Two Cheers for Special Needs Provision in Adult Education

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Two cheers for special needs provision in adult education

Peter Watson, University of Leeds

Introduction

Our theme is the celebrating of adult education. In the area of special needs there is indeed some justification for celebration.

Shortly after the first SCUTREA conference the Russell Report[1] in its plan for the development of adult education highlighted three groups of disadvantaged adults who it considered were at that time relatively untouched by adult education. One was the group of disabled people.

Consider the situation then. Remember that up to 1970 people with severe learning difficulties (hereafter SLDs) were considered ‘ineducable’ and were excluded totally even from the school system let alone from adult education. In that year the Education (Handicapped Children) Act transferred responsibility for children with SLDs from Health to Education.

Thus the year of our first conference was also coincidentally a milestone in the education of people with disabilities. At that time the education of pupils with other disabilities was restricted largely to segregated schools. The education of adults with such other disabilities was very sparse. Outside the capital it was largely restricted to vocational training and/or rehabilitation as at St Loye’s College, Exeter.

Developments

Here I want initially simply to survey some of the developments in this area of education over the quarter century. To provide detail of these changes, among other examples I’ll consider the situation at Park Lane College in Leeds.

I co-authored an article on special needs education there in the early 1970s[2] and that will provide a useful contrast for the present situation.

The first intake specifically of disabled students was in September 1971 when the Leeds authority took a positive view of the 1970 Education of Handicapped Children Act and approved the setting up of an FE course for students with SLDs. This was possibly the first such FE course in the country. It involved eleven students with SLDs. There was no specific provision for people with other disabilities in the college at that time.

At about that time other pioneering courses were taking place elsewhere, for example at Nottingham[3].

The Russell Committee reported from its nation-wide survey (assuming the incidence of disability was about the same as it is now) that only about 3 out of every 1000 disabled people joined adult education classes. That figure itself however is somewhat misleading. The majority of enrolments were in the greater London area. In other parts of the country the picture was bleaker, e.g. in Yorkshire/Humberside the enrolment of disabled students was less that 1 per 1000 of the disabled population.

Growth in this area can be seen by comparing the current situation with the one just described. Now Park Lane college has some 400 students with disabilities, including about 150 with SLDs.

There has also been a growth nationally. Even by 1987 SKILL reported from their survey that there were 43,500 students with disabilities in the FE sector, that is, about 7 per 1000 of the disabled population[4].

In addition to this increase in numbers there have been changes over the quarter century in the philosophy of this area of education. One major improvement has been the development of integration. Recall that in 1970 the typical school-education of students with special needs was segregated from mainstream education. So in 1971 in line with that ethos the SLD course at Park Lane was initially segregated from the main college in an annex. It was not until a decade later with Warnock and the 1981 Act that integration got underway. The Park Lane courses for SLD students are now on the main site.

Another significant change stems from the adult education tenet that students have a right to have a say in their education. This arises from the early work of Rogers[5] and Knowles[6]. However in special needs education there was the patronising view that tutors knew best what should be in a student’s programme. This was particularly so in the education of people with SLDs. Indeed this was still found in a recent survey in the Leeds area[7]. This is however now hopefully changing[8]. A related move in general education involves students in the assessment of their progress (National Curriculum). This also is now taking place to a limited extent in adult special education[9].

Different people ascribe different aims and objectives to adult education. These range from:

the personal development of the individual,

through instrumental aims, such as vocational education,

through to social change of groups of people.

The aims of education for disabled students generally are the same as for all students, plus extra emphasis often being given to the development of independence and self-confidence. The aims of education of student with SLDs however are not exactly the same as those for other students because these students will not obtain jobs in the open employment market. Early in the century they were trained to work in sheltered workshops etc. so that ‘society might be spared at least part of the cost of their maintenance’[10]. In the 1970s it was suggested that Adult Training Centres (ATCs), where many people with SLDs spend a lot of their time, should be changed to Social Education Centres (SECs); that is, there should be a change from mundane occupational work to personal and social education. The response to this has been patchy: in some places we have ATCs and in some places SECs.

In FE, as at Park Lane, the aim has been typically social and general development. Now however we have a change in philosophy imposed upon us by the government with its emphasis upon vocational education via Schedule 2 of the FHE Act. This affects the whole of education. It affects particularly people with SLDs. Some courses for students with SLDs have Non-Schedule 2 funding but this is being reduced and in many places people fear that such classes will be reduced or even vanish.

Turning to more practical issues, there have been important changes in teaching method brought about by developments in IT. Consider but a few examples. Previously people who could not speak had to rely on simple communication boards. Now there are complex electronic devices which are controlled, for example, by touch which enable the student to produce messages on miniscreens or even via a voice synthesiser. For blind people there is the Kurzweil reading machine and its derivatives which can ‘read’ print; that is, translate a printed statement into the spoken word. More generally the whole area of computer assisted learning and for example the Open University offers considerable opportunities. Indeed the OU has more students with disabilities than all other HE institutions together[11].

Some problems

There are however some problems in the education of adults with special needs. Some of these can be highlighted by comparing the situation in adult education with that in child education[12].

Terminology

Firstly there are problems of terminology. To understand this we need briefly to review the terminology in child education. The concept ‘Special educational need’ (hereafter SEN) is derived from the 1981 Education Act and ultimately from the Warnock Report. That report suggested replacing the term ‘handicap’ which was seen as referring to an attribute of the person, with the expression SEN, which was seen as attributing the student’s problems to an interaction of a feature of the student with aspects of the student’s environment. Thus a child has an SEN if he/she has a learning difficulty (hereafter LD) which calls for special educational provision. A child with a severe and persistent SEN will be provided with a Statement of SEN. Thus in schools there are pupils with SENs with Statements and pupils with SENs without statements. In addition the Warnock report suggested among other things, as a practical consequence of the new concepts, getting rid of the distinction between remedial education and special education and calling it all special needs education and also as noted above, that there should be as much integration of this special needs education into normal schools as possible.

After this side glance at child education, what about the legal terminology in adult education? The FHE Act defines LD in the same way as the 1981 Children’s Act does, but it does not define or use the term special educational provision. Similarly, the FHE Act does not define or use the expression ‘special educational need’.

Thus there is a significant change in terminology when we move from the legislation of child-education to that of adult education. The term SEN has no legal status in adult education. Of course the term SEN or more generally ‘special needs’ is used in discussion and practice in adult education. But in adult education it usually refers to the needs of people with LDs or disabilities. It does not mean the same thing in adult education as it does in child education. In particular it has a very much restricted denotation. There are practical implications of this.

Whereas in child education, what used to be called remedial education has been merged with special education, in adult education we have both special education and basic skills education which are seen as separate disciplines and undertaken by different teams of tutors[13].

Identification and assessment procedures.

As a consequence to the terminology differences there are differences between child and adult education in practices concerning identification and assessment of students with SENs. In child education the identification and assessment of pupils with SENs, particularly those requiring a Statement of SEN, is prescribed in detail in the Code of Practice of the 1993 Education Act. The procedure may involve a series of up to five stages and a wide range of personnel. These include personnel from outside the child’s school, to increase the comparability of standards across different schools. Turning to adult education there are different identification and different assessment procedures.

Firstly concerning identification, in school education one tries to identify all pupils with any of a wide range of special educational needs. In adult special needs education one tries to assess the special needs only of students with disabilities (including SLDs). (This is not to say that in adult education some tutors are not concerned with needs of, for example, educationally disadvantaged students but this is not usually seen as the work of Special Needs tutors).

Secondly with regard to procedures, in adult education there is no Code of Practice. Concerning general assessment practices a government spokesman said ‘there is no such requirement (for a specific procedure), a more flexible procedure is required at this stage of life’. This seems to suggest that institutions can use whatever procedure they like and that the procedures of one institution need have no relation to those of another. This could lead to unequal distribution of resources and unfairness.

In FE/HE etc. assessment of which students have SENs and what the SENs are often involves a very simple procedure. The Special Needs Co-ordinator firstly ascertains which students have disabilities, from initial application forms and/or tutor returns at the start of term. Of course concerning the latter a student may say that he/she does not wish to be seen as having a disability and as having a special need. Some students make this choice. However when a student with a disability is identified and agrees to accept special help the co-ordinator then determines what support is needed in discussion with the student. There is nothing like the five stages which occur in school education and importantly there is usually no involvement of outside personnel. That is there is no mechanism to ensure comparability of standards between different establishments. Indeed this lack of an independent and formalised assessment procedure is one of the least satisfactory aspects of the FHE Act[14].

There are some important facts concerning the identifying of students with SENs. While about 3% of children are disabled, on average 14% of adults are disabled[15]. Incidence is however significantly related to age, thus while about 3% of 20 year olds are disabled, about 40% of 70 year olds are. From this we note importantly that three-quarters of adults with disabilities were able-bodied as children. This points to a major need for rehabilitation.

Location and personnel

A major difference between child and adult education is related to Knowles’ assumption that for a child education is largely for future life, while adult education is often to provide help to the student for current problems. As was just noted a major task concerning disability is rehabilitation - there is often a major education component in this. There is often in fact insufficient provision of rehabilitation[16]. More often than not the teaching involved in rehabilitation is undertaken outside the education service, by, for example, social service or health personnel. Is this because the education services have failed to respond to a need here? Or is it because the other services have excluded education? To an extent it is the latter: In the area of Community Care, the official viewpoint is that education has no role[17].

Looking forward

Currently the FEFC has set up the Tomlinson Committee ‘to review FE for students with disabilities and /or LDs’. This will be considering some of the above problems[18]. Consider some possibilities:

Concerning terminology it is likely that adult education will retain the usage of the terms ‘disabilities’ and LDs and reject the term SEN for logical reasons. This could have a ‘spill over’ effect in thinking in child education. Special needs education and basic education should be brought closer together. It seems odd, for example, that one set of tutors should be teaching, say, basic reading skills to educationally disadvantaged students, and another set of tutors teach these skills to people with MLDs. Nevertheless although there should be more co-operation and collaboration, I consider that in adult education, tutors should not aim to be the jack of all trades that some school special needs teachers sometimes aspire to be.

With regard to assessment there is need for the involvement of outside personnel to increase the comparability of standards, perhaps this might be arranged via development of PACT teams.

There is under-representation of disabled students, particularly in HE. There are many reasons for this. These include some socially devised barriers which could at least in part be removed by legislation. Unfortunately attempts to move in this direction were defeated in Parliament last year.

There is need for more collaboration of education with social services and health personnel in community care work and rehabilitation. There needs to be more education (that is, teaching methodology) in the training of social service and health personnel.