A More Integrated and Effective Delivery of School-Based Educational Inclusion Measures

A More Integrated and Effective Delivery of School-based[1] Educational Inclusion Measures

Submission to the Minister for Education and Science

from the

Educational Disadvantage Committee

Introduction

1.1The report of the inaugural meeting of the Educational Disadvantage Forum, held in November 2002, recommended the development of a new strategy for educational inclusion. It was envisaged that a number of core principles identified by the Forum should characterise this new strategy, including the need to address current anomalies in designation criteria and in funding structures, the need to ensure coherence of provision and the importance of developing appropriate structures to ensure efficient and effective delivery of educational inclusion measures.

1.2This paper sets out a series of recommendations designed to facilitate the development of a new strategy which will incorporate the core principles identified by the Forum and subsequently discussed in detail by the Educational Disadvantage Committee. It suggests a more consistent approach to the identification and selection of disadvantaged students and schools in order to achieve more effective targeting and deployment of supports. Such an approach will ensure that there is a closer match between the level of disadvantage and the level of resources being made available.

1.3It is proposed that coherence of provision should be pursued within an agreed national framework, providing for greater flexibility to respond in a more planned and integrated way to identified needs at local level. This will involve a substantial shift away from the current programme-based approach. It will target investment in the most strategically effective way at school level and eliminate existing duplication of roles and staffing. The recommendations also provide for the maintenance of continuity and consistency of provision through retention of the Home School Community Liaison Scheme, which is the only mainstreamed disadvantage programme in the system. It is proposed that this balanced approach to change will empower schools to identify and meet local needs while sustaining support structures essential to the delivery of priorities identified at national level.

1.4Planning, monitoring progress and measuring the outcomes of educational inclusion measures will be critical to ensuring that the additional resources provided have a real and sustainable impact on the pupils and schools targeted. The recommendations set out in this paper envisage the prioritisation of disadvantaged schools for regular external evaluation by the Department’s Inspectorate and for assistance from existing and emerging support initiatives, particularly in the areas of School Development Planning (SDP) and Whole School Evaluation (WSE).

1.5The strategy outlined in this paper has been debated by the Educational Disadvantage Committee over recent months and reflects a range of views expressed by the members of the Committee.

Recommendations

Recommendation 1

As part of the Committee’s deliberation on this root and branch review of the

Department’s educational inclusion measures, the Educational Research Centre (ERC) was commissioned to carry out an examination of the overlap/anomalies between schools’ participation in these schemes. Additionally, the ERC was asked to investigate the existence of a “social context” effect using existing data sources and the appropriateness of banding schools for purposes of resource allocation.

This investigation found strong support for the proposition that the disadvantage associated with poverty is aggravated when large proportions of pupils in a school are from poor background (a social context effect). The ERC further found that a substantial relationship existed between individual achievement and the percentage of medical card holders in a class or school.

In addition, the ERC found no evidence of a specific point at which the effect “kicks in” or no point at which the relationship changes qualitatively. The relationship is best represented as linear and so a larger number of bands or a sliding scale may have to be considered.

Following extensive consultation with the ERC on these findings, it is recommended that a rank order of disadvantage for primary and post-primary schools be established for the purposes of qualifying for resources, both teaching and financial, according to the degree of disadvantage experienced. At this point, the rank order should be based on the best existing data at primary level, i.e., the findings of the ERC survey in 2000. The development of the primary pupil database will provide a basis for more sophisticated targeting in the future. The work of the ERC in 2002, informed by the Department’s post-primary pupil database, already provides a satisfactory index[2]for the rank-ordering of post-primary schools.

Recommendation 2

Schools should be able to access resources and personnel based on clear criteria for targeting disadvantage. They should be in a position to deploy those resources in a way that best meets the needs of the school and the community it serves. In meeting these needs, most of the existing range of initiatives, which have developed over a number of years, would be regarded as a menu of approaches for tackling educational disadvantage rather than as stand-alone programmes. It would be vital to ensure that the proven value of the mainstream programme, Home School Community Liaison Scheme, be retained as a constant within the new integrated strategy.

We recommend that a single agreed level of additional financial support, calculated on a per capita basis, should be made available to disadvantaged schools, with a reducing proportion of this level being made available to schools, scaled on the basis of rank order. The variety of financial supports for educational disadvantage currently being made available through different programmes would be combined to create a single pool of resources. This would enable the school, serving its particular community, to prioritise expenditure to meet identified local needs in accordance with the school plan which will havetaken cognisance of other complementary services available to the school.

It is also recommended that the variety of teaching resources currently made available through different programmes be pooled to deliver greater consistency and coherence of provision. In line with the recommendation in the Cromien Report, a more broadly based staffing schedule arrangement will be introduced in order to address the “whole school” situation. This would deliver an automatic staffing response to needs arising from educational disadvantage. The school would prioritise assignment of the teaching resource, in accordance with the school plan, to the mode of delivery most appropriate to local needs.

Recommendation 3

The flexibility of service provision required to better target and address local needs necessitates a parallel realignment of professional support and training. It is recommended that the existing School Development Planning (SDP) framework be customised to include greater understanding of educational disadvantage and the development of teaching methods to accommodate diverse learning styles.

A greater focus on training and supporting schools serving disadvantaged communities with regard to school self-evaluation and the SDP process will result in the formulation of plans which address local issues concerning the use of resources and staff development needs. This calls for more specifically tailored training and support to schools in the development of cohesive plans with closer association between the support to disadvantaged schools offered through mainstream incareer services at primary and post-primary levels and staff development needs as identified through the SDP process.

A more generic model of in-service professional training for teachers working in this area will lead to the development of a wider information and skills base than that associated with stand-alone programmes and will facilitate a whole-school approach to addressing educational disadvantage. It is recommended that the Education Centre network should prioritise the delivery of this training on a local basis, resulting in much broader networks of teachers, other professionals and parents, with common generic skills in dealing with these issues. Schools would be supported, under the umbrella of an integrated support service model, to develop curriculum and assessment provision to meet the needs and interests of the particular community of learners they serve.

It is envisaged that the range of co-ordinating structures and support staff associated with the existing programme-centred model will be re-organised and brought together under a single educational disadvantage support structure. This would provide for a more effective deployment of existing resources .

Measurement and evaluation of the effectiveness of a school’s delivery of improvements in educational inclusion are critically dependent on the development of integrated school planning and associated needs analysis. The capacity of individual schools to develop appropriate planning and evaluation mechanisms would be facilitated through the School Development Planning initiative, and the work developed under the Whole School Evaluation (WSE) process.

It is recommended that a framework/template be developed to help the school and the community it serves to deliver and evaluate the effectiveness of educational inclusion interventions. The development of this framework would be informed by a working group of the Educational Disadvantage Committee. It is envisaged that planning criteria would be developed under this framework/template requiring, for example, that School Plans should demonstrate certain characteristics, such as;

being responsive to local needs
centrally involving parents

being flexible and innovative
showing integration and partnership
mobilising all resources and targeting them effectively
setting and monitoring targets
planning and creating short term wins
institutionalising new approaches.

Plans, which should be available in the school for inspection, should address key areas such as;

early childhood education
parental involvement
targeted support for the provision of school books
school attendance monitoring
extra curricular programmes and connections to youth service provision within the area
transition from Primary to Post-primary
collaboration with other agencies, service providers and local structures
links with second chance education services in the area.

Self-evaluation methods would be employed at school level to monitor and evaluate the impact of additional provision in meeting pre-set targets and performance indicators. This level of ongoing measurement and evaluation would be further augmented by regular external evaluation through the Department’s Inspectorate.

Recommendation 4

The proposals outlined in this paper present an opportunity to redevelop provision for educational disadvantage and target investment in the most strategically effective way by empowering schools to identify and meet local needs while sustaining support structures essential to the delivery of priorities identified at national level.

This would involve the integration of resources currently delivered through programme-based responses in order to develop a much more targeted model of provision, which would be responsive to local needs. Realignment and/or redeployment will result from the necessary shifting of resources to meet the needs of schools in the most disadvantaged areas. This would result in a substantially reduced number of co-ordinating staff resulting in savings which should be used for direct provision of education services.

Given the fundamental shift in the modes of funding and support proposed, an information strategy for schools will be developed. In essence, greater levels of resources will be available to the most disadvantaged schools, to be deployed on the basis of an approved school plan. The availability of more integrated support structures and specifically tailored in-service training should also assist in preparing schools for the new approach.

It is recommended that a detailed Transition Plan be drawn up by the Department. The key steps that should be addressed in the plan include:

►revisiting the selection of primary and post-primary schools to establish a rank order of schools based on the percentage of pupils with characteristics of disadvantage

►devising a formula for the distribution of resources on a sliding scale consistent with the qualitative nature of educational disadvantage in schools

►realigning/redeploying programme support, on a phased basis, in terms of extra teachers and financial provision by shifting resources in accordance with the appropriate ranking and agreed levels of automatic entitlement

►amalgamating the existing programme support services and bringing them together under a single educational disadvantage support structure with a specific focus on supporting schools in planning, implementation and evaluation.

[1]This paper provides suggestions for school-based educational inclusion measures. It is recognised that further work needs to be done to tie school-based measures into community initiatives and to bring cohesion to disadvantage initiatives outside the primary and post-primary school sector.

[2] In 2002, a working group consisting of Department officials and ERC personnel began the process of establishing a database of the top rank of the most disadvantaged post-primary schools. ‘Examination Fee exemptions’ were used as an indicator in this process, in addition to two educational variables (schools’ overall retention rate to Junior Certificate and Junior Certificate examination results).