The
Volume 68
Word Spring 2011
BDA Chair to speak at RDA AGM 6.30 pm Tuesday 17th May, RACC
We are honoured to have Dr Kate Saunders, the Chair of the British Dyslexia Association, as our guest speaker at our Annual General Meeting this year. Kate will explain proposed changes to the membership arrangements between the BDA and local dyslexia associations; she will also outline the reforms set out in the government’s Green Paper on SEN provision; and describe how the BDA works with the government and other large organisations to raise the profile of dyslexia in schools and the workplace. Please join us for a glass of wine or a cup of coffee at 6.30 pm on Tuesday 17th May at our usual venue, in the Business Centre at Richmond Adult Community College, Parkshot, Richmond. The formal proceedings of the AGM will begin at 7 pm, with Kate’s talk following on at approximately 7.30 pm. All are welcome and there’s no need to book in advance. Admission is free to RDA members and students and costs £8 for non-members. For further information, please email: sue@judge.uk.com or consult our website: www.richmonddyslexia.org.uk.
Government announces radical overhaul of SEN provision Last month the government unveiled its plans for the radical reform of SEN provision in the English school system. The Green Paper, entitled ‘Support and aspiration: A new approach to special educational needs and disability’, proposes wide-ranging changes to respond to the frustrations of children, their families and the professionals who work with them. Many of the proposals appear remarkably sensible, but it remains to be seen whether there will be adequate resources to make them a reality. In a time of major cutbacks, the government’s expectation that the voluntary sector will be able to deliver what is currently provided by local authorities seems wholly unrealistic. cont’d p.2
Helpline: 020 8940 4626 • Membership: 020 8876 9406 • www.richmonddyslexia.org.uk
school - including mainstream as well as special schools – but in practice all this amounts to is making Academies, and possibly Free Schools, part of the choice.
Problems cited by the government include too many children being over-identified as SEN, which can prevent them from achieving their potential because teachers have lower expectations of them.
Currently children who have severe, profound or multiple health and learning needs or disabilities receive a statement of support from their local authority. However, the government feels it often isn’t clear - to parents or to local services - who is responsible for delivering on the statement. For example, services such as speech and language therapy may appear in the statement but are funded and commissioned by local health services.
The government wishes to include parents in the assessment process and introduce a legal right by 2014 to give them control of funding for the support their child needs. Under the current system, the local authority and therefore the schools receive SEN funding and allocate it accordingly. It is proposed that parents will be entitled to receive a personal budget to enable them to arrange their children’s care, but again the Green Paper is short on the detail of how such budgets will be calculated and whether they will, for example, cover provision of private therapy if it is not available through the NHS.
The government plans to tackle this problem by introducing one single assessment process and education, health and care plan to give children all the help they need. It will mean education, health and social services will have to work together to give families one single package of support, tailored to their individual needs. It is suggested that voluntary and community bodies will organise assessments and that funding will be provided for the purpose, but it remains to be seen whether there will be enough funding and how easy it will be to arrange assessments when local authorities and the NHS are cutting services. Children’s Minister Sarah Teather commented: “We have heard time and time again that parents are frustrated with endless delays to getting the help their child needs, and by being caught in the middle when local services don’t work together. Parents and voluntary organisations have given us overwhelming examples where they have felt let down by local services. At the moment there is an appalling situation where public money is being wasted as children are growing out of equipment, like wheelchairs, before they even arrive. The new single assessment process and plan will tackle this issue and mean that parents don’t feel they have to push to get the services they are entitled to.”
The government would also like to replace SEN statements with a single assessment process and a combined education, health and care plan so that health and social services are included in the package of support, along with education - this will run until the child is 25 years old. There will be a right of appeal against these plans similar to the current right of appeal to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal, and provision in the plans will be enforceable through the courts if necessary. This potentially remedies a significant problem with the current system under which the tribunal has no power to consider anything other than educational issues, despite the fact that, for many disabled children, educational, health and social care issues are very closely intertwined. If the Green Paper is made law, the government would also replace the existing “complicated” School Action and School Action Plus system with a simpler new school-based category to help teachers focus on raising attainment. Teacher training and CPD will also be overhauled to help them teach pupils with SEN better.
Currently more than one in five children (21%) in this country are identified as having SEN but only 2.7% have statements.
The paper suggests that parents of children with SEN will also be given a wider choice of
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Chairman’s Letter After another long and dark winter, green shoots are at last evident in the garden, and the Green Paper designed to improve the system for children with special educational needs and disabilities’ has recently been released by Education Secretary Michael Gove. There is much to look forward to this year. This Green Paper follows on from comments made by Ofsted towards the end of last year indicating that there would be far fewer children with special needs if we had better teachers. Let’s hope that the Green Paper comes up with some sensible ideas and schemes to allow our excellent teachers to teach and make it possible for those with special educational needs to get the help they require to achieve their goals in the most suitable learning environment.
As a committee, we also set goals each year and over the past year we have achieved, or are well on the way to achieving, all of last year’s goals. Our website continues to develop and this is a huge job requiring a lot of regular input. We have attracted a large number of local schools as members in their own right and they are now benefiting from all that we have to offer them in terms of training and support as well as keeping them informed of all that is new in the important areas of SEN. Our autumn series of lectures continues to be very popular and anyone attending can now receive a certificate of attendance for their continuing professional development. Our helpline continues to be useful to those who like to hear a voice at the
end of the line, especially at the start of the academic year, and our newsletter ‘The Word’ is fast becoming an excellent source of reference for our readers. We were very pleased to welcome our new treasurer on board at last year’s AGM. Mike Camilleri is doing sterling work with the accounts and keeping us well informed about what we are spending and how we are using our money on your behalf. All the committee members and I look look forward to meeting as many of you as possible at the AGM on 17th May and hope that 2011 will be a successful year for you and your families. Nesty Boyd
including gold, silver, costume jewellery and watches, towards this recycling appeal. Even damaged, broken and incomplete items can be turned into a donation, so all the odd earrings and snapped chains are a great start! Everything you give is turned into cash, recycled and put to good use. So please parcel up your jewellery and post it free of charge to: British Dyslexia Association, FREEPOST CENTRAL RECYCLING
Recycle to Raise Funds for the BDA Please donate your unwanted gold, silver, costume jewellery and watches to the BDA. The British Dyslexia Association has come up with a simple way to help boost much-needed funds and benefit the environment, with an unwanted jewellery recycling collection. Please donate any unwanted jewellery,
Thank you for your support.
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RDA Autumn Course 2010 Once again, Monyra Ispahani invested an enormous amount of time and thought into the organisation of another series of fascinating talks and workshops. We would also like to thank our speakers for sharing their experience and insights with our members. Motivating Reluctant Readers by Julia Rowlandson Julia offered a string of ingenious ideas to nurture a love of reading. Children should be encouraged to think about why they need to read, not so much in the classroom as outside it, as a means of relaxation or escapism, a way of finding information, communicating with others and keeping in touch with friends. Parents need to set aside time in their child’s day for reading, ideally morning and evening, and be fairly rigid in sticking to it. Reading in short, regular sessions is far more effective than the occasional prolonged burst, and when listening to children read, parents need to resist the temptation to multi-task! Children should be encouraged to choose their own books, based on the cover and the blurb on the back, but they may need help in finding a suitable book. Parents could also read the first few pages or chapters together until they reach the point when the child can’t put the book down. Our generation was taught never to abandon a book, but if a
book simply does not work it should be abandoned. Dyslexic children need fairly short stories with a clear layout, short sentences, simple grammar and plenty of ‘streetcred’ direct speech. Publishers like Barrington Stoke produce excellent books with good illustrations that often capture the children’s interest with a gripping storyline and simple language in the first few pages and then challenge the children with more complex language further into the book. Good reading skills can be developed when reading with children, by asking questions about the plot and how they think it will evolve, encouraging them to empathise with the characters and relate situations to their own experiences. For more ideas about motivating reluctant readers, Julia recommended these two websites: www. firstchoicebooks.org.uk and www.readingmatters.com Lost for Words by Cat Heale Cat Heale’s talk offered many practical ideas for supporting the development of vocabulary of all children, not
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only those with SpLDs or EAL. Cat described her methods of ‘scaffolding’ i.e. providing temporary support to children to allow them to extend their reach. Cat described the areas teachers should cover to ensure children are in a position to write well. They include drilling common spellings, irregular words and homophones; focusing on synonyms and encouraging children to use a thesaurus (for better alternatives to words like ‘nice’ and ‘said’); teaching parts of speech; focusing on connectives (for better alternatives to ‘and then’); studying particularly rich descriptive passages taken from outstanding children’s authors like Tolkin, Pullman, Morpurgo and asking children to commit a few short phrases to memory (although anything more than the odd phrase would be plagiarism); and teaching the punctuation and layout required for direct speech. To encourage proof-reading she also recommended a Franklin spellchecker, which costs under £20.
Cat also pointed out the importance of having fun with language, for example, with children asked to describe themselves using similes and metaphors (eg as tough as a lion), to describe people and places using all five senses, to experiment with alliterations, tongue-twisters, rhymes, idioms, proverbs, nonsense words, rap language etc. Cat mentioned some of the excellent software available to support vocabulary development, including TextHELP: Read and Write; ClaroRead; Dragon Speaking Naturally; Word bar; Word Card Generator and Visual Thesaurus; and she recommended the website www.bathlts.co.uk for other creative writing ideas. More than just a game? by Anita Weare Anita led a lively, interactive workshop, demonstrating the games she has created and uses in her work as an SEN teacher. She emphasised the enormous value of games in teaching, as a way of creating a relaxed atmosphere in which children learn with enthusiasm and without realising they are ‘being taught’. She opened with her game of bingo, played by all present, which was designed to reinforce a range of sounds and letter formations. She then demonstrated two of her maths games, one for practising the concept of exchange or ‘carrying’, and the other for practising the four basic mathematical symbols.
Her final game was a variation on snakes and ladders in which players move counters around the board based on the number of syllables in a given word. Anita offered some useful guidelines when inventing games to teach and reinforce learning in any discipline, not just literacy: Keep the games simple, just make sure they get across the teaching point. Don’t waste time explaining complicated rules. Have an element of chance (like a dice). It appeals to the children and increases the opportunity for all children to win and enjoy a sense of success. Use high-quality laminated materials, with eye-catching colourful designs. Adjust the rules according to different abilities so the game is hard enough to challenge children, but not so hard that it knocks their confidence. Visual Perception by Trish Babtie and Angela King Trish and Angela gave an interesting insight into the impact of visual perception on learning. It can be divided into two broad areas: visual perception (the ability to recognise, recall and make sense of what we see); and visual motor integration (the ability to coordinate visual information with motor output, commonly known as ‘hand-eye coordination’). Our eyes work like cameras with both lenses needing to converge to create sharp
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focus. 20% of children suffer to some degree with visual perception problems, which can disrupt the way their eyes move along the line (tracking). The website www. childrensvision.com shows this effect on children as they skip words or lines. Many of these problems go undiagnosed but can often be easily detected and treated by a behavioural optometrist. The Institute of Optometrists charges £120 for an initial assessment, but certain high-street opticians offer this service too. There are many factors that contribute to problems with visual perception: poor posture, insufficient exercise, too much/little lighting as well as tiredness and hunger – a banana and a drink of water at the beginning of a lesson can go a long way! Trish and Angela recommended multi-sensory exercises to stimulate the brain at the beginning of a lesson, eg asking children to wave their left hand and shake their right foot simultaneously, while describing their movements in full sentences. They demonstrated their moziblocks, a game in which children are required to copy certain patterns of blocks onto a grid. It is particularly effective in boosting a child’s visual perception by studying the relationship between different shapes, thus improving handwriting, attention to detail and the ability to copy accurately. Spatial relationships are an important component to
visual perception. Children need to be able not only to know left from right, but also how to identify the distinctive features (size, orientation, shape) of similar objects, boosting an area of the brain closely related to problem solving and the kind of conceptual skills required for higher level science and maths. At an early reading level this skill enables children to distinguish between words with similar letters, eg was/ saw, then/when and on/one. It also develops their figure ground, the ability to perceive and locate an object without getting confused by the background. Teaching Time and Money by Sarah Wedderburn Sarah highlighted the importance of understanding time and money, not only as an essential life skill but also as a way of introducing and reinforcing many other aspects of numeracy. The teaching of time and money covers categorisation and sorting, which form the basis of all numeracy. Children should be taught to sort by colour as well as by size (understanding why the bigger 50p is more valuable than the smaller 5 pence coin). Learning about money also teaches children the idea of abstract values for the first time, for example, how one small gold coin has the same value as ten larger silver coins. Sorting and adding coins is excellent for mental maths, reinforcing number bonds,
teaching equivalent values, reading large numbers, and practising times-tables, particularly 2s, 5s, 10s and 20s. For children, time is a classic abstract concept, and yet children are being expected to read analogue and digital clocks at an ever younger age. A considerable number of skills need to be taught before a child can begin to understand why two hands on a clock move at different speeds and how the number 9 can also signify the number 45. Firstly, it is important to grasp the whole concept and language of time and its bearing on everyday life, knowing the difference between a quarter and a half, between morning, afternoon and night and the sequence of days, weeks, months, and seasons. Sarah recommended two excellent games for teaching time, Clear the Decks and Take-Off, and the following websites with freely downloadable resources for improving maths: www.woodlands-junior.kent. sch.uk www.senteachers.org www.tes.co.uk How to assist children in short but frequent sessions by Nesty Boyd Nesty outlined the different kinds of support available to children. The most familiar method is the one-on-one attention which children receive when taken out of the classroom. Specialist help is always available
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outside the classroom too, from occupational therapists, optometrists, speech and language therapists etc. It is essential to intervene as soon as a problem is identified. Little and often is best, although in busy lives this is not always realistic. It is important to be aware of the child’s feelings in this situation. Although some enjoy the individual attention of a one-on-one session, many dislike being singled out for extra support, particularly if they forfeit break or a lesson they enjoy, and they worry about being unfavourably compared with their peers or siblings, so they need to understand how the support will benefit them. The feelings of parents are also a consideration. Many feel guilty (usually for no good reason), some deny a problem exists or can become critical of the school. There are a variety of measures for determining the effectiveness of help given, including SATS, school exam results, IEPs, the expectations of the child, parents and inspectors. It is important to report back on progress to all involved, including teachers, parents and outside agencies, and to maintain a formal record of work covered and progress made.
Review: The Dyscalculia Assessment There are still not many publications for teachers regarding dyscalculia, so any information on the subject is most welcome. The Dyscalculia Assessment by Jane Emerson and Patricia Babtie is a first-rate book for teachers of children having real difficulty in maths. The book is both informative and practical on the subject of dyscalculia and recently won an award as the Best Special Educational Needs Resource. It is an excellent tool for busy teachers as the information, planning, resources and even the scripts are provided. I was able to start assessing and planning for my pupils the day I bought it.
recently awarded the Best Special Educational Needs Resource It provides an easy-to-use assessment that helps the teacher pinpoint the pupil’s areas of difficulty by going right back to exploring their number sense and counting skills. The assessment then moves through calculation, place value, multiplication, division, word problems and formal written numeracy. Once the problems have been identified the book enables the teacher to devise a suitable programme of remediation. The authors have provided freely downloadable resources, lesson plans and suggested methods of teaching which are easy to follow and laid out in a logical straightforward way.
the pupils. This book has clearly been written by teachers, for teachers. I hope the authors can be persuaded to cover other areas of learning difficulties using this very successful and much appreciated format. If you are interested in buying a copy, please email Trish Babtie on pat9801@gmail.com. The book costs £30 (+p&p) and for every copy sold £5 will be donated to the Richmond Dyslexia Association.
There are plenty of games for each area of learning and further suggestions of websites and publications to enhance the programme. The authors have even provided the templates to use when assessing, planning and evaluating
Sophie Camilleri SENCO Falcons School for Girls and Falcons School for Boys Secretary of the Richmond Dyslexia Association
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Appeals to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal Part FOUR Eleanor Wright is a solicitor specialising in education law and a befriender for the Richmond Dyslexia Association. She offers free advice on all aspects of SEN provision, including supporting parents in discussions with schools and local authorities, drafting letters and other documents, preparing tribunal appeals and representing parents at tribunal hearings. This is a continuation of a previous article on presenting appeals at the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SENDIST). However, before proceeding with this I should flag up a recent trial by SENDIST to reduce the time taken for change of phase appeals, i.e. appeals relating to children moving schools to 10 weeks. Full details of the proposed timetable can be found on their website.
to put together a strong case that the child’s placement at the school would be incompatible with the efficient education of other children, rather than an inconvenience. Independent schools The duty to meet parental preference is weaker here. The law provides that LAs must “have regard to the general principle that pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents” but in particular need not do so if the child’s needs could be met more cheaply elsewhere.
Part 4 Appeals
These are appeals about the school named in the statement and tend to be the most contentious ones, particularly when parents are asking for independent schools.
When a proposed statement is issued for a child, the name of the school will be left blank because this is the point at which the parents must be consulted about their school choice. The LA cannot name a maintained school without consulting it first, but does not have to consult independent schools requested by the parents.
Maintained schools Where parents want a place in a state school, that preference must be met unless it is unsuitable to the child’s age, ability or aptitude or his special educational needs, or the attendance of the child at that school would be incompatible with the education of other children at the school or would be an inefficient use of resources. The courts and tribunal attach considerable importance to parental preference for a mainstream school, and if a school felt it could not meet the particular needs of a child it would need
Tactics It is therefore relatively easy to get a maintained school named in a statement if the parents ask for it. However, LAs tend to oppose more strongly appeals made for independent special schools because of the expense involved: some special schools cost over £100,000 a year.
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There are two main issues to be considered in Part 4 appeals.
that cannot be provided in the LA school, that needs to be carefully set out in their reports. Ideally, at least one of the expert witnesses should visit the school nominated by the LA and possibly the school nominated by the parents.
Cost In most cases, a maintained school will be cheaper than an independent. The main cost in the mainstream will be the funding allocated by the LA to the school on the basis of the number of pupils in the school and their ages. LAs usually devolve funds to schools to provide for SEN statements which includes, where needed, home to school transport or the provision of a 1:1 teaching assistant or therapies.
Possibly the most difficult type of special school placement to achieve is a residential placement, again mainly because of the expense involved. The tribunal will only be prepared to name a residential school if there is a genuine educational reason why the child needs this (frequently described on the basis that he needs a “waking day” curriculum), or if there is no other suitable alternative available near to the child’s home.
However, a maintained school is not necessarily cheaper, particularly if the child needs support by a teaching assistant at all times as well as a specialist teacher, individual therapies and home to school transport. If an independent school is able to offer all the necessary support and therapies without any extra cost, it may in fact be cheaper. Or, if the independent school is only a little more expensive than the maintained one, then the tribunal should look at whether there is any extra benefit to the child in accepting the school preferred by the parents and weigh that in the balance. The special school may also be able to provide a more appropriate peer group. If the figures come reasonably close, parents could potentially agree to deal with home to school transport themselves, which could tip the balance in their favour.
Although I have stated that the tribunal will normally name the school preferred by the parents if it does not feel the LA school can meet needs, this is by no means automatic. It is not unknown for tribunals to find that neither school can meet the child’s needs, or that, although the parental preference can do so, it is in effect overprovision and unduly expensive as a result. The tribunal is also required to take into account the child’s views and it is the LA’s responsibility to find these out and file a report on it. There is obviously a dilemma for parents when the statement names a school which they consider is totally unsuitable. They can choose not to place the child there, but in that event the LA has no obligation in law to provide education and it is the parents’ responsibility either to teach the child at home or to find an alternative placement elsewhere, possibly at their own expense.
Ability to meet the child’s needs If it can be demonstrated that the LA school cannot meet the child’s needs, then the tribunal will normally name the school nominated by the parents, even if it is substantially more expensive. In order to succeed on this ground it is absolutely essential to appeal parts 2 and 3 in addition to part 4.
Parents occasionally decide to go ahead and place their child in the school they prefer at their own expense, in the hope that the tribunal will endorse that later. That in general will not prejudice the parents’ case.
To persuade the tribunal that a child needs specific provision which cannot be met in the LA nominated school, expert evidence is essential. Independent experts cannot, of course, be told what to advise, but if they agree that the child needs support of a type
In my next article I will deal with the appeal hearing itself.
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The Reference Quick reference guide compiled by the Richmond Dyslexia Association. Provides a brief description of the most common learning difficulties, a checklist of typical symptoms and useful website addresses.
Price: £4 (inc p&p) Contact: sue@judge.uk.com If you wish to advertise in The Word please email our editor: sue@judge.uk.com Rates: £25 for ¼ page; £50 for ½ page; £100 for full page.
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Aims and Services The Richmond Dyslexia Association (RDA) is a voluntary organisation which aims to promote awareness of dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties (SpLDs) in the Richmond Borough and to advise parents and teachers on the support available. Services include: Arranging talks to raise understanding of dyslexia and other SpLDs; Producing a newsletter twice a year and circulating copies of the BDA Contact magazine three times a year; Supplying a collection of dyslexia-friendly books and tapes to local libraries; Running a helpline for advice and support; Recommending private remedial teachers and educational psychologists; Offering free advice to parents on the statement process and the support available in schools.
Membership Please help us to achieve our aims by joining the RDA. Our yearly subscription is £15 (£10 for unwaged households) or £95 for schools and businesses. For membership application forms, please contact: Lee Coole, 57 Burlington Avenue, Richmond TW9 4DG Email: leecoole@uk2.net
Useful Websites and Telephone Numbers 020 7736 7415 020 8940 4626 020 8876 1351 020 8241 1111 020 8876 1351 020 8892 3322 020 8487 1122
BRITISH DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION (BDA) National charity representing needs of dyslexic people in education and the workplace. Tel: 0118 966 8271 www.bdadyslexia.org.uk DYSLEXIA ACTION National charity specialising in assessment and tuition. Tel: 01784 222300 www.dyslexiaaction.org.uk CRESTED Council for the Registration of Schools Teaching Dyslexic Pupils. Runs a register of schools approved for their dyslexia provision. Tel: 01242 604852 www.crested.org.uk
Affiliated to the British Dyslexia Association Registered Charity No. 281147 12
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RICHMOND DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION (RDA) www.richmonddyslexia.org.uk Chair Nesty Boyd Helpline Joan Crosland Secretary Sophie Camilleri Autumn Course Organiser Monyra Ispahani Treasurer Mike Camilleri Befriender Eleanor Wright Editor Sue Judge