Name of Candidate: Alison Tams

Student Number: 06906725

Course Code: SHF90600-1

Study Skills/Reflective practice/personal development

Date: 12th February 2007        

STUDY SKILLS ASSIGNMENT

Is the early years setting the best place to educate a child with severe learning difficulties, or should they attend a specialist school that can cater to their needs more successfully. Are early years staff trained enough to deal with very young children with special needs and is there sufficient funding available for early years settings?

by Alison Tams

CONTENTS PAGE

  1. INTRODUCTION

How we came about integration of special educational needs in mainstream settings.

  1. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

  1. Mainstream or Special Needs School
  2. Training
  3. Funding

  1. EVALUATION

Our Setting experiences with Integration of children with special educational needs

  1. CRITICAL ANALYSIS

i.        Background Information on the works to be critiqued

ii.    Conclusions to work critiqued

  1.  RECOMMENDATIONS

  1. Mainstream or Special Needs School
  2. Training
  3. Funding

  1. 1) BACKGROUND TO THIS ASSIGNMENT  - INTRODUCTION?

How we came about integration of special educational needs in mainstream settings

A committee chaired by Mrs Mary Warnock spent four years from 1974 investigating the education of handicapped children and young people with special needs.  This report was then presented to parliament in 1978 and was named as Special Educational Needs Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People. This report had a major impact on education of children with special educational needs.  Many of the recommendations became law in the Education Act 1981.  The Warnock Report highlighted the importance of the integration of children with SEN into mainstream schools and early years settings but also stressed that there still would be a place in society for special needs schools.  

Before this report there was the Education (Handicapped Children) Act 1970 which basically said that all children were to be educated and no child should be considered ineducable and under this act many special schools were built and appropriate staff trained and these schools thrived but by the end of the century integration became the buzzword. (1)Alcott, M (1997), states that “Enthusiastic educationists and many parents campaigned to have all children educated with their peers. Segregation was wrong ‘Close the special schools’ became the new Slogan” An Introduction to Children with Special Educational Needs, Hodder & Stoughton Educational, London.

2) FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

There has been much debate about the inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream schools/early years.  It seems now that even Baroness Warnock herself has done a u turn and has published a report damning England’s Special Needs Education System. Baroness Warnock states (2)“Pressure to include pupils with problems in mainstream schools causes confusion of which children are the casualties”  ‘Special needs’ education queried, BBC News [online], 14th November 2006, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4071122.stm

i) Mainstream or Special Needs School Education

According to a report by Ofsted they state that (3)“pupils were equally likely to make good progress in both types of school…they found the most important factor determining the best outcomes for pupils – socially, academically and personally – was not the setting, but rather the “quality of the provision” Special needs schooling compared, BBC News (online), 19th November 2006, from .

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ii) Training

There are those that state categorically that inclusion of special needs children into mainstream schools is imperative and those who argue that schools which cater specifically for children with special needs and where staff are specifically trained to meet these needs is a more realistic option for children with special

needs.  

A report by the BBC news stated that (4)“Ofsted Inspectors criticised mainstream schools for relying too heavily on teaching assistants to support SEN pupils, saying experienced specialist teachers were more effective” Special needs schooling compared, BBC News (online), 19th November 2006, from . The ...

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