Children's Services – Equality Case Studies
Diversity Project – Early Years
With financial support from Children’s Services and the Department for International Development, CDEC (Cumbria Development Education Centre) has been able to support Practitioners in promoting an appreciation of diversity among 3 – 5 year olds.
Practitioners piloted, shared and reviewed a range of activities using global resources from big books to Persona Dolls and came up with a wealth of good ideas – the simplest being to make sure that when the children were asked to paint people, there was a full range of colours available in the paint pots.
One powerful aspect of the project was the linking of Early Years Settings, with an urban school/nursery partnering up with a rural school/nursery in the same area of Cumbria. Children were able to explore their own environment and personalities in order to tell others about themselves; to anticipate what the “others” might be like and then to compare their speculation with reality, with a fun day shared in the summer term.
CDEC ran this project in East Cumbria in 2007 and is currently working with Practitioners in West Cumbria with plans to extend this to the South. As Robert Fulghum said, “Most of what I really needed to know about and what to do and how to be, I learnt in Kindergarten”, so CDEC is very grateful to all the Practitioners who have been/are/will be involved in this valuable project.
Homophobic bullying
Children’s Services have a multi-agency Anti-Bullying Steering Group that has been established to improve local services’ responses to the issue of bullying both in schools and in the community. One of the areas that the group identified to focus on was homophobic bullying.
Stonewall produced a report in 2006 that stated 65% of young gay people nationally have experienced homophobic bullying in schools. 97% of gay pupils hear derogatory phrases used in school and seven out of ten gay pupils say this has an impact on their school work. There is no evidence to suggest that this is any different for gay young people in Cumbrian schools.
The Anti-Bullying Steering Group coordinates a local response to Anti-Bullying Week. For the 2006 Anti-Bullying Week, each day was designated with a particular theme in order to raise awareness. One of these themes was ‘Homophobic Bullying’.
A sub-group was also established that developed a website aimed at young people, their parents and professionals. The idea of the website was to provide an area that people could visit to learn about what is homophobic bullying, how to recognise it and how to deal with it. The information also points to a whole range of existing websites and resources for understanding more about homophobia and how to deal with it.
This work is currently being extended to developing a system for schools to collect information on a range of prejudicial incidents, including homophobic incidents in schools. This will allow baseline data to be collected on the number of incidents occurring and the responses to it. Work can then be targeted to areas of particular need.
Pre-School Child with Learning Difficulties
Children's Services worked with a three year old boy with learning difficulties who attended an early years setting and had just completed a period of assessment at a Child Development Centre. Unfortunately the setting was flooded in January 2005 and there was a period when the child was unable to attend Nursery. He then had to settle in to his setting once again.
Advice from a Children's Services’ Specialist Advisory Teacher for Early Years enabled the child’s Mother to carry out appropriate activities in the home environment. The Specialist Advisory Teacher facilitated close liaison with setting staff, staff at the Child Development Centre, the speech therapist, and parents. A multi-agency meeting with the parents was held to support his reintegration into nursery and set appropriate teaching and learning targets. These targets focused upon the development of communication skills, cognitive skills and fine motor skills.
With this advice the child re-entered nursery successfully and is being included in Foundation Stage activities with appropriate support and differentiation. Parents and nursery staff have commented on how helpful this advice has been and how pleased they are with his progress.
Early Intervention at Early Years Action Plus
A child in a Reception class was referred toChildren's Services’ Specialist Advisory Teaching Services (SATS) by her School. The school was concerned about her speech and language development, and general delay in other areas.
The Early Years Specialist Advisory Teacher visited the school and observed the girl in class, undertook assessments and spoke to the class teacher; the support assistants, the SENCO and the child’s mother. Results from assessments revealed that she was experiencing delays in their expressive and receptive language skills and delays in their development of fine-motor skills.
As a result of SAT intervention, it was suggested that she was referred to the Community Speech and Language Therapist and a 6-week intervention programme concentrating on speech and language and fine-motor activities was set up and delivered one morning a week by the Specialist Teaching Assistant. Four short-term targets were identified.
Inclusion / Transition of Blind Pupil into Secondary School.
A Pupil was assessed as having a very small amount of residual vision, enabling her to have access to print rather than a Braille medium. Her vision was assessed by a Specialist Teacher each 3 months.Braille was taught until the pupil had reached grade 2 standard but she was strongly in favour of using print as medium.
Her parents preferred her to be educated in a mainstream school so a 12 month Inclusion Plan with specific action points leading to increased trust, knowledge among all stakeholders was developed. The whole school undertook a training programme and there was a successful Standards Fund application for specialist technology equipment to be purchased. Both the Specialist Advisory Teacher and the pupil underwent training on touch-typing, magnification and speech software.
The planning and teamwork were able to identify obstacles in advance and with the funding arrangements in place, solutions were quickly found. Once the programme was agreed, Children's Serviceswere able to provide resources and support within all the agreed boundaries and react proactively to changing circumstances.
The pupil was placed in top set within the school and in several subjects achieved marks in the top 5 of that set. The details of the original plan enabled the parents to feel that progress was being made and that the Local Authority would do what they had agreed.
Working with a child with a hearing impairment
A pupil has cerebral palsy, visual difficulties, severe learning difficulties and a severe hearing loss. He was referred to the Specialist Advisory Teacher for deaf and hearing-impaired children when he was two years old, shortly after his deafness was diagnosed and hearing aids were fitted. The Specialist Advisory Teacher visited the child’s family to advise and support them and worked closely with the other professionals involved with the family, especially the Early Years Specialist who was visiting the family regularly. When he was three years old he had a Statutory Assessment following which he had a Statement issued and started at the Nursery of a local SpecialSchool.
His communication skills at this time were very limited. His attention was fleeting and his eye contact poor and he was not showing evidence of any response to sound. The Specialist Advisory Teacherasked the audiology department at the local hospital if they might consider more powerful hearing aids and a personal FM system (Radio Aid) was issued. This helped to cut down background noise in the classroom and enabled the teacher’s voice to reach the pupil more effectively. Training was given to everyone who worked in this classroom and detailed advice given on how to direct the pupil’s attention to sounds and speech and help him attach some significance to this. A Speech Training Unit was lent to the school and an auditory training programme was undertaken.
Despite close team work between the teachers, classroom assistants and the Specialist Advisory Teacher, it became clear after a further year that the pupil was not responding to sound nor developing the early vocalisations that might have been expected after a year of good amplification and appropriate play and language input. It was decided with his parents to introduce sign language. Makaton was already in use in the school and a deaf Communication Support worker visited the family once a week to help them all learn to sign and use signing appropriately around the home.
The pupil responded immediately to this. He was noted to use over 50 different signs within the first six months of signing being used consistently with him.
Two years later the pupil’s attention has much improved. His numeracy and literacy skills are beginning to develop despite him not having any spoken language. The Specialist Advisory Teachernow works weekly with the pupil to develop his reading and suggests work to the class teacher that might be carried out in the classroom.
His parents are very pleased with his progress and say that his previously very difficult behaviour is much better now.
The school are now looking to have a Classroom assistant in his class next year who has Level 2 signing skills to enable the pupil’s language and learning to develop further.
Raising staff awareness of autism
The Specialist Advisory Teacher (SAT) was asked to provide training for staff at a small rural school after the admission of a child with an autistic spectrum disorder who had severe learning difficulties and medical difficulties.
The training was delivered to all staff during a two hour after school session. The SAT gathered evidence on his condition from the school nurse and spoke to the Speech and Language Therapist who had worked with him previously. She also read all relevant reports and information prior to delivering the training.
The majority of the training gave a generalised overview of Autism including a brief history, explanation of diagnostic procedures, and strategies for teaching. This was followed by a more informed discussion based on how to ‘teach’ the child in question and how staff could ensure appropriate inclusion.
During subsequent visits, staff reported how they felt more confident in implementing a number of strategies. By opening up the training to general discussion, staff felt that they were able to air their concerns and understand that some approaches would not be successful.
Secondary Support Provision
A pupil transferred to a rural secondary school in Cumbriafrom Bangkok. His first language is Thai, his second Laos and he had very limited English language skills. School placed him in a lower ability/Special educational needs group. Following a referral from the school to the Specialist Advisory Teacher, a meeting was held with key members of school staff, parents and pupil and a support package from the Specialist Teaching Assistant for Ethnic Minority Achievement was devised.
A key member of staff was identified to be responsible for sharing information with all relevant staff, reviewing progress and as a contact person for EMA staff.
An informal information sharing session was held with the EMA Teaching Assistant and any concerned subject teachers regarding the teaching and learning of an EAL pupil. Key documents were shared with staff and the school ordered relevant subject publications directly from the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
At this session it was agreed that the pupil would withdraw from French study. Those 3 ‘free’ periods could be better utilised by peer mentoring / homework session with Upper sixth pupil, a session with their teacher and 1 session working with the Specialist Teaching Assistant. Sessions were used to pre-teach specific subject vocabulary, for homework support and to examine any difficulties the pupil encountered. All subject staff were asked to provide materials relevant to their subject with a brief plan of topics to be covered over half term with learning objectives. Sessions with the pupil were recorded on a record sheet by all staff working in withdrawal sessions to avoid repetition and highlight areas of difficulty.
All school staff were given contact details for EMA staff and made aware of times of visits.
A review of progress was held after a 6-week intervention package and the EMA staff advised the school to move the pupil to higher ability groups. The school agreed and this was also discussed with pupil and parents.
With continued input focusing on pre-teaching and language skills, the pupil is completing tasks reliably, demonstrating understanding, offering views in small focus groups in class and is beginning to contribute to whole class discussions. Staff are more confident teaching the pupil and are becoming more consistent in providing information for the pre teach sessions.
The pupil has recently chosen their options for Year 10 and the school has adopted a flexible approach to utilising the time that would be spent in the Summer Term with subjects that have been dropped. The pupil will join extra English, maths and option subjects with pupils of a similar academic ability to help consolidate and reinforce their learning.
The pupil has quickly become a valuable member of the school community with many friends and appears happy and settled in his new environment.
Drop in clinic at a local secondary school to support pupils with English as an additional language
Following a recent increase in the admissions of pupils for whom English is an additional language, a local secondary school requested support from the Specialist Advisory Teaching Service.It became apparent that the traditional methods of support would not fit the current admissions profile. It was suggested that a weekly 'drop in' session format could be used to:
- extend accessibility of the service and share its knowledge with a wider audience.
- provide a forum for pupil and staff voice
- share collaborative responsibility for achievement between all parties
By the end of the term, 12 sessions had been delivered with a total of 20 pupil visits and six staff visits. Of these, 11 visits concerned pastoral matters, 7 concerned whole school strategies, 1 was subject specific and 5 visits concerned homework support. 2 remaining visits were simply classified as ' other'.
During the pilot study the amount of time commissioned to the school reduced from 72 hours to 12 if compared it to the preceding term. Both staff and students report supportive strategies becoming embedded into everyday practice in some lessons and curriculum areas, and environmentally the school also now have signs, displays and home/school letters in a variety of languages in all key areas of the school building.
Distance Learning for Occupational Travellers
A Primary school in a small market town has a long tradition of successful working with pupils from travelling fairground families. The winter base for the fair is situated in the town. The pupils have a fairly predictable travelling season, although they can be away for many months of the academic year.
The school has wholeheartedly embraced a whole range of opportunities to expand its practice in multicultural issues. The Multi-Cultural and Anti-Racist Advisory Teacher did some race equality training with the school and they have also hosted the ‘Ally Comes to Cumbria’ Forum Theatre production for pupils. Children's Services were then invited by the school to a meeting which focussed this multicultural work specifically onto Travellers. An information sharing and gathering workshop was held with school staff, where many ideas were generated for working more effectively with Travelling pupils when they are travelling away from school.
Distance Learning is a scheme of independent learning that has been developed nationally, not as an alternative to school for Traveller pupils, but as a means to provide some continuity of education and equality of opportunity within a pattern of interrupted learning.
For the seasonal and/or occupational Traveller, Distance Learning, managed jointly by the base school, parents and pupils and supported by Children's Services, provides this continuity when the pupil is too highly mobile to be dual registered at another school. It is a means of keeping children in contact with the curriculum of the school, creating a sense of belonging to the school community and responding to and valuing their mobile lifestyle.