Dear All
The Government is preparing for its Comprehensive Spending Review and pdnet has been invited by WSS to contribute to a conversation around priorities for improvement of SEND provision. There is a tight timescale . To support our contribution your views would be very helpful.
1. What steps should be taken to ensure all teachers have access to specialist expertise when they need it?
2. How should specialist expertise be defined?
Many thanks.
Specialist expertise is a range of things in my opinion.
It is about coming alongside parents, school, preschool and college staff to facilitate the social model of inclusion, so that might mean translation of the medical model to educational settings.
It is also about having the knowledge and understanding from a range of perspectives, headteachers, teacher, parent and most importantly child/ young person's and the skill to pull that together into a successful package.
Others can have their turn now whilst I give it more thought.
Sonia
Specialist expertise - perhaps something like this?
<p align="left"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #333333;">Specialist expertise is the particular set of knowledge, skills and experience which enables the practitioner to advise on, and model, best inclusive practice for individual learners who need targeted support which is either supplementary or alternative to that provided for the majority of learners. </span></span></span></p>
<p align="left"><span style="color: #333333;">“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">inclusive practice” here refers to strategies and interventions which enable, for a particular learner:</span></span></span></p>
My suggestion for a form of words:
Firstly, the Local Authority should recruit specialist advisory teachers, i.e., teachers with specialist expertise (to cover the full range of SEND), whose remit is to support and train teachers and other education staff in inclusive practice.
Secondly, there needs to be a clear and fully accessible communication and referral system from teachers to the specialist service so that teachers can request support and/or advice quickly. and easily. This should be well publicised by the LA.
As there is likely to be high and increasing demand for the service, the LA/DfE needs to resource it according to need, so that individual specialist teachers' caseloads are manageable, and they can deliver the service in a timely fashion.
Specialist teachers should offer training for mainstream staff to raise their confidence, effectiveness and independence. Training should include Raising Awareness sessions, as well as bespoke training around the needs of individual learners. The LA should refer to the training in their Local Offer, and the specialist service itself should advertise it.
The LA needs to facilitate inter-agency working between the specialist teachers and particularly Health and Social Care colleagues so that effective and holistic interventions are delivered for learners.
Teacher training institutions should invite input from the specialist service to raise awareness of its existence to trainee teachers.
Max
