking, together with the ability to explain their thoughts, using 2-D or 3-D models, will lead to secure links in learning.
Learning processes will be clearly articulated to children, who should be able to explain what they are doing, and why.
The processes through which the children will be challenged will be known to teachers, parents, support staff or any other assisting adult.
The potential for learning across and between different abilities needs to be maintained, to ensure that children derive learning from as many sources as possible.
The taught curriculum will be well taught, with teachers working to improve their personal skills and practice across the curriculum.
ICT in all its forms will be a central tool of development.
The school and each of its constituent parts, will see itself as part of a wider learning community, deriving information and good practice from sources that complement our own developing practice.

Putting the vision into practice
Teachers at X School plan to ensure that the vision and aims are put into practice, employing methodologies outlined in the policy for learning, through an approach summarized as Analyse, Plan, Do, Review, Record, Report.

Analyse… Teachers will receive information from a range of sources about the prior attainment of each child. This will provide a framework upon which to base decisions about working arrangements, suitable objectives for learning and tasks to achieve these.
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Plan… Teachers plan over different timescales, annual, based upon allocated topic specifications. It is for individual teachers to use these specs creatively to provide a dynamic approach to learning.

​Contributing to school level Planning Detail; see blog on “Planning”

Whole of National Curriculum interpreted through School-based Topic Specifications for each topic within each subject.
Literacy and numeracy frameworks.

Planning at different levels (teachers)
Content
Learning needs
Space, timescales and resources

Do… Tasks given to children will be creative, challenging and engaging, leading to anticipated progress.
Task design. Tasks will have a definite purpose in progressing an aspect of a child’s progress, known to the child and any assisting adult.
Activity presentation. All activity will be clearly presented and understood by children before being active.
Independence levels, skill, knowledge and attitude will all be considered when devising the task parameters, as the different learning attributes of individuals and groups should be encompassed in the task challenges.

Children as learners
Understanding task… Children will have a clear grasp of what they are being challenged to achieve, be able to discuss and articulate purposes when asked.
Task behaviours… Children will be expected to demonstrate appropriate approaches to tasks, developing persistence to achieve.
Team working… Children will be challenged to operate as collaborative, independent learners on tasks specifically created to allow for qualities of cooperation to be developed.
Oral skill…Children will develop appropriate descriptive, analytical, exploratory languages to communicate clearly to a peer or interested adult.
Recording skill, written, pictorial, mathematical…Within any learning experience there will be opportunities for children to use different forms of recording to help them to remember sequences of events within an activity.
Evaluation… Children learn about learning by doing, by reflecting on the process and activity, and evaluating changes to approaches for future reference.
Review… Children will develop as primary evaluators of their drafts. Peer reviews will be developed over time, with the teacher giving informative feedback to help with the next phase of development.
By being given tasks that they will need to discuss, decide on action, carry out, review, re-evaluate and repeat, they will develop an insight into the ways in which adults work and solve problems.

Outcomes..Review
Teacher as reviewer and quality controller…Any piece of work from a child is the current draft capable of being reviewed and improved. Ongoing oral feedback should support the child within the learning process. Marking should provide opportunities for advice, and an overview of quality.
Feedback to children…should enable each child to review their own needs in learning for subsequent pieces of activity.
Room for improvement… advice on areas for development.
Objective and subjective…Correcting spelling or an aspect of grammar may be clearly objective, whereas a commentary starting “I liked…..” would be subjective.

Moderation…At intervals it is clearly good practice to share views on achievement. Moderation allows a consensus view about a discrete piece of produced work.

Record… Teachers will keep records which assist them in progressing learning for individual children.

Report… At half year and year end, teachers will write reports to inform parents about achievements and room for improvement.
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Review, Recording and Reporting, especially individual needs
To colleagues
To parents
Significant others

In reality for around six years now, but the title scans with the “Wild Rover” first line, the second of which is “And I’ve spent all my money on whiskey and beer”, which probably doesn’t sit well with the idea of Governance or good management.

I became a Governor in one school after a few years of waiting until I reached 60 and effectively “retired” from the front line, having been invited onto the Governing body a few years before. It was a body in need of bodies, to ensure that meetings were quorate.

I’d like to think that it was for my lifetime in front line education and continuing involvement in specific areas, such as inclusion and parent partnership, as well as initial teacher education. Governors bring a wealth of expertise into a school and can act as critical friends as well as supporting the school in the development agenda.

Getting a “good” after an Ofsted inspection was testament to the hard work of the staff and management, including the Governing body. It also bought further time for necessary continuous development.

After a few years, a second school identified itself as being in even greater need of support, so I did a transfer having worked with the recently appointed Executive Head and Head of School in my ITE role. We had enjoyed many interesting exchanges of ideas, which they felt would help their new agendas, in a school with a very chequered history.

As Governor with particular responsibility for coordinating with SEND and inclusion, pupil premium and vulnerable children, I have been able to spend quality time with different staff, enabling them to articulate their developmental focus and actions, clarifying our joint understanding where necessary and occasionally offering areas where additional thought might be useful.

All visits to the school in any capacity as a Governor are written up and shared with the body, to ensure everyone is aware of what’s happening.

Where I am still involved in education, I also buy, receive and read a wide range of books. Where these could add something to the school, they are offered and have evidently been of value. I would especially mention Paul Dix, Jarlath O’Brien and Mary Myatt’s recent books on behaviour and ethos as having been well-thumbed. I have struggled to get the books back on occasion…

Twitter occasionally throws up interesting reads, too, so these are forwarded for information. This did occasion the school’s involvement with the Maximising the Impact of Teaching Assistants process, led by Rob Webster, which over the past year has developed significant conversations within the staff as a whole.

The Governor role is an interesting one, in that, while Governors are included in the Leadership and Management area of Ofsted, we are always at one remove from the day to day realities, which is why I feel that my school visits are essential, to fit the imagery with the reportage. It would be easy to take everything at face value, especially if you value the management and their work. I know that both the Executive Head and HoS value the conversations and the challenges that arise. This has been noted in discussion with the allocated LA inspector.

For all that, though, I am probably one of the quieter members of the Governing body, preferring to reflect before speaking. Governor meetings can become reactive in nature, and we all know that “stuff happens” in schools, but a reflective Governing body is more likely to support progress, avoiding creating “busy work” and distractions from the day job for already pressed managers. A reflective body is also more likely to look at itself and the roles, to add some value to the journey.

The education system is a bit like an Airfix kit; the bits have to go in the right place, with the right amount of glue, if the finished model is to look like the picture on the box. As in many reorganisations in education, there isn’t always a very clear picture on the packaging, so bits are in danger of being put in the wrong place.

With an emphasis in 2019 on the school curriculum, keeping sight of the school picture will be even more important.

Strong Governance needs to be a part of every school, but it needs a strong local base, supported by a supportive, easily available, local centre of information. I’m lucky that my LA still retains a Governor Service providing up to date training opportunities.

Like all school development, it never ends, simply because it is a human system, subject to human frailty as well as strengths. It only achieves through the efforts of others. It’s my pleasure to be able to continue offering support and occasionally some mentoring based on experience.
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Curriculum 1971-2014; broad, balanced and relevant.
Curriculum 2018; knowledge rich (or learning rich)?

Put simply, classroom learning is children, context, engagement, guidance and adaptation, evaluation of outcomes. The whole captured within communication.

Remembering always the maxim that education( life) is a journey not a destination. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century.)

It’s strangely fascinating occasionally just to be a bystander to conversations on social media. There’s a current penchant for everything curriculum, as if it’s the next new thing that no-one has ever thought of before You can almost hear the sound of cash tills ringing with the book potential.

The recent Ofsted commentaries on curriculum are strangely reminiscent of earlier HMI statements, one series of which was dubbed the “raspberry ripple” books because of their covers. The September 2018 commentary suggested that there was a lack of curriculum development expertise. In some ways this is not surprising, as for twenty years curriculum and pedagogy has been engaged through ever tighter dictat, seemingly removing teacher and school discretion, whereas autonomy is the life-blood of a thinking organisation.

Forgive me for being old(er). I started as a classroom teacher in 1974 after three years at training college; my first Primary class will now be coming up to 55 years old. In that extended career, I never worked in a school without a curriculum in some form. Some were stronger than others. They might have been based on a scheme for maths and English, with Topics (now called the foundation subjects) being the area that was apportioned to specific year groups. Once you knew the topics, there was the search for the available school resources, or perhaps an investigation in the locality to seek out appropriate places to visit or people with local interests. We were, to all intents and purposes, organising the knowledge, supplemented by the County Library Service and, from time to time, museums and costume services. It was relatively easy to put together a package of essential knowledge that would be shared, sometimes with teachers making some kind of information book that was derived from the various sources.

In looking through my notebooks from my career, I came across a diagrammatic version that was the top layer of an early curriculum map. It’s not detailed, but an overview that enabled themes to be allocated to year groups, then further developed through locality resources and resource boxes.
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In many ways variations on this have been a feature of my career. Start at the top layer, then work ever deeper, providing greater detail at different points to support teacher thinking in their classroom. This last layer might include agreed details that have to be structured into the theme narrative and retained for future use.

​These early thoughts were supplemented further with a very active inspection and advisory service and teachers centres that provided both courses and in-house support to school development.

From an earlier blog:

Curricula are usually written by experts, from the expert perspective, ensuring that information is delivered, whether or not it is appropriate for the learner’s current needs. 
As teachers, unconstrained by predetermined curricular expectations, we were able to assume the mantle of experts, reflecting on what the four year olds brought with them in the way of life experiences which would be the start points for school based experiences and exploration.

So history started as My story, based on storyboards created with a series of photos, then developed into His or Her story, with reference to parents and grandparents. Local walks to look at houses of interest started a link between History and Geography, with sketch mapping, drawing in situ or photos being taken (development time, much easier now?). Parents and grandparents came to tell their own stories, recorded onto c45, 60 or 90 tapes to be replayed and reflected upon. For homework, children were asked to telephone grandparents to ask a series of questions. Timelines were created throughout, so historical perspectives were constantly being revisited, as knowledge was added. And we got back to the Victorians with photograph based family trees, together with the accompanying narrative.

Building materials became the stuff of science, complemented by Lego or other construction material, as well as clay models of houses, made out of very small bricks, fired in the kiln. Trials with garden clay compared to the bought variety. One child brought in a tile found in their garden, which we took to the local museum to be told it was Roman. Visiting the local church we discovered even more tiles, being used as wall bricks and on the way back a local aunt offered the chance to have a look inside a house originally dating to 1580. I know, risk assessments, CRB etc. The Tudor context allowed exploration of timber as a building material. One idea often led to another, with settlements, including the Anglo-Saxon beginnings of the village being explored, with the support of the local history society.

In reality, what is a curriculum? It is a series of related contexts within which learners will enhance their understanding of the world in which they live, allowing opportunities for language acquisition, broadening communication, real contexts for writing and other recording.  The mathematics of measures and data creation supported the core learning at every age. So the basics were the backbone of topic work. The contexts provided the creative structures into which the relevant subjects could be fitted.

Asking questions and seeking answers were the basis for both library research and experiential science activity, which might be based on the notion of finding out interesting ideas to share with the rest. Every subject had value for what it brought to the child as thinking and learning opportunities. The art table was a permanent fixture within the classroom, with half a dozen children regularly interpreting information in picture form.

When the National Curriculum was brought in in 1987, I was a deputy in a First School. Our audit of the school curriculum against the NC showed a 95% correspondence, with a couple of tweaks to be effected.

This became a feature of revisions; small tweaks were needed to accommodate the update.

I came across my notes from 1987, when I had responsibility for science. I had grouped the sixteen attainment targets, yes 16, into three main areas; scientific processes, our environment, make it move/forces, and three supplementary areas; electricity/magnetism, sound and music and light. These might have been organised as larger, three-week projects, or perhaps a week of experiences.

It was not long before a reorganisation led to the sixteen ATs becoming four main areas; virtually the same content, but a reduction in areas for assessment, essentially materials, physical world, living world and scientific exploration.
When I became a HT in 1990, we worked hard on the curriculum, because, although the school had taken on elements of the NC, there were gaps which needed to be addressed.

The approach was refined over time and can ne read about in a blog on planning. There is a clear focus on layering.
In addition, as a school, we also looked at quality versus quantity in writing.

It was clear that children were being asked to undertake a considerable amount of writing, but that, for the most part, any writing in subjects other than English were of poorer quality.

We moved from this to identify the main writing approach for the week, which would be developed through different stages; modelled, organised and drafted, with occasional redrafting for display quality, for an audience.

The two-page approach to writing that we developed is shared as writing process, tweak your books which morphed through all writing in one exercise book, to using the exercise book as a personal organiser. This highlighted that writing is writing in every subject. It allowed for each week, or fortnight to be devoted to a particular project, perhaps a report from a practical experience, to letter writing, or imaginary story. As a head, I encouraged teachers to consider the use of time available for quality writing. This could be an hour by hour for essential teaching and modelling, note making or early organisation activities. It might be a morning to enable a range of drafting and evaluation/critique activities. Timetable flexibility allows quality to emerge, rather than unfinished work. Over time, the time frames reduced to emphasise fluency.

Topic areas, essentially the foundation subjects, were organised in different layers, as articulated in the planning blog. Topics lasted as long as was needed, but all allocated topics had to be shared. Topic themes were resourced by subject coordinators, with a topic specification and a collation of the resources available within the school. Book resources were sourced through the County Library Service.

Within these areas, we reflected on the commonality of learning themes and came up with the “Making Sense of Experience” model; a means of looking at deepening experience, at any age. The “Experience, explore, explain” mantra was central to the thinking; simple enough to remember, but embedding many different elements.

In 2014, the current NC was enacted. Having listened to Tim Oates, when we shared a panel, telling the assembled staff that the 2014 version was created to be easier to test, I started to worry. With it being maths and English heavy with testing in these areas, the next few years have shown that the wider curriculum has diminished, in some cases significantly. However, there is a strong argument for the curriculum retaining its breadth and depth.
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So why are we where we are?

My simple answer would be estate-wide small thinking, more from the point of view of ever closer attention on the minutiae of teaching and learning, especially by some individuals who have made national and international names, and a lot of money from publishing, by a focus on small bits. The words that we use, such as differentiation, assessment, planning, writing, reading, phonics along with others, have been packaged and repackaged into formulae, then interpreted into book form, to be sold into the education spending market, which itself has grown significantly over the past 25 years.

A couple of the latest high-profile areas are “growth mindset” and research. Each has the potential to become formulaic, distracting and ultimately to be devalued. The former, to me is what teaching and learning are all about, otherwise what’s the point and the latter, as an investigative mind-set, is what I’d want from all teachers, seeking to refine their practice.

The issue with buying a scheme for doing the thinking for you is that you can stop thinking about the whole and how things fit together, and that’s what I’d say some have done. These schemes can dictate timetables, as children are packaged up into appropriate sized groups to undertake the specified activities, often led by the less well-informed members of staff, so that, although “coverage” might be assured, the depth of understanding might be suspect for many. These groups are, by default, mini sets or streams, so can become self-limiting systems. Time is also lost, as children move between areas of the school to be part of their small groups.

There has been successive reorganisation of priorities, with literacy and numeracy taking over from English and Maths, with a subsequent downgrade of other subjects, all of which provide the background information against which English and Maths operate in the real world. There is talk of the knowledge curriculum, but the knowledge areas of the curriculum, in some places and for some children are under some threat.

The small thinking arises out of a sound-bite need for politicians, to show that they are doing something to improve the situation. The Literacy Hour was not the be-all and end-all of the Literacy Strategy, yet it became the simplistic message given on the radio and TV every morning. For the past four years, we have heard phonics equals reading as the mantra.

The problem with both messages is that it can distort practice to the point where other aspects of each subject, which are equally or more vital, are diminished, so teachers and children lose sight of the bigger messages.

Levels became the bête noire of the system because they became distorted into data points, rather than remaining as the progress descriptors that they were in the beginning. From misuse, they lost their purpose and became distorting, as they became high stakes in showing progress. The number and the data point lost the accompanying words, but, at least in some of the foundation subjects, the words could still be a useful starting point for reflection on progression.

Like all things, I’d argue that a focus on detail is essential, but that at every stage any change in one aspect needs to be reflected upon across the whole learning system, otherwise it can be distorting.

It’s a little bit like an exercise regime where concentration on one part of the body can create a distorting effect.
It's got to start with the whole, consider the parts and then put the whole back together. 

And when it comes down to simplicities, the whole relies on effective communication in all forms, pitched to the audience, using words that they can understand, sharing images to supplement the words and to enhance the capacity to make links with earlier experiences.

It takes an aware teacher to be able to do that with facility. Teachers need subject and pedagogic knowledge. Thinking teachers sharing a thoughtful curriculum and supporting each other with their own knowledge and sharing successful pedagogy can significantly alter the curricular diet for every child.
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The HMI report for 2018 includes a commentary about the teaching of and support for SEND.

​In many ways, I am not surprised. Working with Inclusion Quality Mark for eight years up to 2014, it was clear, from visits to and supporting schools, 2013-14, attending and presenting at conferences, that the complexities of the changes that were being wrought on schools in a very short time would be very difficult to achieve. That the changes also included system changes outside schools, at a time when austerity cuts were really beginning to bite, only served to exacerbate the situation for more vulnerable children.

Schools felt that they had to focus on curriculum and assessment, the latter having been put into free-fall by a Government unwilling to offer clear guidance. As schools would also be inspected on the new system, it became an imperative, especially for schools which felt vulnerable; borderline good, RI or SM.

Systems are still not yet fully effective in all schools. The sheer weight of requirement, especially for Primary schools, to embed mathematics and English, meant that the wider curriculum was sometimes given less prominence, to a point where this is flagged up as a concern for the 2019 inspection framework. It is also feasible now, after four years, that schools are beginning to see issues with their earlier decisions and are making adjustments.

One big structural change in 2014 was to put emphasis on the classroom as the prime place where good or better teaching and learning is seen as addressing the needs of all individuals. Therefore work has to be well planned, well delivered, activities engaged with, feedback given and supportive, developmental feedback afterwards.

In which case, the class teacher becomes the conduit through which SEND decisions are effected, with enhanced responsibility. Consider for a moment the position regarding Performance Related Pay (PRP) where a teacher can be held responsible for the outcomes of all groups of learners.

Teachers need to know their children very well, to be able to personalise interventions and commentaries. The deployment of available support, for specific purpose, with defined, checkable outcomes, will be essential. However, as the highest trained person in the classroom, the teacher may reasonably be expected to take the greater burden of the most challenging learning needs, while the support does just that, supports other learners.
All aspects need to be considered, starting with the appropriateness of the task, or the necessity to adapt, the need for support to achieve an appropriate outcome.

Within the task, the deployment of staff to be the eyes and ears, with the capacity to intervene appropriately to need will be essential. It will become an essential skill to spot and deal with issues as they arise to smooth the learning path. These interventions will need to be noted in some way. Therefore a methodology needs to be considered. In the first instance, the exercise book could become a part of the dialogue of concern, noting advice given, as well as clear, readable, understandable feedback. A secondary need will be to keep a track of teacher thinking, within and between lessons, through post it notes, amended planning, or diary format.

The teacher needs to get better at initial investigation of issues.
 
In addition, within the 2014 NC, the idea of levelness gave way to yearness. I blogged about this, from 2013, as I could see considerable potential pitfalls, especially for children who didn’t “make the grade” in the previous year. This may have been further exacerbated as teachers chose to stay in the same year group for a few years, to make use of their need to get to grips with yeargroup requirements.

Primaries are possibly in a much more difficult position, in that the new National Curriculum is very year-group based, with the assessment criteria as articulated, to know and understand the year group requirements. The use of the phrase “Secondary ready” cast an implied level of expectation against the achievements at year six. The rhetoric to date seems to suggest whole cohorts moving at the same speed. Topics are also relatively year group specific, which could cause issues if a child is either slower or faster than their cohort at learning in a specific subject. It is arguable that for Primary schools, level-ness has been replaced by year-ness.  So measurement of progress will be against year group expectations. Within the documentation, it is possible to infer the hierarchy of expectation, so schools may do that to ensure that their learners are tracked against the new criteria.

Where schools have been freed from the need to use levels and asked to create their own systems, those which have been shared through social media like Twitter have to date looked very much like levelness in a different form. And they always will, because the schemes shared have been recording sheets to keep a track of children’s performance.

And that’s my main issue. Subjects have hierarchical skills, which have to be introduced, practiced and embedded in produced work. Levelness articulated the hierarchy of skills and allowed this within whole class tasks and topics, with all learners challenged at a personal level, in the best practice. Level and grade criteria support expectation, planning, in-lesson interventions, reformulating of challenge to need, feedback, both oral and written, then food for thought after the lesson.

Year-ness will do that, but I have a slight worry that the articulation of achievement within the new system at Primary level has the potential to become a new system created barrier to learning for a number of vulnerable learners.
We had a system that could have been tweaked to make it more coherent, challenging, robust and acceptable through the system.
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We may embed new issues. I hope that I am wrong.
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All classes are mixed ability, even a set or streamed group, so creates an internal dynamic that needs to be accommodated; from prior records, simple starter assessments to confirm or ask questions, to seek to refine planning that allows appropriate imparting of information and learning challenges, both of which may be subtly altered in delivery through engagement with individual or group needs.

This is articulated in another blog; 65, based on the teacher standards.

Not all Special Needs get identified early. Some become more obvious as school challenges get harder. Some may have a source outside school, but which impacts in the setting, eg social and emotional needs.

Individual responses will offer challenges and cause concern. This may multiply over time, if established as a seeming pattern of response. Investigation and recording of the developing situation informs a discussion with the school SENCo. Not to do so might result in a request to do so over the next period of time. This delay can be the source of irritation in a teacher who wishes an immediate remedy.

From 2013
·         SEND is no longer “someone’s job”, it is everyone’s job…

Training is an interesting issue, in that there are and will be significant calls from all sides for “more training”. The availability of external staff is likely to be seriously strained in the near future, as all schools ask for the same personnel. I can see a number of options addressing these needs.

Local specialists (possibly including Special School staff) to create fact sheets available to all local schools, to address possible concerns across a range of needs, ASD, ADHD, SALT, OT as an example.

• In-house solutions 1. Some special needs in learning can be evidenced against the outcome of younger children. Therefore, by definition, the expertise is in-house. Exemplar portfolios will help with decision making, if they incorporate both a statement of what’s evident and a description of potential next steps. In “old money” a level 2 child in year five is operating on a par with an average year 2 child. By talking with the year 2 teacher, the professional dialogue will offer insights into routes. In a separate system, it may be necessary to make links with feeder schools.
• In house solutions 2. The school SENCo, if (s)he has undertaken the required training, should be in a position to offer the broad-brush explanations necessary for class-based colleagues.
• Planning for learning needs to look at the dynamics as well as the fixed points. The plan, based on expectation, should prompt thinking on the hoof, ensuring interactions that result on lessons being tweaked to the evident needs.

The basic principle of SEND, know your children well, and that would be my suggestion for the 2019 inspections; how well do schools know and support their children’s needs?

It could be that simple…

Let’s try to put some things in perspective. Schools, in England and Wales, will soon reopen, teachers will receive their classes for the next academic year and the annual diary will start and pan out, plus or minus a few hiccups.
There are four areas of SEN description in the 2014 framework

• Communication and Interaction
• Cognition and Learning
• Social, Emotional and Mental Health
• Sensory and/or Physical needs.

The vast majority of children will arrive with their past educational history well documented, showing their earlier achievements and some areas where there appear to be continuing concerns.

A very few will arrive with an Education Health and Care Plan, EHCP, in place, with specific needs identified and methodologies and support required for them to achieve the needs. This may, or may not, include some statement of dedicated teaching time or adult support.

Others will already be highlighted on the school SEN register, with earlier needs identified. That these last two groups are known ahead of time allows the receiving teacher to prepare and plan, anticipating their ongoing need within the class plans.

There may well be some children whose needs only become apparent during the new academic year. This could be as a result of external trauma, resulting in unexpected responses to learning situations, or it could be an unspotted earlier need that becomes apparent as challenges become harder to accommodate.

If, after a couple of weeks back in class, with new children, one or two are causing some unforeseen concern, it is important that every class teacher and additional adult recognises their place as front-line eyes and ears of T&L need.

Changes to the organisation of SEND provision have been in train for the past few years, during which time I have blogged, as I have come across useful information. These blogs are archived within my blog, see Contents but I will refer to aspects to provide an introduction.

In this post, I am not looking to describe the range of individual needs that might be encountered. There are many expert colleagues who are much more able to offer insights into the specifics of individualised SEN(D). I have focused on issues as they affect mainstream school teachers, which can be summarised as developing a coherent, investigative approach that can fit with normal classroom practice, which is premised on the need to look, to reflect and record concerns to inform deeper conversations.

SEN is an area of teaching and learning where teacher expertise can easily be challenged.

A feeling of vulnerability, identifying a personal need can create a tension. There is always the possibility of meeting a child whose needs fall outside previous experience; the truism that “you’ve met one child with autism, so you’ve met one child with autism” can exemplify many areas of SEN.

For known needs, it is essential that earlier information is available, read and planned to be actioned within the new class organisation, and where needed, specific advice sought, considered and planned.

With any new class, there is a period of what I would call “calibration or sometimes recalibration”, the teacher challenge in learning being more generic, based on earlier reading of records and possibly earlier experiences with that year group. Outcomes show greater detail “in the moment”, resulting in more tailored responses, questioning and feedback/guidance. Outcomes also enable finer tuning of challenge levels and responses, as individual needs become apparent.

On entry into the formal learning situation, the staff eyes and ears should be alert to issues, noting down things that are said and done, to ensure that future reflections can be based on pattern finding or evidence across a range of issues. Evidence finding is the bread and butter of teacher life, in terms of interactions, questioning, feedback, support and outcomes.

General statements like, “x cannot read”, are unhelpful to discussion.

Investigating and sharing specifically what a child can and cannot do can lead to focused intervention, rather than general approaches.  Leaving a child in a situation where they are clearly failing, are seen to be failing and knowing that this is the case, is destructive to the child and to the teacher. Acknowledging specific issues and seeking the specific means to address the issues demonstrates a positive, professional approach.

There is no doubt that, when a teacher encounters a child who does not fit the “normal mould” that they are used to, that they may experience unease. Once a child enters school, it is less likely that concerns about potential special needs will be unknown, raised by parents or professionals, which hopefully have been followed up and investigated, so that, by the time a teacher encounters the child there may already be records with substantial supportive information available.

The journey to SEN decisions is likely to be a phased affair, especially with regard to learning issues and possibly over an extended timescale for many children, much to the frustration of parents and teachers.

“Getting a handle” on the problem can be a case of more structured investigation that may eventually lead to diagnosis, prescription and deciding on courses of action.

It is really important that teachers and other adults in class note down their concerns, from their earliest awareness, so that timely discussion with professional colleagues can distil patterns, suggest alternative courses of action and also avoid delay should there be a need to refer to an external form of support, eg the school Educational Psychologist (EP). Unless there is a track record of concern, the EP may well request that the classteacher undertakes activities that have already been tried, but the outcomes not recorded. This can add to unnecessary delays in addressing key issues.

Action is also embedded in classroom relationships and these need to be carefully considered. All children need teacher time, as they are the key strategic decision maker.

Children seem to know where they are in comparison with their peers. They can judge for themselves those who can achieve in an area and can also highlight what they can’t achieve, across a wide range of subjects. This can lead to self-esteem issues, to go along with their understanding of a learning struggle. Children know when they are being given easier things to do, so presenting appropriately challenging activities, with commensurate scaffolded support is important. Allocating a teaching assistant to an issue can create a mutually dependent relationship, with a child’s independence and decision-making capacity being limited by constant adult support. It needs careful oversight and review.

The children with the greatest need, need the best teaching.

The class teacher must teach these groups or individuals, to ensure quality teaching is available to them and also to deepen their understanding of the child(ren)’s needs.

Where this is the case, reference to teachers of earlier years can provide pedagogical and practical advice. In many ways, teaching standard 2, progress and outcomes, is THE key standard to support teacher understanding. What is the anticipated learning journey of children from early years through to year 6? While we know that learning is never linear, concerns about a child’s learning is often judged against such an expectation.

This crib sheet at the header might support record collection and prepare the ground for discussion. The centre box suggests an approach.

Teacher judgement plays a significant part. If a teacher has never met an issue, or makes simplistic inappropriate judgements, then the subsequent learning journey for the child will become more complex, with the potential for regression, rather than progress, as the relationships can become strained.

So, from a classroom perspective, I’d offer the following:-

·         Start a RADIO* file on individuals who are raising worries. *Record of Actions, Discussions or Decisions, Interventions and Outcomes.
·         Annotate plans regularly with individual concerns.
·         Annotate exercise books with appropriate supportive commentary.
·         Make diary notes in the RADIO file to deduce any pattern arising.
·         All adults become “spotters”. Keep a post it note record of things that happen in the lesson, to add to the RADIO. Ask any support adults to do the same.
·         The record should allow the teacher to create a proper narrative, with action, outcome and judgements/decisions, refined actions. There should be a record of planning adaptation.

At this point, the class teacher can take the beginnings of a case study to the SENCo, thus avoiding the generic conversation that starts, “X has a problem with…” or “Y just doesn’t get it…” which then needs to go through the process outlined above. By adopting this approach early, and similar systems are embedded in many schools, valuable time for vulnerable learners is saved.

Neither the class teacher, nor the SENCo is not being asked to be a diagnostician, but an investigator and describer of learning, behaviours and outcomes. The TA or other adult support can provide additional insights into issues. The broadest view available will support decision making.

Stepping up a notch.

If the teacher has got to the point where the child’s needs exceed their expertise or experience, they may feel the need to involve another adult, an experienced colleague such as the SENCo, to seek advice and solutions. There is nothing wrong in saying that you need help with a specific child’s needs. By asking for advice, broader school awareness is raised.
This stage was previously called School Action (Plus), and may involve deeper exploration of the issues supported by a range of external expertise, all of which will be subject to reports to the school, enhancing the available evidence.

I’d expect some kind of agreed internal plan to be developed, with the focus on actions, from the teacher, to seek to effect specific change; to keep a further diary of interventions, and outcomes, over relatively short timescales. These Personal Action Plans need to be seen embedded in plans and visible in practice. They should be clear descriptors, accessible and shared with parents at each stage. The focus on classroom action is essential. Progress should be capable of being measured in some form. They were called Individual Education Plans, IEPs, but could sometimes appear to be disregarded in practice.

Regular reviews and refinements eventually build to a more substantial case study file, which is likely to be then supported with reports from a range of additional professionals.
These files start with the teacher spotting and recording needs over a time scale, investigating anomalies, so that the support systems around them can offer advice based on detail.
That’s teaching…
 
SEND is often linked to Inclusion practice
Inclusion can sometimes be seen as an add-on to “normal” teaching activity.
It is possible to argue that inclusion, far from being an add-on,
is an integral part of practice,
explicit in the detail of the standards for teachers.
Teachers will go to work each day to secure the best opportunities
for each and every child in their class.
Inclusion occurs in the best of teaching experiences.
 
Inclusion is not something that is done to people.
It is an aspect of ethos, a principle and, as such, exists or it doesn’t.
An inclusive environment is one where people matter,
their needs and aspirations are not only known but are also supported.
Therefore, it is a college of individuals which cares for each other,
the collegiate approach.
Inclusion is an ethos based on love and care,
with the opposite extreme leading to exclusion and a child being ostracised.
An inclusive ethos should allow individuals to express themselves
and, at times, to articulate different opinions.
Openness and articulacy can support the resolution of issues more easily.
Inclusive organisations often support discussion and resolution
through mediation and allowing advocacy for vulnerable members.
 
All school staff are the eyes and ears of the organisation.
In this approach, early identification of concerns,
such as behaviour change, physical hurt and absence
can lead to early intervention, by the most suitable means,
sometimes external to the school.
School staff have a responsibility to keep children safe.
Intervention can be testing for the adult,
but to ignore warning signs puts everyone at risk.
 
Every child is unique, demonstrably so, educationally,
physically, emotionally, socially, though heritage and life experience.
It is possible to perceive thirty different needs in a class of thirty children.
That puts a strain on a teacher’s organisational abilities
and their ability to engage with each individual.
However, differentially challenging activities can lead to deeper engagement
with small groups and individuals, where whole class teaching cannot.
 
Differentiation has been a significant challenge to teachers,
as it implies the need to plan for several layers of ability within groups.
Some schools organise in sets or streams, but it is arguable that even in sets there
is a continuum of ability, even if it is narrowed.
One only has to ask the simple question, “What’s the point in being bright in this classroom?”
to see that some may not be sufficiently challenged.
Challenge implies expectation,
where the teacher has analysed the child’s needs and can see what that the next
learning step is.
Expectation can lead to aspiration,
with targets being set slightly higher, but with support.
Teachers need to be aware that task
completion does not automatically mean success in learning,
but the combination of learning processes with positive outcomes is energising
to both the child and the teacher.
We all want the “light-bulb moment”.
 
Inclusion should imply personalised approaches to learning and teaching,
with individualised challenges for children
to enable them to become engaged learners and active producers,
rather than consumers.
 
Assessment, analysis and reflection are embedded within practice,
supporting individual and institutional progress.
The mantra for each school and each individual within a school should be,
 
“Inclusion is what we do.”


More reading?
​Practical SEN(D) Linking ideas into a coherent whole.
SEND 2014; possible class teacher Crib sheet.

​I was surprised, this week, when a post that I wrote last year passed by my Twitter timeline. In this, I looked at the impact of successive education secretaries over my career and how during the past forty years, education has become a central theme in politics. This could be because successive Governments have hived off other direct responsibilities leaving the rump of public service roles.

It is a truism that children are largely born into the world in the same ways as they always have, apart from medical interventions that are now available where they weren’t previously. They grow through whatever experiences their families offer then they enter school. They show variability at that stage, which might be an indicator of learning issues or perhaps of limited pre-school experience and interactions.

From entry, the teacher and other adults, through interacting with the children, begin to make judgements and fine tune their interactions to elicit detailed information. This may require a form of interpretation, unpicking the concept being experienced and tracking back in language forms, supported by manipulable resources or modelling, to a point where the child is able to engage at their personal level of understanding.

Where a child is in EYFS, the detail in records kept during that phase can be used to interrogate the possibility of the child having Special Educational Needs.

Tracking back and tracking forwards is a descriptor of a teacher life, in language and conceptual terms. We are continually told that “learning is not linear”, yet planning for teaching and learning is, with the examined implication of linear accommodation of each new element of learning. The year cohort approach to the National Curriculum assumes that each cohort should move as one, in a linear fashion, apart from the judgements that a child is, or isn’t at Age Related Expectation. If they aren’t, they will take forward a deficit, which has to be bridged, if they are to have any hope of keeping up with peers over time.

Therefore, in any classroom, at any one time, there will be a range of capabilities and understandings, even in a set or stream.

Inclusion was an item on the radio this morning, in the context of SEND. When the word was introduced, I was keen that the term should not just be used in this regard, but in a broader definition, which I framed as; an inclusive school is one that does it’s best, within the school capacity, to offer a quality education to each child, ensuring that any difficulty is identified, addressed and tracked, with clear evaluation underpinning decisions, including the use of external expertise. Where a school has utilised every available course of action, consideration should be given to alternative placement, where additional expertise or resources are available.

Labels and levels regularly flit by, as an addendum. If a child has a need, is that a label, or a descriptor? Levels, in the original National Curriculum, were clearly available as descriptors, and, where they were adopted as such, offered a language for discussion children’s learning. I blame the data bods for usurping the numbers of levels to supposedly predict progress, where, in reality, progress is effected in each classroom, a bit at a time, by a well-informed teacher with the skills and abilities to interact with the learning needs of each child, where this is evident. 

Progress is an interaction between the process of learning, including the quality of the teacher input of information into the lesson, and the outcomes from the child assimilating this information and being able to utilise it to fulfil a challenge, at whatever level is appropriate to the child. A post-activity evaluation can determine the next appropriate steps and the focus for the child.

This week, I have been making my last visit to School Direct trainees, and, in a couple of weeks’ time will host an interim meeting for Winchester University Post Grad mentors to review their progress to date. The essence of all the discussions can be refined to a few of the Teacher Standards; 2, 6&5, progress and outcomes, assessment and adaptation.

These, particularly standard 2, are critical to all decisions that affect learning in classrooms. If a teacher doesn’t know what “quality” outcomes look like for their year group, their underlying decisions may be faulty. This has implication for context expectation, so inter-school moderation is a key factor. With a young teaching force, breadth of experience may become a self-limiting factor. We are approaching the latter part of one year and schools are looking to the next, with decisions being made about teacher placement. PG and SD trainees may well be teaching year groups other than those in which they trained, and many will be in different school contexts, with structural differences to accommodate, as well as the different needs of children.

Quality awareness is a precursor to any form of quality control. This has to be a school-level discussion, so that every teacher is made regularly aware of potential expectations. Is it any wonder that many begin to struggle in their first years? It was a problem with sub-levels; what was the difference between a 4b and 4a?

Progress and outcomes are still subjects for debate among experienced teachers. Is it any wonder that trainees find this area fraught with possible issues? But, essentially, it is the single area that has the greatest impact across every decision, as per this diagram.

As the picture at the top of the blog says, we need these young teacher and their colleagues, to be the lead thinkers in their classrooms, to be capable of interpreting the needs of learners and to have the ability to adapt to these needs. They need to be aware; spotting and dealing with need at different levels, recording and tracking their concerns and their discussions with experienced peers, helping to make decisions about where a child’s learning journey will develop.

Interpretation takes time. Many of us, in using another language, make elementary errors, but, with practice, this becomes more refined and appropriate to need. Developing teachers need to be able to speak fluent “child-speak”, modelling and making appropriate links to “adult-speak” for those who struggle
.
So, if I was a Primary head today, what would I want to be doing?

• Create an inspiring range of challenging topic and project areas that would embed the necessary knowledge to be used in other scenarios. These would have time allocations, not necessarily to fill a half term, so that Science, History, Geography and Technology all had a secure place.
• Ensuring that each element was appropriately resourced so that it could happen and be of quality.
• Link the English and Maths curriculum in such a way that each could make use of the current and recent past topics, so that one fed the other, with opportunities to use and apply earlier skills and knowledge.
• Ensure that art, drama and music were deployed as interpretative subjects of worth and each capable of supporting the English and Maths curriculum.
• MFL, music and aspects of PE can be used to support the PPA needs of the school, by judicious use of specialists.
• Ask for teacher medium term plans, to see the direction of travel. Short term plans are for the teacher in the classroom, so can take any form that suits.
• I’d want children to know the focus for their personal efforts at any particular time.
• Create portfolios of moderated in-house examples that could support decision making in the school, be used to moderate against other school outcomes to validate judgements.
• I would have some kind of measure of capability, to support and focus decision making ability, especially of early career teachers. Every area of life is governed by a measure of capability in some form, from the kick around in the playground to academic and work achievement. “Can do” statements are a guide.

It is a consequence of the fact that there is no one size fits all approach to education that, at the tail end of a forty-plus year career, no-one has created a system that completely “works” for children from 4-18. The variables will always be the children and life itself. The shifts in the world impact on the learners, but the needs are the same; to understand the world we live in and have the skills to interrogate and explore it and communicate effectively.

Learners need interested adults to help them to interpret what they are experiencing, to give them the conceptual vocabulary that enables them to more fully participate in ongoing discussions which can allow further progress.
​
Linked blogs
When Blunkett trumped education. http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/when-blunkett-trumped-education
Are you an inclusive school? (pdf download; checklists) http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/pdfs.html
Levelness and yearness. http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/revisiting-if-level-ness-became-year-ness
Quality= a work in progress (and outcomes). http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/quality-a-work-in-progress

I know I came upstairs for some reason. I can at least now claim “senior moments”.

My problem, at the moment, is that there are usually several things competing in my head for the available space, which is the lot of the freelance. For that reason, I have lists and post-its to try to keep track of the different strands. Even then, something can be missed, especially if something grabs the attention and takes over the time available. Occasionally, it’s a product of reading something on or through Twitter. These items can be tangential, but sometimes then coalesce within a variety of experiences. This time it was Nancy Gedge's article in the TES on working memory.

Life requires us to remember things. Orientating ourselves, organising our personal spaces to be able to sort, find and return items, ensuring that those necessary things are done. Many of these are held as memories, such as how to get from the house to somewhere else, while others might need a list, especially when specific items are needed from shopping. There’s little worse than getting home and finding something really important has been overlooked. Yes there is. It’s when the shopping is for someone else, especially when preparing for a special event!

As much of my working life is visiting schools to supervise trainee teachers, I have to have an ordered diary, ensure that the trainees and schools are aware of my visit and then make sure I read my diary to be in the right place at the right time. Constant rejigging of times to suit unexpected situations can put pressure on even the most organised of systems, but adaptability is essential, in life and in work.

Watching and discussing with trainee teachers is a privilege. With this being the whole of their development year, to see them move from insecure to very able is more than encouraging. From time to time they forget to do something that is written on their plan. This can be a conscious decision, based on their understanding of the learners’ needs, but it can also be an oversight. A simple piece of advice to highlight those bits of their plan that they must not forget to do or say can often be enough. Some carry a post-it in the palm of their hand. Others will develop a series of PowerPoint slides with key questions to open up like a book.

Overt modelling, where diagrams are developed from manipulatives, that then are available throughout the lesson as memory reference points can be key to supporting children with memory issues.

Success criteria for that specific activity, based on the idea of “What a Good One Looks Like”, or WAGOLL, can become a scaffold for self-checking; have you done these things? This is a task level set of expectations that provides the context for personal needs.

The need of the teacher and the children to hold onto their development needs, in Primary across a range of subjects, can be challenging. Thirty children and ten plus subjects can mean several hundred development needs or “targets”. It’s the same for Secondary. It was to support this need, to enable teacher and learners to be prompted to a specific focus, that the “exercise books as personal organisers” approach was developed in my school. Essentially these are flaps to note the continuing need. Opened out when working, the supporting adults can interact with individuals to a fine-focus need, which they might otherwise ignore in the broader need. Neither the teacher, nor the child has to hold the information in their heads.

If all Primary writing is done in a single book, a clear writing focus is maintained throughout. The process can be supported by note making, lists, recipes, etc, which can become the basis for a first draft piece of writing. Exploring the process of writing holistically enables thought processes to be developed.

For reading, an “advisory bookmark” can be created, to remind the children and any adult engaging with their reading of areas to consider while or after reading.

Providing prompts is an important part of development. Intervention in-lesson to ensure a child remains on track can enable a quality benchmark to be achieved, against which future outcomes can be compared.

Showing progress can be challenging. “Progressive benchmarking” can be a very simple means of doing this. As a class teacher, pre-NC, I would ask children, every couple of weeks to look back to their previous work and to seek to do “better” in some specific way. The NC level descriptors, appended to the edge of their books and working within the National Writing Project approaches, meant that “progressive marking” through conversation allowed me to agree that they had demonstrated an area and to append their next development goal. It showed tracking of development, the advice given and the progress made.

Personally, I’d far rather develop schema that support memory, short and longer term, than to continually feel harassed that I had forgotten something.

Teachers are under considerable pressure to show that their children are achieving at the highest possible level. Looking at the underpinning schema can be the route to stripping out unnecessary elements.

Organisation is in school and teacher hands.

I wonder how you try to keep track of these needs.

Linked blogs (click to read)
Nancy Gedge TES article
Exercise books as personal organisers
Primary writing in a single book
Advisory bookmark
National Writing Project
Organisation
1)      Planning for learning over time
2)      School organisation of time

People are ingenious when it comes to overcoming the need to get across the barriers that a water course creates. It is rare that someone wanting to get across would want to spend an inordinate amount of time throwing rocks and debris into the water in order to step across. In fact, this might be inefficient, as the water would keep rising on one side of the barrier.
​
Paleolithic peoples would make stepping stones, by depositing stones large enough to poke through the water and allow steps to be taken in some safety. In some places, these stepping stones also had a flat top stone, to make a simple bridge. The bridge allowed regular and easy access from one side to another, supported on the simple pillars.
​

There is a current education mantra, “Bridging the Gap”, which appears to have morphed into “Diminishing the Difference”. I think some highly paid whizz-kid sits somewhere and comes up with these statements, without thinking through the impact on learners, or having to implement the outcomes.

Some children run faster, jump higher, sing better, find maths easier, read and write better than others. That is one of life’s realities with which even young children can engage. At the end of each school year, children achieve across a spectrum of achievement, in different area of the curriculum. Where an artificial barrier is erected, let’s call it Age Related Expectation, or ARE for short, this will mean that a proportion of the children will fall below the level and some will achieve above another artificial level that says they are higher than expected.

The problem is that those who don’t achieve will be seen as having a residual gap in their learning from that year, which suggests a need to fill in the missing elements. This could either be done by throwing everything again into the gap, to try to fill the space, but, as with water, tensions might rise and the good intentions might actually exacerbate the problem. Bridging the gap might start with establishing the security of the foundations and then seeking a means to bridge without having to put in too many interstitial pillars to give temporary support. Regular check questions or conversations are necessary.

It is a situation where the ability to analyse or assess minute by minute outcomes and to reflect and react to the evident need is a key aspect. However, this is often a role given to a classroom assistant. Unless this person is well trained and well-versed in this role, there is no guarantee that the vulnerable child will make the necessary progress, yet the reality is that these children have to run to catch up, to stay near their peers.

Where a significant proportion of the education dialogue can veer towards the traditional whole class approach across Primary as well as Secondary, a narrow lesson focus can have the impact of leaving a proportion adrift, unless rapid in-lesson intervention occurs.

That some argue against mixed ability groups, or grouping per se, can appear perverse, as any group of children is mixed ability. Children, especially younger learners, can share ideas within a task, with the aim of finding a mutual solution. That one child might contribute slightly more than another in a group is akin to some achieving higher in any other lesson. It all becomes a moot point after a while.

 The single most important factor in my experience is the quality of the challenge, requiring thought that proceeds towards finding a solution to the initial problem. Poorly designed tasks can become self-limiting.

In my last blog, I looked specifically at SEND issues. If issues are not addressed, vulnerable children might be left to flounder each year with the inevitable consequence of being labelled, not at ARE; shorthand “fail”. Unless the teacher can demonstrate that this is despite their best, recorded efforts, with quality teaching and intervention to need, it is possible to argue that the child may have been let down by the system.

An art exhibition is not something that suits everyone’s taste. Bobbie Bale is not a photo-representative kind of artist. She is immersive, interpretative, inventive and in touch with her inner feelings; this past few years she has been dealing with bereavement and working out her feelings in her art. It is technically of exceptional quality, her work is in a number of national collections, but can be challenging. Seeing her being challenged by someone with more traditional tastes, reminded me of Twitter spats, between “progs and trads”. That is made uncomfortable viewing for a number of other visitors, including the man’s wife, showed that the method of presenting the argument was critical, especially when the visitor chose some remarks that could be seen as personal. During the course of the day, the majority of visitors were somewhat awestruck by the works, even if they wouldn’t have the pictures on their walls. They could relate to the underlying feelings that had been captured in the images. Bobbie had found a way to communicate to them. For this one visitor, she may have needed a little more time to talk the process and the emergent outcome.
​
The SEND Built-in not bolt-on conference was a chance to engage with some of the leading minds in SEND; not all, but it was a privilege to be party to a wide range of presentations and discussions. It was developed to share the thinking that had emerged from the earlier Government discussion groups about the need for SEND to be a greater part of Initial Teacher Education.

We had the “Every teacher is a teacher of SEND” statement, from Stephen Munday. I am waiting for a revision that says, “Every teacher is a teacher of children, some of whom have known difficulties, for which plans can be made initially, some of whom have issues, as yet to be identified, which may show short or long term needs, but which need to be identified and addressed within the capacity of, first, the teacher, and second within the school capacity, eventually, and in more difficult cases, involving external expertise.”

Equally, from Anita Devi, presenting on behalf of NASBTT, The National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers SEND toolkit, we had the SEND approach of assess, plan, do, review. Now, in seeking to take this for SEND, the process can ignore the fact that this approach underpins all teaching and learning, and, if it is seen as embedded in overall T&L, can be restated as refining assessment from interrogation, discussion and trying different approaches, which can be seen as the graduated approach. That a child has an observable need obliges the teacher to spot and deal with the need within their current skill base, referring to experienced colleagues as needed.
​

Inclusion by Nancy Gedge

I read this book with great interest, as a large part of my life over ten of the past twelve years has been spent working with schools seeking to improve their approach to ensuring they had a secure inclusive ethos, starting with supported self-assessment.

There is a truism in education that you will always think that you will never know enough, and as a result, the relentless searching for self-development becomes the hallmark of a very good teacher. A good teacher is a life-long learner, prepared to look at themselves to determine where they need to address professional or personal needs.

Nancy’s book is written with the 2014 SEND changes in mind. The book is a very good resume of the need for a teacher to see themselves as responsible for the progress of each child in their class, making best use of the available resources, to the best of their ability. It offers much food for thought in this regard, with regular points that suggest specific elements to ponder. It would certainly support a teacher seeking to develop their practice.

The first chapter looks at the inclusive teacher and this is probably the most significant element, as, especially in mainstream Primary, the class teacher is the adult who will have the greatest impact on a child’s life for ten months. Being a teacher is a complex activity, ranging across a wide range of knowledge domains and skills.

The mind-set of this person determines every learning aspect of the year. If the child is not sufficiently challenged, they may not make an appropriate level of progress. The experience level of this person will determine their capacity to understand the child’s need and to be able to set expectations appropriately. Mentoring by an experienced colleague will be needed.

Where I work with ITE trainees, this can be summed up with the teacher standards 2,4,6,5,2 (see blog); an understanding of what progress means, leading to effective planning, engagement and interaction with learners in-lesson and adjustment to evident need, establishing a new baseline for subsequent challenge.

Other chapters look at the specifics of the 2014 SEND Code of Practice and what it means in detail for a class teacher, the removal of barriers to specific needs, behaviour management and the specifics of certain special needs, relationships including with parents and teaching assistants, concluding with a jargon buster.

This is a wide ranging book, covering areas of teaching and learning alongside the needs of children with Special Educational Needs. It will be if use to early career trainees and NQTs, but would also provide a basis for self-reflecting within a school.

As well as encouraging people reading this book, I’d offer my own thoughts, looking at some broader aspects of an inclusive approach in detail, from visits to some 100 schools, which can be downloaded as a pdf, but also a pdf on SEN(D) which includes a crib sheet of areas (see below) that might be worthy of note and record when a child is causing some concern.

I have to say that, over the past twelve years, the Inclusion agenda moved from integrating SEND children into school to become a more holistic ethos that sought to ensure all children were included appropriately. This move was to counter earlier philosophies that could be captured in the question “Does your school have the capacity to take this child?” which was effectively asked within a SEN Statement development before a school was named. It was up to the school to say yes or no; a form of initial exclusion. Professional capacity in specific areas may still be a determining issue, and combined with the diminishing of Local Authority staffing may well run counter to the needs of individual children. That this is often the case is regularly documented in social media.

That you haven’t an easy answer to a child’s needs can be the case where a special need is suspected. Before the term SEN(D) was coined, teachers spoke of Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD), describing needs in as much detail as possible, in order to support dialogue with external expert staff. The principle hasn’t changed, even if the title has.

As a rule of thumb, I’d encourage teachers to spot, record, think and talk about a child displaying anomalous behaviours or responses in a learning situation. Not all children come with a ready-made SEN(D) label identifying their needs. It will certainly make you think and can often be very challenging.

​Clarity is essential to good decision-making.

​Inclusion, at heart, is just doing your job, well.
 

It can appear, almost daily, that experienced teachers, on social media, bemoan some aspect of Initial Teacher Training. This can be behaviour management, planning, subject knowledge, working with parents, progress and outcomes or assessment.

Recently there has been some discussion on SEND; special educational needs and disabilities. It is almost as if a trainee teacher has to emerge from their period of training fully equipped for every eventuality that they will encounter, at least in their early career. It is important to view ITE as just that, an initial period of training. This has to be continued through a teacher’s career, with independent self-developing behaviours supported by schools.

From the list above, apart from certain elements of working with parents and generic national Curriculum directed subject knowledge, there is every likelihood that other aspects will be different in systematic terms in every school. The variability of the training context is likely to result in very different experiences for trainees.

It is the fact that every school is subtly, or sometimes significantly, different that has caused me to reflect on the role of the school and the professional mentor as a major factor in a trainee’s success or otherwise.

Today’s mentor is more likely to be an in-house tutor than just an experienced teacher with the skills to model good practice to an observer, but selected by the head as “their turn” to have a student. Most ITE providers offer training to mentors, including to Masters’ level. They need to be able to coach the trainee in every aspect of development as a professional teacher, ensuring that every one of the teacher standards is embedded into the teacher-to-be in a form that enables them to reflect and refine their practice in ways that benefit the children.

Where trainees struggle, it is usually because the mentor, often a member of SLT, or with specific responsibilities in a school, is pulled to other roles during a school experience, so that the trainee receives too little modelling of practice, support and guidance as well as challenge and reflective dialogue. While it is a truism, regularly expressed by trainees, that they valued the time when the mentor left the room, the need for in-lesson and post-lesson coaching discussions cannot be over-stressed.

There is also the question of the general context. Schools volunteer to take trainees and, as long as they have no significant weaknesses, universities often then place a trainee. From time to time, this does not work, so a trainee is moved. 

The school SENCo may, or may not, not be experienced, and have undergone SENCo training, so that the internal systems may not always be sufficiently mature to allow the trainee to anticipate significant support.

From the training provider, the ITE trainee receives a variation on the following thinking toolkit as a starting point.

1)      An understanding of child development across the subject range and abilities within the school setting; Primary age 4-11. This is the bedrock of all decisions, impacting on all classroom practices. This is summarised in two blogs.
24652 revisited
Build a Teacher; Structuralist to holistic

Teacher standard 2; progress and outcomes. Standard 4; planning. Standard 6; assessment. Standard 5; adaptation to evident need. The developmental continuum 24652 may well show up anomalies from specific children. These are the points for analysis and further refinement of challenge supporting investigation.

It is an area where significant collaborative work would be beneficial to teachers at every stage in their development. A very good understanding of the potential range of capabilities and an ability to frame expectations of the children in a specific year group or class is central to offering challenge and the potential for progress.

2)      An understanding of approaches to behaviour management and an ability to accommodate to the contextual demands of that school’s specific approach.
Behaviour management and ITE

3)      Understanding the SEND regulations, as per the 2014 framework.
The 2014 SEN framework

4)      An understanding that some children in any classroom will display individual needs that are outside the general range of class needs, or perhaps specific to a subject or context.
Individual needs
Individual needs; fine tuning

5)      They need to understand the need to keep careful records that may ultimately build into a case study that will add value to an application for additional support.
SEN Radio?
SEND Building an individual case study.

6)      And all this within a team ethic that starts with teacher, parent and child, extends to the broader school expertise, then supplemented with external expertise. Understanding a graduated approach.
SEND Tic-Tac-Toe

7)      Having a set of descriptors of learning and social behaviours and outcomes that might, over time suggest a pattern of need that can ultimately be categorised by an external expert, following the creation of a case study.
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The school offers the real life opportunity to put this background thinking into practice. Trainee inexperience can mean an extended period of getting to know the nuances of the school system, which can be compromised by lack of shared time with an experienced mentor, or SENCo. The structural elements have to be considered within the whole. Systems understanding is an essential precursor to more holistic elements.

As an experienced Link Tutor, I am always concerned, after a couple of weeks of the school experience to unpick how well the trainee knows the children, as a class and as individuals. A level of security suggests that the practice will progress positively, as the trainee is beginning to show holistic thinking. Those still seeking to put the structures together cause more concern.

Colleagues at Winchester University have developed a ten week module for SEND that is a significant part of year 3 of the undergraduate course. This covers the above and also specifics of different identified needs. This module occurs directly before the final school experience, during which the trainee has to create a case study of one child chose with the support of the mentor and SENCo.

Learning needs are explored and described using a variety of criteria; social backgrounds unpicked with staff (teacher, SENCo, ELSA-emotional literacy support assistant) and parents through interview; discussions with children, where appropriate, underpin descriptors. Trainees have to seek to understand the needs of one child in detail. At the same time, they need to be acutely aware of the range of other needs in the class. This is particularly the case when trainees choose to do their final school experience in a special school environment.

Issues will always arise and can happen to anyone: -

Teacher standards 8, 7&1

Poor understanding of systems; schools are rapidly becoming single entities. Transfer between schools or changing year group within a school can cause concern. Dialogue and mentoring may be needed in self-organisation based on school systems, or sharing of information between colleagues, to enable deeper understanding of a child’s personal needs.
Class behaviour; understanding the school system, interpreting it into the practice of the class, ensuring that it is followed efficiently, and followed through where this is necessary. Involving senior colleagues as needed. Running a good classroom is key to every aspect of learner success.
Professional Relationships; getting on with colleagues, at all levels, is sometimes taken for granted. It’s easy to take this to an extreme and cause a tension, which can easily become exaggerated. Sometimes needs a quiet word, or, in severe situations, SLT intervention. Parent relations is a skill that is refined through experience, but there can occasionally be parents whose approach can be more challenging. Understanding is a key element of professionalism.  

Teacher standards 3 & 4

Being ordered and organised would seem to be needed as second nature in teachers, but cannot be taken for granted. Planning over different time-scales, resourcing appropriately, deploying available staff to predetermined need, are fundamental.
Subject knowledge appropriate to the needs of age and ability range of the children can be a variable, especially in Primary education, where the individual interest and expertise may vary considerably, but needs to be addressed.

Teacher standard 6&5

Responsive, analytical skill and the ability to adapt to evident need can be some of the last skills to be refined. It may well be evident between lessons, based on the relatively simple view of “They got it, or not; what’s next?” It is the in-lesson interactions, coaching, guidance and timely feedback, with, for some children a tweak down or up in the challenge to enable them to underscore some or additional progress.

Teacher standard 2
Progress and outcomes may be the last on this list, but it is the spine of every decision that a teacher makes. Going back to the 24652 dynamic, standard 2 is likely to encompass the teacher expectations, which, in turn, drives challenge, interaction and then expected outcome.

Getting teaching and learning right is a multi-layered and multifaceted reflective process. It is dynamic and ever-changing, permanently challenging.
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Trainees need to start this process in training, then keep reflecting, with colleague dialogue and support, to refine their thinking, organisation and professional decision-making.

Dean Beadle managed to put much of the previous hour into context, by being himself. What you see is what you get. I had no preconceived idea about Dean. His bio shares his Asperger’s Syndrome, with details of his many accomplishments since leaving education. It suggested that he was humorous and insightful.

The next 75 minutes passed very much quicker than the first 60.  Dean spoke without notes, without Powerpoint and without any other visual resources. It was a tour de force presentation, which had pathos and humour skilfully interwoven, taking us through his school experiences, which can be described as considerably less than positive, especially at Primary School. His exit from that school was dramatically described, with added ambulance and an Eastenders twist. The problems that he described were largely associated with high anxiety, which led to inappropriate behaviours and speech, which elicited inappropriate responses from teachers unwilling to understand the needs of this “naughty” child. Dean showed how his lack of emotional response through his face often led to teachers believing that he was calm, when in fact he was in turmoil. He pointed out that some “social group” situations, set up by schools, with the best of intentions, to enable socialisation, actually heightened his social phobias, rather than addressing underlying issues. The reason was simple. Teachers talked about him, not with him, so based decisions n assumptions. It was when a TA became his advocate, coaching, guiding and prompting behaviours, within a framework of trust, that he began to make more sense of social norms and the system within which he found himself.

It was a pity that there was not time for further discussion afterwards.

Shay McConnon, special education teacher, psychologist, author, speaker and magician, shared his insights into what makes a good team and team member. He was challenging and amusing, with a dollop of magic to emphasise his points. There was a significant focus on the needs of an individual within the team, which, for me, began to work against the premise of a school being a collective endeavour, with a wide variety of staff roles that support the system and external forces which come into play in different ways, with parents, community, Governors and external authorities all impacting in different ways.  

One to one relationships can have a significantly different purpose from the same people in roles allocated by their institution, with differential status or responsibilities complicating the relationship beyond simple friendships. Working as a team exposes some members to situations that they find uncomfortable as they feel challenged by (the needs of) others, in order to accomplish tasks set by the institution.

While different members of the teams were described as bue, red or green, according to their essential temperament, as a former Head, I kept thiking that, in order to run an effective collegiate team, I had to understand, the mindset of each team member, if I was to get the best out of them; knowing the people is a key.

Understanding mindsets was the key to the day; the individuals who make up teams, the children who make up out classes and schools, the parents who put their trust in the school, the oficers who make decisions about children’s lives.

The weakness, if there was one, was in the use of the word INCLUSION. This term was used from around 1997, to acknowledge (encourage) deeper integration of children with SEN into mainstream schools. It could, cynically, be seen as a political ploy, to change perceptions.

Where schools had significant populations of children with SEN or other individual needs, the professional capital built up within institutions and individual teachers was great and the “Every Child Matters” agenda was enabled to be successful. Working with Inclusion Quality Mark and Leading Parent Partnership Awards, I was able to see and interrogate this in action in a wide spectrum of schools.

Where it meant that one or two children were to be somehow accommodated within a school, the lack of professional capital often put tremendous strain on a single teacher, and sometimes on a broader spectrum of people. They didn’t have the capacity to deal with identifiable issues.

Over my ten years with IQM, it became clear that inclusion worked where the definition covered all groups of children and struggled where there were few. The latter occasionally enabled teachers to claim that a child didn’t fit. This had to be interogated to find out whether the child had exhausted the school skill-set, or whether they had somehow “got under someone’s skin”.

Inclusion is a holistic philosophy, supported by significant organisation that is responsive to evident needs, through investigation, clarity of description, analysis, planning and follow through, including evaluation.  
Inclusion in reality, is described within the teacher standards; essentially it’s just doing your job really well, for all children.

However, it is getting harder for schools, especially within Government frameworks which describe children at specific points as being “at national standard”. A large number of children with SEN will NEVER be “at national standard”, so will be permanently vulnerable within their education.

The system, at a national level, far from safeguarding these educationally vulnerable children, may actually have created a system that makes them even more vulnerable, by classing all without an EHCP as effectively within some “normal” band; an ever decreasing circle of anxiety and feeling of failure, that is not understood.

The system is clearly not yet sufficiently robust to identify and support the individualised needs of those with the most challenging need. Nor yet to ensure that those who “fall behind” in one year, have sufficient additional help to make up the difference. Mantras don’t make a difference; bridging gaps and diminishing difference trip off the tongue, but don’t actually unpick o address the needs.  

There are times when teachers just have to teach the individual child in front of them. That’s the fulfilment of inclusion, when every child’s individual needs can be met within the school that they attend, but with system safety nets that provide adequate external expertise to support the teachers. It may occasionally mean transfer to a school with specific expertise, but that’s a sign of an inclusive system.
​
We can’t yet describe the system as holistic and inclusive and we may never get there in a fragmenting system, where mainstream schools are fighting for survival based on their educational outcomes “at national level”. It seems like a self-defeating philosophy.   

After a couple of weeks back in class, with new children, one or two may be causing some concern, in aspects of learning. It is important that every class teacher and additional adult recognises their place as front line eyes and ears of T&L need.

Changes to the organisation of SEND provision have been in train for the past few years, during which time I have blogged, as I have come across useful information. These blogs are archived within the contents list of my blog, but I will refer to aspects to provide an introduction. This post is summarised from a broader reflection in http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/practical-send
In this post, I am not looking to describe the range of individual needs that might be encountered. There are many expert colleagues who are much more able to offer insights into the specifics of individualised SEN(D). I have focused on issues as they affect mainstream school teachers, which can be summarised as developing a coherent, investigative approach that can fit with normal classroom practice, which is premised on the need to look, to reflect and record concerns to inform deeper conversations.
SEN is an area of teaching and learning where teacher expertise may be challenged. This, in itself, is an indicator of potential need, but, for a teacher, can create a feeling of vulnerability. There is always the possibility of meeting a child whose needs fall outside previous experience; the truism that “you’ve met one child with autism, so you’ve met one child with autism” can exemplify many areas of SEN.
On entry into the formal learning situation, the staff eyes and ears should be alert to issues, noting down things that are said and done, to ensure that future reflections can be based on pattern finding or evidence across a range of issues. Evidence finding is the bread and butter of teacher life, in terms of interactions, questioning, feedback, support and outcomes.
General statements like, “x cannot read”, are unhelpful to discussion. Investigating and sharing specifically what a child can and cannot do can lead to focused intervention, rather than general approaches.  Leaving a child in a situation where they are clearly failing, are seen to be failing and knowing that this is the case, is destructive to the child and to the teacher. Acknowledging specific issues and seeking the specific means to address the issues demonstrates a positive, professional approach.
There is no doubt that, when a teacher encounters a child who does not fit the “normal mould” that they are used to, that they may experience unease. Once a child enters school, it is unlikely that concerns about potential special needs will be unknown, raised by parents or professionals, which hopefully have been followed up and investigated, so that, by the time a teacher encounters the child there may already be records with substantial supportive information available.
The journey to SEN decisions is likely to be a phased affair, especially with regard to learning issues and possibly over an extended timescale for many children, much to the frustration of parents and teachers.
“Getting a handle” on the problem can be a case of investigation leading to diagnosis, prescription and deciding on courses of action.
It is really important that teachers and other adults in class note down their concerns, from their earliest awareness, so that timely discussion with professional colleagues can distil patterns, suggest alternative courses of action and also avoid delay should there be a need to refer to an external form of support, eg the school Educational Psychologist (EP). Unless there is a track record of concern, the EP may well request that the classteacher undertakes activities that have already been tried, but the outcomes not recorded. This can add to delays in addressing key issues.
Action is also embedded in classroom relationships and these need to be carefully considered. Children know where they are in comparison with their peers. They can judge for themselves those who can and can also highlight that they can’t achieve, across a wide range of subjects. This can lead to self-esteem issues, to go along with their understanding of a learning struggle. Children know when they are being given easier things to do, so presenting appropriately challenging activities is important.
Allocating a teaching assistant to an issue can create a mutually dependent relationship, with a child’s independence and decision making capacity being limited by constant adult support. It needs careful oversight and review.
The children with the greatest need, by definition, need the best teaching. The classteacher must teach the group or individuals, to deepen their understanding of the child(ren)’s needs.
Where this is the case, reference to teachers of earlier years can provide pedagogical and practical advice. In many ways, teaching standard 2, progress and outcomes, is THE key standard to support teacher understanding. What is the anticipated learning journey of children from early years through to year 6? While this is never linear, concerns about a child’s learning is likely to be judged against such an expectation.
The crib sheet at the header might support some record collection and prepare the ground for discussion.

Exemplar Primary, Exemplartown.
Set within a very built up, deprived area of Exemplartown, Exemplar Primary School is an oasis of calm and purpose which has a significant impact on the lives of the children and families, from two years of age.

I can only hope to capture the essence of the school in this report, based, as it is, on one day in the school.
Exemplar Primary School can rightly see itself as a beacon of excellence in Inclusion working within a broad local group that is working collaboratively to improve opportunities across the area.

The school has a very clear vision, articulated by the head and visible throughout the school, especially within very high quality displays but also through conversation, plans and other visual evidence. The term “Team around the child (TAC)” can be used to summarise the staff approach to the individual needs of the children. The school creates informal, internal TACs to oversee the well-being and educational needs of vulnerable individuals. Parents are fully involved within this process.

The following poem is offered as a summary.
Unity
(author unknown)
I dreamed I stood in a studio and watched two sculptors there,
The clay they used was a young child’s mind and they fashioned it with care.
One was a teacher: the tools she used were books and music and art;
One was a parent with a guiding hand and gentle loving heart.
And when at last their work was done, they were proud of what they had wrought.
For the things they had worked into the child could never be sold or bought!
And each agreed she would have failed if she had worked alone.
For behind the parent stood the school and behind the teacher the home!

Care for children and their backgrounds underpins the Exemplar Primary ethos and exemplifies a fully inclusive approach:-

• Seeks maximum academic success for all children
• Is focussed on the pursuit of outstanding teaching and learning
• Is focussed in the interest of relationships for learning
• Understands and cares for each individual
• Is a loving, fun and humane school
• Works with parents and children to raise standards and achieve excellence

I would want to recognise the substantial volume of work undertaken by the Inclusion coordinator, supported fully by staff at all levels, in collating such a wealth of information available before the visit, that was thorough, interesting, informative and gave a rounded view of the school.  Many thanks too, to the different people, staff, Governors and parents who came to share their views during the assessment visit. I’d particularly like to thank the children for their welcome. They were a credit to the school.

The school building is bright, well lit, well equipped and well maintained with main teaching areas and separate withdrawal rooms. There are well used connecting corridors. The building is significantly enhanced by very high quality displays showcasing children’s activities. The children treat the school with respect, enjoying the facilities on offer. They move around the site sensibly.

The children, parents, Governors and staff were very welcoming, positive and ensured that openness and honesty were significant features of the visit.

The vision of the Head teacher, and the Senior Leadership Team is demonstrated throughout the school, as evidenced through the conversations with the school partners, staff at different levels, parents, Governors and children. The vision is enacted by staff who articulate and model expectations, treating adults and children with equal respect, ensuring that the ethos is enabled to grow. Children respond accordingly, evidenced through the classroom visits at different times of the day. The processes which embed the philosophy are developed, modelled and described to ensure that there is clarity across all staff groups. Aspiration is also tempered by realism; possibilities are generated, then careful choice is made. Action is monitored and evaluated. Exemplar Primary School is a reflective school.

The over-riding impression given by Exemplar Primary School is of a school that has an understanding of what it wants to provide to enhance the learning experience for children. There is an energy and enthusiasm within the school which is clearly visible in the attitudes and behaviour of the children. There is a values-based ethos, based on openness, honesty and humanity, which ensures that the Inclusion agenda is assured. It is enhanced by the Rights, Respects and Responsibilities approach, helping the children to articulate their place in the school. 

There is very clear leadership, with a number of key staff working together as the SLT, through which developments are shared, enhanced, tested in practice and reviewed to assess impact. As a result the school benefits from the drive and enthusiasm of a supportive management group, which is communicated through the children. Around these hubs is a group of fully engaged, interested and energetic staff, whose voices are being enabled to be heard, but also valued by decision-makers, who encourage thinking and engagement to ensure that all decisions are based on the most secure information. Within this organisation too, individuals are mentored, supported and developed through structured in-house and external CPD.

The school policy for teaching and learning can be described as a dynamic continuum, based within clear themes.

There is developing evidence of:-
1) Analysis of evidence leading to quality information being made available to support
2) detailed planning, including the provision of appropriate resources and staffing.
3) Children in the best practise, actively sharing in their learning journey, which is
4) tracked and reviewed at regular intervals with
5) records being collated and disseminated, allowing the process to be cyclic and developmental.

The school is one where continuous development as a result of self-assessment is an essential element of all processes, ably led by senior managers. Systems are being strengthened as a result of testing and adaptation to need. This process is evolutionary.

Children and their learning is at the heart of whole-school development, with significant work being undertaken to ensure that personalised approaches to learning are a reality for vulnerable children, with a differential approach to the aspiration for all learners. Learning is tracked throughout a child’s schooling. Systems are in place that will ensure that quality information derived from attainment data will be available to teachers to support target setting.

The children are a credit to the school. They were invariably polite, happy to engage in discussion of their own learning and their experiences through their time at the school, although a few found discussion more of a challenge. They are partners in the running of the school, some being given responsibility through a variety of means.

There is significant evidence of good practice in Inclusion, across all categories of need. Inclusion is evident in every aspect of school life, ensuring that Every Child Matters and, as an extension, that every person associated with the school is also fully valued.

The Governing body is a strong element of the development agenda, ensuring that the school is more able to articulate strong reasoning for improvements and initiatives before committing funding. There are a number of active members, with broad expertise which is made available to benefit the school.

Parents express their pleasure at having their children at the school and endorse the view that the school is open, honest and welcoming, to their children and them as parents.

Kahlil Gibran:      Teaching:

Then said a teacher, "Speak to us of Teaching." And he said:
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of our knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.
The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.
And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither.
For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.
And even as each one of you stands alone in God's knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.

Significant strengths:-

• Open, honest and humane approach to the needs of the whole school community.
• Very self-aware, through review, quality assurance and good knowledge of school data.
• Planning being developed at different levels.
• Enthusiastic, supportive staff progressing the learning agenda.
• Motivated pupils.
• Parents, Governors and outside agencies able to provide broader support, but also appropriate challenge.
• A community where everyone’s personal and learning needs matter.

The level of discussion throughout the visit was of a high quality, with staff prepared to engage in discussion and debate. This openness is to be applauded as it allowed trains of questioning and a depth of thinking to emerge, which might support future developments. It is clear that teaching and learning are at the heart of the school thinking.

Area for reflection.

While there was evidence of differential challenge from teachers in lessons especially in English and maths, there was less clear evidence from children that they could articulate what they were seeking to improve in their learning.  It would be worth reviewing the detail of differential challenge across the ability range, where there is potential for less clear articulation of expectation, which in turn might lead to slightly reduced performance by significant class members. See the discussion topic below.
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Consider the impact of peer to peer learning dynamics as a model of what is possible, especially the impact within setting, where a narrower ability range might limit visualisation of what is really possible, especially for less able learners.
 

Over the past couple of years, on Twitter, there have been many conversations about Inclusion and whether it is desirable or achievable.

The introduction of the new version of the National Curriculum, with a year group based scheme of work has sometimes seemed to bring the whole into one simple argument. While some argue that it demonstrates “high expectations” and suggest that “they” hold such expectations, others begin to argue that, where some children are failing to keep up with their peers that somehow they should be “elsewhere”. Any alternative argument is met with an accusation of “dumbing down”, or some other put down.

In the early days of the drafting of the NC, I was worried by the emergence of the term “mastery”, because this connotation could be equated to a proportion of more able children, whose needs might be argued as better met in a separate establishment; Grammar Schools keep hitting the headlines.

There is also the idea of a National Standard, that has been notionally set by the Government that, on a simple reading of the National Curriculum suggests that all children should “know and understand” the contents of the scheme of work. So it is arguable that where a child “knows and understands” less than 100% of the scheme of work, that there are gaps that will affect their future progress. Can we really get to a stage where 100% of children in a year group will achieve 100% in any test situation? Therefore, by definition, there will be a proportion of children who will be deemed not to have achieved. These children are likely to largely be those whose learning is less secure and may also have some kind of Specific Learning Difficulty that underlies this.

Anyone who has regularly read my blog will know that I have raised concerns about those children who will be judged to not be on track to achieve at the cohort expectation, especially when they get to transfer age, at 7 or 11, or to use and adjust a phrase used prior to 2015, “Secondary ready”, which could then be extrapolated to “Junior ready”.
Rather than worrying about the potential for creaming off the top, I am beginning to be more exercised by the potential for the argument that certain children “do not belong” in mainstream education.

This, to me, is being exacerbated by a developing narrative of Inclusion as being synonymous with integration of SEN, rather than the idea of catering for the needs of all children. It is then easier for some to start to articulate “otherness” and “not fitting”.

If there has been systematic, forensic internal analysis of individual needs, plans put in place that have had limited impact, despite best efforts from appropriate staff, advice sought from external expertise that has also been implemented, then a case study might be drawn up that seems to support alternative needs.

However, a class teacher may express the view that X “doesn’t belong” because they do not have the expertise to address the evident needs. Limited teacher expertise, understanding or tolerance, does not make a child into a special need case. So quality of teaching has to be taken onto account. Negativity towards the learner, once expressed, cannot be taken back and this rupture can become the real cause of the need to move the learner. If an internal move is possible, it is to be hoped that this will not be with a label that colours the receiving teacher view, or it becomes a negative cycle with it’s own dynamics.

It has, for many teachers, become more difficult to fully define individual learning needs within the current NC, with systems deeming children to be “emerging”, until they have completed the curriculum to be delivered. As this is likely to be in the summer term, there needs to be a greater clarity about ongoing security with the essential learning. The system could have an inbuilt delay in intervention.

Inclusion is just doing your job well, for each and every child in the class and the school. Systems should be in place that identify the vulnerable learners and those who are potentially vulnerable, as an aspect of ongoing assessment activities. The notion of TIC, TAC, TOE should guide decisions as concerns deepen (team including the child, around the child, of experts), with teachers knowing the level of concern, interventions planned and ongoing outcomes from these interventions, so that expectations are coordinated across all aspects of a child’s learning.
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In the absence of any other methodology, here’s a crib sheet of SEN categories with some possible identifiers.

It is quite likely that a teacher will meet a child, or children, who test their ability to adapt and cater for their needs. To discuss the needs with a knowledgeable other is professional, not to do so, then to suggest that a child is wrongly placed, without a developed history, is bordering on unprofessional, in my opinion.
At an extreme, I am reminded of a radio programme that I listened to while travelling from an ITE observation, which was the story of Albert Goering, the brother of Herman, "The Good Goering". The term “unter-menchen” came up in discussion about the removal of those who didn’t fit.

Is it possible that the fate of children with Special Needs or Specific Learning Difficulties will be described as “not fitting” and to be removed to another place, thereby bringing back into reality the idea of an under-being? Of course, when one is removed, another takes their place at the “bottom of the class”, or as a higher concern. Becomes cyclic.

Unintended consequences?

​Better to build teacher expertise so that individuals, and the school can deal better with needs.
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Inclusion ethos; everyone has value in and for themselves. Every child matters (and always has)

The past 24 hours have seen many hours spent in “discussing” the idea of inclusion. While there may be personal grounds to take a view at either pole of the debate, the reality is that children come to school and, once there, are entitled to receive the best that can be offered. This starts with the classteacher, who may find that the specific needs of a child are outside their experience. This is not uncommon.

Special needs come in all shapes and sizes, with a disparate range of needs. The skills that were developed in dealing with the issues of one child may not be transferrable exactly to another. It is therefore incumbent on each teacher to get to know the children as well as possible, to tailor challenge to the evident needs and to monitor very carefully the outcomes, as the journey constitutes the internal case study that may be needed as evidence of a specific special need.

While engaging with the Twitter chat this morning, my mind recalled a number of children with whom I have had the significant pleasure of spending time.

There was V, who was already in the school when I became a head. V was the most delightful child, full of life, always a ready smile, a befriender, especially of younger children during playtime, a real striver, whose have a go attitude was infectious. She had innumerable friends. V’s mum had taken thalidomide during pregnancy, so V was born without legs and one arm. Despite this, she got on with things, including the putting on and taking off of her prosthetic legs, or organising her wheelchair. It was often humbling to see how much extra effort she had to make just to get though each day. This had an inevitable impact on the children in her class and across the school as a whole.

I will never forget the school sports day where V was determined to take as full a part as possible. The skipping race was the highlight, as she “skipped”, with a friend each side turning the rope, while she “ran” without her prosthetics. There were many tears of joy at her success. It was inevitable that, when it came to the end of year celebrations, that the “contribution to school life” prize would go to V, simply for her example. This was grit, resilience, character and growth mindset, 1990 style.

R came to school as a Reception child, shy, retiring and not overactive in his approach. He would avoid physical activity at all costs, which was worrying, in itself. He was one of those children, who, very early, are on your “watch” list. It was during a visit by the school OT that I took her into the school hall, which coincided with Reception doing a PE lesson. She didn’t need R to be pointed out, as she turned pale and took me outside for a chat, concerned that there were undiagnosed underlying issues. A very painful few weeks ensued as hurried reference was made to medical services, several meetings with parents keeping each other in touch with developments and the final diagnosis of muscular dystrophy. R stayed with us for a few more years, first with the aid of crutches and then with a wheelchair, but, eventually, his physical needs moved to a point where it was clear that alternative provision was the better option. Visiting him there a year later, it was evident that this was the right decision. Sadly R died a couple of years after that. With a step brother and a cousin in school we were kept in touch with the news.

M was an excellent artist, could draw anything, from life and from imagination but M couldn’t make any sense of language. He could apparently speak well enough, albeit with a slightly limited vocabulary, but it became noticeable that he could not sustain an idea over several “sentences”. Working with the advisor for language, we were able to unpick aspects of his needs, so he was able to read, at a low level. His working memory was poor, so that needed some support and his comprehension, as an ability to make sense of what he had heard or read seemed to diminish, especially when linked to memory. He was living in a strange parallel world. We were able to use his artistic skill to advantage in creating storyboards from which he was encouraged to create oral stories that would be transcribed and turned into personal reading books. In the end, however, despite deploying every available resource and source of expertise available to us, the application for a statement was successful and, with a diagnosis of language disorder, M went to a specialist provision, where there was 1:1 teacher expertise available every day.

Each of these children, chosen to represent the many who passed through the school with individual needs, offered something in return. The ability to deal with physical or learning needs within the staff was enhanced with each child identified with a possible issue. This investigative capability, building within individual teachers and the school as a whole, enabled strengthened systems to be developed that supported others with lesser needs. Underpinning all this were very good relationships and communication, with no feeling of criticism if there was a need to discuss one’s personal needs as a teacher.

It can be the case that SEN issues push the limits of the organisation, on a personal and an organisational level. If external expertise is available and can be harnessed, the expertise can be grown through experience. There is a significant need to ensure record keeping of the highest quality, especially where there are concerns, as the primary need is to establish an internal case study to underpin discussions with external experts. These records can be premised on the questions that teachers have asked, then sought to follow up; analyse, plan, do, review, record is a useful simple mantra.

It is, however, really important to remember that you are dealing with the person first and foremost, with the need being a constituent part to be addressed, not the whole. It means knowing each child well, as a rounded individual, to avoid them becoming a “problem” child. The problem may be the teacher lack of expertise or experience, which has to be addressed first. There are also very concerned parents, who may be very fearful about what the future holds for their child. All factors have to be carefully considered.

Children may be similar, but they are not necessarily the same. SEN or individual issues provide a very good learning opportunity for teachers. Becoming a good investigator is a very good first step.

Inclusion is just doing your job
The 2014 SEN framework
SEN changes for 2014
Top Tips for Inclusion
SEND 2014; possible class teacher Crib sheet.
When is SEND?
Individual needs
Individual needs; fine tuning
SEN Radio?
SEND Building an individual case study.
SEND Tic-Tac-Toe
SEND Teachers as investigators
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Special Educational Needs (Disability) appears with regularity in my Twitter timeline, with, on one side, teachers saying how little training they have had to deal with that issue, as if it is a significantly separate aspect of teaching and on the other, those with some specialist background, in whose laps many of the problems are placed.

Changes to the organisation of SEND provision have been in train for the past few years, during which time I have blogged, as I have come across useful information. These blogs are archived within the contents list of the blog, but I have extracted (some of) them to make what I hope is a more holistic document here.

I have focused on issues as they affect mainstream school teachers. I have sought to develop a coherent, investigative approach that can fit with normal classroom practice, largely premised on the need to look, to reflect and record concerns to inform deeper conversations. I am not looking to describe the range of individual needs that might be encountered. There are many expert colleagues who are much more able to offer insights into the specifics of individualised SEN(D).

SEN is the area of teaching and learning where teacher expertise may be challenged. This, in itself, is an indicator of potential need, but, for a teacher, can create a feeling of vulnerability. There is always the possibility of meeting a child whose needs fall outside previous experience; the truism that “you’ve met one child with autism, so you’ve met one child with autism” can exemplify many areas of SEN. General statements like, “x cannot read”, are unhelpful to discussion. Investigating and sharing specifically what a child can and cannot do can lead to focused intervention, rather than general approaches.  Leaving a child in a situation where they are clearly failing, are seen to be failing and know that this is the case, is destructive to the teacher and the child. Acknowledging specific issues and finding the specific means to address the issues demonstrates a positive approach for everyone to acknowledge.

There is no doubt that, when a teacher encounters a child who does not fit the “normal mould” that they are used to, that they may experience unease. However, although it is possible for changes to occur later in life, as a result of illness, or a degenerative situation that suddenly becomes apparent, it is unlikely that special needs will be unknown to some extent, relatively early in a child’s life, at home and (pre)school. Concerns will have been raised, by parents or professionals, which hopefully have been followed up and investigated, so that, by the time a child enters school there may already be substantial information available.

Inclusion is just doing your job
Inclusion is seeking to effectively teach each and every child who enters your classroom. They will be known from earlier records, from preschool and parents on entry to school. Therefore, from the early stages of their education journey, teachers can analyse, prepare and begin to plan what they think are appropriate challenges and support structures for known cases. Plans should be adaptable to developing needs with challenge and support altered to evidence. I would amplify the word challenge, as it is easy to fall into the trap of considering needs to be lower level than reality.  

On entry into the formal learning situation, the staff eyes and ears are alert to issues, noting down things that are said and done, to ensure that future reflections can be based on pattern finding or evidence across a range of issues. Evidence finding is the bread and butter of teacher life, in terms of interactions, questioning, feedback, support and outcomes.

This was summarised in a pair of posts; SEND Tic-Tac-Toe  (team including the child; in class decisions, team around the child; including parent(s) and in-house expertise; Team including external experts) and SEN Radio? (Record of Actions, Discussions and Decisions, Interventions and Outcomes) which propounded the ides of fine tuning to need.
Consolidating this into a case study can support the efforts of external professionals to provide appropriate advice and support. A lack of detailed information ensures that an investigation has to be put in place. SEND Teachers as investigators

In order to support classteacher thinking, especially about the details of some aspects of SEND, I pulled together a crib-sheet, SEND 2014; possible class teacher Crib sheet.
which proved popular, as a start point for planning, thinking and record keeping.
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The journey to SEN decisions is likely to be a phased affair, especially with regard to learning issues and possibly over an extended timescale for many children, much to the frustration of parents and teachers. “Getting a handle” on the problem can be a case of investigation leading to diagnosis, prescription and checking out the potential for “recovery”.

Unlike taking tablets, remediation is also embedded in relationships and these need to be carefully considered. Children know where they are in comparison with their peers. They can judge for themselves those who can and can also highlight that they can’t, across a wide range of subjects. This can lead to diminished self-esteem, to go along with the understanding of a learning struggle. They know when they are being given easier things to do, so presenting challenge with a clear rationale is important.

Allocating a teaching assistant can create a mutually dependent relationship, with a child’s independence being limited by constant adult support. Equally, the TA role can be dependent on the child’s continuing needs. It need careful oversight and review.

The child needs can challenge the teacher expertise, especially in the earlier stages of their career, where they may not have had wide experience across several year groups, so can understand where the child is on the development spectrum. Where this is the case, reference to teachers of earlier years can provide pedagogical and practical advice. In many ways, teaching standard 2, progress and outcomes, is THE key standard to support teacher understanding. What is the “normal” learning journey of children from early years through to year 6? Ok, I know this will never be linear, but there are developmental patterns which describe the possible jumps through aspects of the curriculum. Unpicking what progress “might be like”, gives a background to raising concerns.

Keeping a track of all the different needs of children is currently significant, within the change National Curriculum, where cohort expectations have been articulated, with “labels” that will be allocated at the end of Key Stages that suggest that a child may not be at the expected standard, a euphemism for possible SEN. There is a need to ensure cohort coverage while at the same time looking at the areas where individuals might not be quite at the level required.
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I would propose the use of Exercise books as personal organisers? as a means of keeping track of the two aspects, where lesson by lesson progress through the curriculum is evidenced, but flip-out sheets record the specifics of individual needs. The whole becomes a personal portfolio, from which year-based portfolios can be developed. They also allow clarity in formative and summative assessment, as well as reporting, because the evidence is available for all viewers.
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Assessment is likely to be a matter of contention for some time to come, as the realities of letting each school decide a system becomes apparent. Ofsted will need to come to terms with a different system on each visit. Secondary schools will receive transfer records from multiple schools, and, more than ever, are likely to put these to one side and retest the children. Transfer between schools will become complex, as systems don’t quite match up, so individual schools will come up with some form of arrival assessment to find equivalence. SEND will be affected, as any transfer between special education and mainstream will be affected in this way. Records may be less than useful. SEND will also be affected where a school seeks an EHCP assessment, where the rigour and accuracy of the internal record may be a factor in the decisions. Putting significant responsibility onto classroom teachers with regard to SEND without ensuring the quality of skill in decision making also potentially embeds another layer of issue.
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The biggest issue is that the system is not holistic, and as a result, contains holes, through which potentially vulnerable learners might fall, not necessarily at school level, but through misunderstandings; the law of unintended consequences.
Assessment, to me, is the biggest bodge/botch job of all, in that a National system was cast aside, ostensibly because it was misused for data and because “parents didn’t understand it”. In reading the first draft of the proposed National Curriculum replacement document with the attainment target statement to essentially know and understand the contents of the curriculum, suggested, when assessment was hived off for schools to make decisions, that it had been done so in order that the curriculum could stand as read. So, however it is dressed up, in effect, children either achieve or not, with different “levels” of achievement, as a scaled score or in words. As this is based on an examination outcome, there is still room for children to have gaps in their learning, as long as they get a pass score.
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