Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress
International
Special Education Conference
Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity?
1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland
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Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland |
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Dr Christine Rogers
Centre for Family Research
Faculty of Social and Political Sciences
University of Cambridge
Free School Lane
Cambridge, CB2 3RF
There are a quarter of a million pupils who have a statement of SEN, and there are nearly 1,200,000 children who are identified with SEN (DfES: 2004a, DfES: 2004c). Of those with statements of SEN 60.3 per cent were placed in maintained mainstream nursery, primary or secondary schools and 36.7 were placed in SEN schools (maintained, non maintained and PRUs), (DfES: 2004b). That is still only a little over half of all children with statements of SEN in mainstream education which reflects findings in this study, that currently mainstream schools are not necessarily the most appropriate place for pupils with significant SEN. This paper has emerged from my small scale doctoral research with parents who have children identified with special educational needs (SEN) and specifically focuses on the parental experiences of ‘inclusive’ mainstream education and/or ‘special’ education.
Expectation of mainstream education can have a negative affect on parents when the impaired child is unable to access it, or indeed the child is unable to maintain his or her education within the mainstream school. ‘Inclusion’ within mainstream schools is implemented by the current government and promoted as an anti-exclusionary policy. However, current research is already indicating that actual ‘inclusion’ (the child experiencing inclusion as well as being placed in a mainstream environment) is not necessarily occurring in practice, see Allen (1999) and Benjamin (2002). Furthermore if provision and policies are based on one element of ‘need’ then children’s individual difficulties and therefore ‘needs’ (that includes social as well as educational needs) may not be met. As it stands currently the conflict is between desires to embrace difference based on a philosophy of ‘equal rights’ (‘inclusive’ education) and prioritising educational performance structuring it in such a way that it leaves little room for difference and creativity due to the highly structured testing and examination culture.
All the parents in this research initially expected their child would be educated in a mainstream environment regardless of an impairment, especially those entering the school system after 1997 under New Labour. Education policy and directives suggest all children are considered for mainstream school in the first instance (DfEE: 1996, DfES: 2001b). Different groups of children with varying degrees of abilities all in the same place follow a similar if not the same curriculum. However at a theoretical level this desire to make everyone ‘fit’ within a certain mould creates an ‘illusion’ of an un-fragmented homogenous group. In practice this cannot happen within the current mainstream school system. This section unpacks parents’ hopes and highlights the disappointment in realising mainstream education might be an unrealistic option using case of the parents’ narratives as examples.
Tim
Tim wanted his son, with Down’s syndrome, to go to the local mainstream school. However, after that proved difficult in practice, he thought the next option would be the local school for children with moderate learning difficulties (MLD). Significantly, the MLD school was unable to manage his son’s impairments too so he was then transferred to a local school for children with severe learning difficulties (SLD). Tim told me first about the mainstream primary school.
On that one, to be honest we hadn’t overly invested… it was nice to have a go at it and if it had worked out that would have been great… that was always a long shot and therefore when that didn’t materialise that didn’t really worry us… But we really felt that the headmaster… and to be blunt what you could have said, let’s face it you just couldn’t fucking well be bothered, but you’re not allowed to say that… I mean, in that respect we was pissed off, but that’s only small beer really to be pissed of like that (Tim: 7-8).
So even though Tim would have liked his son to go to the mainstream school and indeed expected his schooling to begin there it was not a complete shock that the placement failed. His son’s second placement in the MLD school was a different matter and as Tim’s son became unhappy there he realised that placement too was inappropriate. Tim was disappointed that the MLD school did not work out, but in fact found his son was better placed in the SLD school. His son was happier there as one of the high achievers within a group of children that had severe learning impairments.
It is quite clear here that the parents do have an expectation for their children to attend mainstream school. However, as suggested above, the expectations of their child being included and accepted into the mainstream school environment may not be in fact the reality of an ‘inclusive’ education system as it currently exists. My data suggests that parents and their impaired children have difficulty with the mainstream environment but other research also confirms that mainstream education can be problematic; see for example, Allen (1999), Benjamin (2002), and Russell (2003a). However, if Richard Rieser, a prominent member of the NUT and head of the Disability and Equality in Education pressure group, was to have his way, all ‘special’ schools would be closed by 2020, otherwise “there could be future generations of kids who will continue to have their lives ruined” (Hilpern, 2004). This study suggests otherwise.
Tracy
Tracy’s oldest is a twin, David, identified with hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and mild cerebral palsy as well as moderate learning impairments. He spent his primary school years in mainstream education and at eleven years old he moved to a school for children with MLD. He then went on to mainstream college at sixteen. Tracy revealed it was a miracle that David survived after the birth. Looking back, she told me, thinking about his education was not on her list of priorities. His health and life expectancy were more important. However, by the time it came to sending her twins to school she did expect they would go to the same local mainstream primary school.
Tracy was told that David could attend his local school, but what was to follow on the first day highlights the sort of shameless prejudice parents can encounter. It was hard enough for Tracy to let her twin boys go off to school for their first day, as it is for many mothers, but it was doubly difficult to ‘let go’ of David whom she had already spent so much of her time caring for, in the hope that she would one day be seeing him off to school. This was the reception she received when she went to pick them up at the end of their first day.
I came back to pick them up at the end of the day and er… as I walked into the playground the teacher went (beckoned) like to me and the headmistress went (beckoned) and I went over to them and she said, ‘into my office please’. I thought they can’t have been naughty like that on the first day! She got me in her office. She said, ‘take a seat. I wasn’t aware I was having a bloody retard in my school’ (she’s curt), … I went mental, absolutely mental… I threw her round the room. I did totally freak out (Tracy: 10).
Tracy continued to explain her actions:
…I built up their enthusiasm about going and I’m as excited for them and I’d missed em and to be going into school to collect them expecting to go in an say hello darlings did you have a good day and I got that! (ibid)
The police were called in and Tracy was arrested and when she told the police what had happened, “they said, ‘well I’d have hit her as well’”. She was cautioned and sent home, but later on an education officer visited her and she was given a full written and verbal apology. Furthermore the head teacher was advised to drop the charges or face disciplinary action. Tracy did not send her children back to that school. Tracy’s twin sons were absent from school for five weeks but then settled into a new mainstream primary.
Unlike Tim, who eventually accepted that his son would go to an SEN school, Tracy began to push for a ‘special’ school placement after realising that her son was not getting the education she thought he needed in the mainstream primary school. Even though she was worried that he might emulate ‘anti-social’ or inappropriate behaviour if he was to attend a ‘special’ school, she decided to appeal to the LEA for an SEN placement. The following example was one of the reasons for her deciding upon this action after attending a parents’ evening and chatting to his teacher.
There was a comment one of the teachers made, ‘oh David’s a lovely boy, we all adore him, he’s so sweet’. …And she said, ‘David found the maths lesson a bit difficult so I sent him outside to cut the heads of the daffodils, the dead heads’. And that was David’s math lesson! That really annoyed me… that’s when I started pushing for him to go to a special school. But he didn’t actually go… they didn’t put him in a special school until he hit seniors (Tracy: 13).
There are a few things going on here, not least the fact that often a child who has learning difficulties but no significant emotional/behavioural difficulties and remains in mainstream school can often be looked upon as ‘lovable’ or ‘cute’ inferring that he or she is different or uneducable in the same way as his or her peers, but liked as a member of the class, bearing in mind this child does not disrupt the class. Una describes this here:
… he (her son) became the school mascot… he was a loveable young man… but the difference between their ability to give him an education that has any meaning, and what he has received since then (in residential SEN schools) could not be more chalk and cheese (Una: 5).
But to be liked is not enough when it comes to the question of the child’s education, welfare and esteem.
Four out of the fifteen children above the age of secondary transition (eleven years old) went from mainstream primary to SEN secondary. Only three of the fifteen have spent their entire time (so far, as some are at the beginning of transition) from eleven – sixteen in mainstream and one of those has gone from mainstream secondary to SEN residential college. What this indicates is that although parents and policy directives may initially lean towards mainstream education for impaired children, the older the child is, the less likely mainstream practices work, based on both the inherent difficulties of teaching large classes, differentiating work and dealing with difficulty.
Experiences within the ‘special’ school
Fourteen out of the thirty children in this study have experienced some kind of specialist education in a separate unit or education site (not including those who went straight from mainstream to residential school). Eleven of those children have attended a ‘special’ school for either moderate or severe learning disabilities. Two have attended language units and one a pupil referral unit (PRU). Karen and Stella have had two different experiences regarding ‘special’ education for their sons. Stella considered herself lucky at ‘discovering’ Nathan’s school for children with MLD. Nathan was born with a ‘brain disorder’ and a possible diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder. Karen on the other hand found the whole experience (including ‘special’ education) frustrating and continued to want mainstream education for Kevin born with Down’s syndrome who also attends a school for children with MLD.
Kevin, Karen’s son has attended two different MLD schools but at the age of nine Karen managed (after a struggle) to get him into a mainstream school for half a day. Kevin was statemented during his first year at primary school although the process began at nursery. He had what Karen called a 0-5 teacher from the LEA who went to her house to teach him. “She was a trained teacher and very very good, you know she’d come for an hour and give you ideas about what she’d want you to do, em… she was very very keen for Kevin to go to mainstream and I wanted him to go to mainstream” (Karen: 11). Stella too had this very positive experience from the 0-5 services and told me,
I had Maggie who was working for the 0-5 service. And she was fantastic ‘cause when she came in… she just came in and supported Nathan in the home and she taught me so much… I’ve learnt… she empowered me! That’s the word isn’t it? No she did, she was fantastic (Stella: 4).
Both these examples clearly indicate that the pre-school services were supportive and well received by both Karen and Stella, and yet neither experienced this level of positive support after school began.
Karen
Karen’s relationship with the first MLD school professionals was fraught to say the least and Kevin was sick most Sunday nights/Monday mornings. As I understand, it is clear that Kevin was trying to communicate to Karen that he really did not want to go to the school, and on reflection Karen too realised that this was his way of communicating, but admitted that she was unable to read those signs at the time. Eventually though, things became so bad that Kevin used to “smack his own bottom and send himself to the corner… he used to get very very cross with his toys”. Karen recalled to me that her son would shout:
‘TALK, TALK, TALK’ [she said this very aggressively]… because he’d stopped talking at school… he’d stopped cooperating… and his mind… if you sat quietly in the corner you know other people would ignore you and you wouldn’t get what was coming to you… (Karen: 15).
Because of her son’s deteriorating behaviour at the school and home the local education authority’s (LEA) educational psychologist had explicitly told Karen that her son would not be able to go to mainstream school even though Karen was still pursuing this. In Kevin’s second year at the MLD primary school she withdrew him and kept him at home as she had serious concerns about his mental and physical health. But she also had to consider her own mental health:
What happens to your child is they become so awful that they’re difficult… they’re too difficult to cope with. And em… I insisted that… one day (Kevin) was so dreadful… and I phone up social services and said ‘you’ll have to take him away now, this minute because I’m going to kill him’. I said ‘I can’t keep all three in separate rooms’, he kept clawing at (her older son’s) face, he kept attacking the baby and em… so they came and got him, and when I went back for him the next day she said ‘Karen (Kevin) is not well! He’s ill’ ‘I know he’s ill but nobody wants to know’ (Karen: 18).
What this clearly suggests is that Karen needed respite from the difficulty of dealing with her family and more specifically her impaired son’s behaviour.
Stella
Stella on the other hand had extremely positive experiences at her son’s MLD school. As mentioned earlier, Stella wanted mainstream education for Nathan but did go and look at two ‘special’ schools. Stella’s experience of Nathan’s MLD school has been very positive:
I was saying to my sister, ‘I don’t think Nathan’s achieving anything in (mainstream) school’ and I realised that I had to consider other options… which is why I’m so passionate about it now… it [special education] wasn’t seen to be a positive option. …I want to say to parents with children who are three and four and five, special needs schools are a positive option (Stella: 8).
For Stella this process of going into SEN education has been a journey of discovering that her child is different from other children who attend mainstream school and that it is not a negative or defeatist experience to accept that difference.
I think it was so hard to be a parent of a child with special needs at that time because you don’t really know what to expect… and it’s emotionally traumatic… you’ve got to think your child’s different… I think that parents… …if their child’s in mainstream school their child’s less different (Stella: 9).
What Stella implies here and later discussed, were issues about ‘inclusion’ and explained, “I think you’d find most parents if you were talking to them would say in an ideal world inclusion sounds jolly right, super and that’s what I wanted for Nathan but then you have to think about realism…”(Stella: 15).
As with Stella, other parents whose children have experienced special schools agree, that although they initially wanted mainstream education for their children, since experiencing their child’s mainstream environment, they have had to reconsider their views on what the current government promote as ‘inclusive education’ as illustrated here:
I mean they were talking about closing down all the special schools and integrating all the special needs children into mainstream… I think that would be a disaster. I think there’s very much a place for special schools (Tracy: 18).
They talk about access, they talk about inclusion, and if your disability is visible then you’re ok… if it can’t be easily seen or easily understood you’re a bit scary, (Babs: 20).
These parents are concerned that ‘inclusive’ education does not work, based on their everyday experiences.
Karen and Stella’s experiences were very different, but those differences illustrate a number of things. Not only is it the child’s impairment that can make the difference with regards to different experiences but the expectations, hopes, desires and wishes that parents take into the relationships with the professionals and others as well as their cultural expectations and personal circumstances. These predictions would be very difficult to cater for at policy level but need to be considered all the same. However, these practical difficulties and emotional responses are messy and often unpredictable. So far in this paper I have uncovered what parents’ expectations are, and their responses to a ‘special’ education process. The following section reveals that mainstream education may not be the most appropriate especially if the impaired child has additional emotional and behavioural difficulties.
Exclusion of the child in mainstream education
This section demonstrates, mainly via Marlene’s story, the problem of exclusion within and from the mainstream school. ‘Inclusive’ education policy and directives, for example DfES (2001a, 2001b) and theory which discusses the celebration of ‘difference’, for example, see Young (1999), are abstract for many of the parents, as they and their child may not experience anything like an integrated ‘inclusive’ education and acceptance. ‘Inclusion’ into mainstream school is not simply about the placement of a child. The child with impairments that present in some kind of anti-social behaviour seem to have a significant chance of exclusion from mainstream school. The child that does not disrupt the teaching regime and sits quietly is often not excluded from the mainstream environment as quickly (if at all), as a child who cannot cope with noise, certain lighting, other children or instructions, for example. With regards to ‘inclusive’ education, Russell in her research on ‘parental expectations’ found negative feelings with regard to looking around schools for their children with disabilities, based on expectations derived from policy directives. One of her mothers said “‘I think they (the teachers) see it as an extra burden to have a statemented child in their class. So how it actually works in practice really concerns me’” (2003b: 148).
Similarly, Benjamin, in her ethnographic research on the ‘micropolitics of inclusive education’, found children with impairments that present with behavioural difficulties, for example autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), can cause conflict for their teachers and the other students within the mainstream school environment, as illustrated here. Josie, a student identified with autism, was in her first year at secondary school and clearly struggling:
Her continued placement was always in doubt: officially because she had not made sufficient progress in terms of her IEP (Individual Education Plan), and unofficially because she was ungovernable and because people’s good will towards someone who enacted her difference in demanding ways had been exhausted. Two days before her review was scheduled, she was part of a ‘serious incident’. She had been in a fight with another girl who then involved some friends, one who made fun of Josie. Josie panicked, and began to hit and kick the girl, shouting that she would kill her…[Josie] was detained by three male teachers. The teachers took her into the school office (the nearest room available) where she caused considerable damage to property before the three men and myself as a witness could corral her behind a desk. Eventually Josie’s uncle arrived to take her home. She was not allowed back on the premises. At her annual review, Josie’s placement was formally terminated, and a placement in segregated special provision recommended (Benjamin 2002: 126-127).
This excerpt from Benjamin’s research is not dissimilar to some of the stories told to me by parents as highlighted below. Some of the parents in my study either feel ambivalent towards the inclusionary policies or vehemently disagree that ‘inclusive’ education can work.
Una wanted mainstream education for her son, but realising the damage it was doing stated quite categorically:
What I’m increasingly seeing now… and local authorities are going gung ho for inclusion at secondary level the children get dumped in bottom classes even when they’re quite bright because nobody actually understands how to teach them and where that isn’t the case what they end up with is a scenario where there are all these children being taught by learning support assistants. …I think my child has a right to be taught by teachers who are qualified. But I think then there’s the question that needs to be asked how much can you ask a mainstream class teacher to do in terms of teaching a range of difficulties, and what are we actually asking the education authority to do here in promoting inclusion? (Una: 8).
From my data it seems there are many children who are ‘included’ in the mainstream education but are excluded at different levels:
Marlene: Owen’s exclusion
Marlene has three sons all of whom have been identified with impairments. Owen, whom I shall be discussing, has been identified with both Asperger syndrome and AD/HD. Owen has been excluded from two mainstream primary schools, spent three terms in a pupil referral unit (PRU), and at the time of our second interview Marlene was looking for a mainstream secondary school that would ‘include’ him. Marlene wanted a small school with small classes, because like Josie in Benjamin’s (2002) research, he was unable to cope with large groups of people.
Owen, during junior school, would constantly run away from school if not supervised. Throughout Owen’s primary years teachers told Marlene that he was simply a badly behaved child. During this time she actually said to the teachers “you have to hold on to him. You have to make sure you see me. It’s no good him saying he’s seen me ‘cause quite often he’d say he can see me and I wasn’t there” (Marlene: 4). Marlene was constantly receiving phone calls from the school saying that Owen had run away, or “can you pick him up as he was rolling around on the headmistress’s floor” (ibid). By the time Owen was seven he had seen an educational psychologist and been referred to a pupil referral unit (PRU). The main objective of such placements is to attempt to control a child’s behaviour and return them to mainstream. Owen was in a PRU for three terms and during that time Marlene explained:
His self esteem come up you know… his behaviour improved, his work come on in leaps and bounds em… but unfortunately the maximum they keep them there was the three terms. It seems to be a short sharp shock, get them in and get them out… but if you’ve got problems like my (Owen’s) got you can’t get them in get them out and turn them around, because what he’s got it’s life long… but up until then he’d only been diagnosed with the AD/HD. I think it was still seen as just a behaviour problem. ‘We’ll get him in there, turn him around and put him back into mainstream and he’ll be fine’. He went back into mainstream and he wasn’t fine. The headmistress said that basically she didn’t want him back (Marlene: 6).
Exclusion for Owen, as with some of the other children is not experienced on one level as indicated above. He was still on the school roll (register) whilst attending the PRU, but the head teacher asked him not to sit the statutory assessment tests (SATs) because as Marlene believed “she didn’t want his results bringing her league table down. And the LEA agreed to it, that was fine” (ibid). Then the head teacher excluded Owen by not wanting him back.
Owen was not the only one excluded or withdrawn from the SATs, as Debbie found when she wanted to take her son away to reduce the pressure on him. “The school and LEA were happy for me to take him away. The school gave us their blessing they said, ‘go! Have a nice time’. So that’s what we did!” (Debbie: 30-31). The SENCO-FORUM (2003b) find that particularly for Key Stage 1 (seven-year-olds)
Members felt that the SATs results did not tell them anything about the children’s level of achievement which they did not know already. They were worried about the impact on children’s self-esteem, and how this set the children back in their own progress. Furthermore, their knowledge of the children’s personal experiences or family situations enabled them to notice when these affected their achievement (163).
This whole testing culture places an enormous amount of pressure on families and teachers, exacerbating the desire to recoil from difficulty and withdraw or exclude the child.
Some children themselves are excluded on the basis of their inability to interact with their mainstream peers. Marlene explained to me that Owen could not interact with the other children at the school “because he didn’t understand the rules” of games such as football “and that ended up with the children turning on him” (Marlene: 6). Unfortunately one of these incidents resulted in Owen running to the toilets and locking himself in. Owen did have a welfare assistant, however the school did not make use of her to “calm him down” and in fact made things worse as indicated here:
What they done was they sent the caretaker over the top of the toilet door which frightened him, grabbed him and as soon as he’s been grabbed he’s even worse, he’s gone to bolt in the opposite direction and now they’ve got two caretakers and it ended up with him being restrained face down with his arms behind his back with an adult male laying across his back and an adult male laying on his legs for an hour. And it was an hour before I was even called. They pinned him down. It took ten glasses of water to re-hydrate. He couldn’t even stand he was in such a state. So we had a huge to do over that. At the end of the day he ended up with twenty-five hours support and he just really went from bad to worse. (Marlene: 6).
Like Una, and Katy, Marlene also stressed that the assistants should be trained and told me, “ the person that was dealing with him wasn’t trained, she was really like Mrs Bloggs from up the street which was the worst sort of person you could put with him (Marlene: 7). This indicates that parents realise their children are not receiving support from highly trained professionals, when ‘inclusive’ education promotes quality education for all, never mind the difficulty Owen is experiencing in negotiating the rules of this school.
Based on Owen’s difficult behaviour the head teacher did not want Owen back after the summer holidays. The LEA wanted him to go into a residential placement, but Marlene adamantly refused that option. He had no education from September through to November that year, until he finally received home tuition. Again, out of the mainstream environment “he came on in leaps and bounds with her but at the same time although he was doing well educational wise, socialising he’d taken a huge leap backward because he’d been isolated really…” (Marlene: 9). After a struggle Marlene got him back into the PRU but by the time I interviewed her a second time, she was still looking for the most suitable placement for Owen’s secondary education.
Marlene’s, as well as other children in this research experienced a period at home where they received some education as a result of exclusion from mainstream education. It is clear here that the more disruptive the behaviour of the child within the mainstream environment the more likely they are to be excluded. However, where the child is moved to can have a significant effect on his or her life chances. Some children’s difficult behaviour is a result of poor socialisation and for others, as in this study, it is about the effects of an impairment such as Asperger syndrome or AD/HD. Saying that all ‘difficult’ students are to be educated together is something that has to be seriously considered as a child with Asperger syndrome may suffer in an equally inappropriate placement, for example, with children who have behavioural problems as a result of difficult socialisation.
All of the above examples show that ‘inclusive’ education and exclusion is not simply a matter of placement, (see also, Lindsay, 2003; McDonnell, 2000; and Wilson, 1999, for example). Mainstream education for many of the parents and their children is not an easy or straightforward path. Based on the data in this study, a move from contradictions within policy directives, and conflict, between including children with impairments in mainstream schools, and the privileging of academic achievement, is necessary. Then think about how contradictions between bureaucratic systems of social control and the cultural and social patterns of ‘inclusion’ and exclusion have developed.
Specialist residential provision: respite or a child’s need?
Nine out of twenty five children in this research over the age of six are attending, or have attended residential specialist provision, and one set of parents is currently seeking a residential placement for their daughter. Some of the parents have agonised over whether or not they can let their child go to carers and educators, and for others it has been sheer relief or respite from the difficulties. Residential education for parents is not a finite discussion about where and how they wish their child to be educated and parents may change their minds as the child gets older and needs change, for both the child/teenager and possibly the family. Residential provision is not generally recommended by LEAs, except as a last resort, or in certain circumstances. So if parents want residential provision they often have to fight for the funding for an out of county residential placement (Morris et al, 2003: 70). When I began interviewing Kerry in early 2001 she was adamant that she wanted her sons to follow a mainstream education path. Yet by the time her son Gary was seven years old in 2002, he was at a specialist residential school and she was appealing to the LEA for the same placement for Ian her youngest, who in 2003 gained his place at the same school.
Tracy
Tracy’s youngest son has a rare syndrome which presents in emotional and behavioural difficulties amongst other things. By the time Brad went to school his difficult behaviour had escalated in the mainstream environment and at home. It was affecting both her and his siblings. At the age of nine things had got so bad that the final time the police turned up at the school Tracy told them she did not want to take Brad home. After that incident he was not allowed back into the school and remained at home for about four months. The LEA finally recommended a residential placement, and by this time Tracy positively wanted this option. She explained to me that when he was at school “I used to dread him coming home. I used to think “‘Oh God, Brad’s coming home’ because I knew it would all start”. When her son had gone off to residential school she added, “all I wanted was some quality time with the others. So I’d devote my time to them all week and at the weekends they understand …” (Tracy: 27).
Even though Tracy’s son was at a residential school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties he was still excluded from time to time and has, since the second interview, been referred on to a different residential school. Tracy told me that if he continues to be excluded from these types of schools the next step is a,
lock up type… and he’ll be there 52 weeks a year and it’s up to me if I want him to come home at any point for a holiday…. which I don’t want, because that’s prison (Tracy: 27).
Tracy is not the only mother in this research to have found living with her child traumatic at times.
Like Tracy, Una described her experience of residential school as a positive relief. Una’s son was in mainstream school until the age of eight and then she was advised that residential education might be an option. In response to this she explained:
If I’m being honest about this… there was a part of me who died, and there was a part of me that went whoopee! Because we were completely worn out and when I think of parents who have three and four kids like this. I don’t know how they survive. It’s horrendous, absolutely horrendous (Una: 18).
When Una’s son went to the residential school for a four day taster it was the first time she and her husband had been on their own “together properly to do something we really want to do” (Una: 15), since he was born. So unable did she feel to meet her son’s needs that even when her son changed schools at eleven (and the school was an inappropriate placement and caused him a great deal of stress, for a whole year) she felt unable to collect him and have him home. It took her a year to secure a referral to another more appropriate school.
Trisha
Some parents do not feel relief, or that they need respite, but in fact feel that their child would benefit from a residential school for his or her growth and development. Trisha has two sons identified with dyslexia; the oldest has it severely. Like Francis, Trisha and her husband have spent thousands of pounds on private residential education. Her oldest son was in mainstream education until thirteen. She described him as being very unhappy there and explained to me:
He entered the juniors and that was the trigger factor. There was work on the blackboard he couldn’t read it, he couldn’t understand it, he was frightened by it. He would run home and I’d take him back to the school and the head would hold him and the secretary would hold him as I left the school… he was screaming… he couldn’t even write his name (Trisha: 6).
And even though he finally received a statement, the implementation was unsatisfactory due to different supply teachers going into the school without knowledge of the children who are statemented in the class. Trisha said that her son used to come home from school so frustrated that she was frightened he might hurt someone. The school psychologist advised her to buy him a punch bag to vent this frustration. All of this became too much for the family and they found him a residential school, where he started on his thirteenth birthday. Trisha told me she was “mortified” (Trisha: 22). Her son hated the residential placement and was often running away, added to this Trisha and her other son were left crying on the doorstep every Sunday evening, but his academic ability improved dramatically. Eight out of the nine children who have experienced residential schools have settled in and coped with structured education better than in their previous school. But that is not the first or always the most appropriate placement. Marlene refused the residential ‘option’ even when advised by her LEA to think about it. She positively did not want her son to go to a residential school and told me “they (the LEA) wanted to stick him in a residential school and we was fighting against that” (Marlene: 7).
Conclusions
The main findings here are about how education provision is experienced by the parents of children identified with SEN. Whilst the experience of parents lies at the heart of this research, debates and discourses on inclusion/exclusion, children with impairments, and wider sociological debates on these issues are crucial. This is because although expectations of childrearing are important here, education in Britain is the dominant form of socialisation for a child aged between four and sixteen, and so equally important are expectations of education provision. How parents negotiate this system and what their expectations of the process are, affect their daily living experiences when they have an impaired child identified with SEN.
What is clear is that ‘inclusive’ policies and directives are in direct conflict with how parents experience the ‘special education process’. In a way the arguments that permeate ‘inclusive’ education pale into insignificance when hearing what the parents in this research have to say about their experiences. Significantly with regards to the narratives in this paper Chris Darlington (2004) the president of the National Association for Special Educational Needs (NASEN) suggests:
Every child should feel safe, have friends and feel valued, and have the highest attainable expectations set for them. Parents should feel confident that the school will welcome their children and celebrate their uniqueness. Staff should be professionally supported with training so that they are confident in meeting an increasingly diverse pupil population in a positive way (Darlington, 2004: 3)
This quote exemplifies what the parents in my study are striving for. Clearly ‘inclusion’ within the mainstream does not enter into the equation when a child is unable to cope with that environment and whether the parent, the teacher, or the LEA exclude or transfer to an alternative seems irrelevant.
Stella, Karen and Tim, for example, did not want their sons to go to residential schools, and in fact wanted mainstream but their children ended up in ‘special’ schools. Both Tim’s and Stella’s experience of this has been positive. Karen on the other hand did not have the time or energy to follow any other chosen activity apart from that of the ‘carer’. That said it was also found in this research that parents in situations like this often change their minds about their child’s future and education placement as in the case of Kerry whose oldest son went from mainstream to residential and her youngest from MLD provision to residential school. This paper has not simply been about whether or not the child is best placed in special or mainstream schools though.
It was found that children who are ‘included’ in a mainstream school often experience exclusion practically, intellectually and emotionally based on their differences and difficulties. This is caused and compounded by a testing and examination structure, cultural ignorance and misunderstandings about difference and difficulty. Marlene’s son Owen had experienced all of the above types of exclusion based on his difficulties. Furthermore the parents too experience a type of exclusion based on others’ expectations of what is ‘normal’ and their expectations for their child’s education. This may be explicit in Tracy’s very negative experience with the head teacher or implicit whereby others use a patronising or sympathetic tone as with Una’s son being the schools ‘disabled mascot’
Contradictions that arise from education policy and provision, and from the discourses of ‘inclusion’ and ‘abnormality’ often result in parents having difficulty in negotiating the ‘official’ education process, or constantly ‘fighting the system’. There has been little in-depth sociological research focussed on the wider social and emotional experiences of such parents, and the linkages of such experiences to those of education policy, provision and discourse. The literature around ‘inclusive’ education draws on the SEN Code of Practice (DfEE: 2001), the Green Paper ‘Excellence For All Children’ (DfEE: 1997), the various related Education Acts and SEN theory, in an attempt to unpack what ‘inclusive’ really means. This study critiques this literature, as it seems that whilst there is a promotion of ‘inclusion’, there is on-going debate about how ‘inclusive’ mainstream education for children with SEN works or does not work in practice.
These discourses are not about ‘inclusion’ or exclusion but about negotiating an appropriate education for all children. If fully ‘inclusive’ education and discourses on ‘acceptance’ and celebration of difference are to be successful for families of children with SEN then the following manifesto must be disseminated.
My data highlights that most parents’ hopes and expectations are for their child to go to mainstream school in the first instance. Many of my participants were disappointed with their experiences both with regards to interactions with teachers and other mothers. I have found the older the child the less likely they will remain in mainstream education, especially if she or he has behavioural difficulties as a result of their impairment. This is because the older the child, the wider the differentiation between his or her peers in learning abilities or social maturity for example, and mainstream schools are often unable to negotiate this increased differentiation.
Policies directed towards provision and its implementation of special education directly affect children with SEN. Moreover, these children have a right to be educated in a way that is best suited to the individual. Therefore education is not simply a ‘need’ but a right to have the most appropriate education. The contradictions that occur between the theories and policies imply the experience at a local level dramatically affects the emotional and practical lives of the families involved. This is based on the heterogeneity of provision at the local level and wider society reactions to difference and disability. The privileging of the academic and the ‘normal’ can exclude the child with SEN and their families from engaging in a so-called ‘inclusive’ society. Therefore parents and the educational professionals continue to struggle with ‘inclusion’ versus ‘academic excellence’.
References
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Benjamin, S. (2002) The Micropolitics of Inclusive Education: an ethnography Buckingham: Open University Press
Darlington, C. (2004) ‘We are still challenged by the concept of difference’ The Independent 10 June
DfEE (1996) Education Act London: Department for Education and Employment.
DfEE (1997) Excellence For All Children: Green Paper London: Department for Education and Employment.
DfES (2001a) Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs London: Department for Education and Skills.
DfES (2001b) Special Educational Needs and Disability Act London: Department for Education and Skills.
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