Glen Eden Primary School

Term 3, 2010

July – September

 Acknowledgements  

Furuparks School in Lulea, Sweden - particularly Ingrid Sundstrom and her team 

Lulea Gymnasieskola - particularly Ann-Marie Andersson and her colleagues in the Individual programme 

Queens Park Manor School in Fulham, England 

The Edinburgh Academy in Scotland

Purpose
To  Investigate - Dyslexia, hand eye co ordination, special learning needs by travelling to Sweden to a friends school and observing first hand another system and how it catered for these things. 

Background
Having taught in my current school for 10 years in various capacities including a stint as the acting Deputy Principal and at the time of applying for the sabbatical was the SENCO and responsible for the setting of IEPs and teaching small groups that had a lot of needs in this area, I wanted to investigate how others helped these learners as well as decide my personal career path for the next 10 years. As I had a friend in Sweden who was working in a similar way I felt it was a good opportunity to mix business with pleasure to see first hand what another country did. 

After winning this sabbatical to look at learning difficulties and dyslexia my role in my own school changed slightly for 2010 and I found that I was now responsible for ESOL learners as well as taking remedial reading groups so I decided to create a questionnaire about:Diversity in learning to encompass this and to focus my research in Sweden at my friend’s school - see below attachment link.
Also as part of my trip overseas I was able to visit a state funded inner city school in London and an Independent school in Scotland.
Using this questionnaire as a basis for interviewing teachers’ and observing programmes in these 3 schools I have prepared the following report on my findings.                   

Questionnaire research findings were based on:

DIVERSITY  IN SCHOOLS  Questionnaire                           Debbie McLarin

What is your understanding / definition of diversity ?      Cultural / racial      Gifted / challenged      Boys / girls      Rich / poor      Behavioural      All / some / none ?

In what ways are students with special learning needs catered for within the  classroom environment / outside the classroom?

What special programmes are run at your school to address different learning needs both for challenged learners and gifted and talented learners?

What interventions do you have in place for addressing the achievement of students from different cultural backgrounds?

In what ways do you conciously engage with families from diverse backgrounds?

What opportunities are there for students / parents and teachers to get together to discuss schooling and achievement?

What opportunities are there to celebrate diversity?

Thinking about your own school, and considering  the different worlds i.e. family/culural life/church/peers/ that students operate in. 

How do  these worlds conflict with each other?

Do they influence your school’s culture?

What strategies has  your school put in place to bridge the gaps between the worlds?

How important do you feel the home - school partnership is in achieving success with students and their achievement?

What are some of the external, community pressures that affect your school and how do they impact on teaching and learning?

Findings

1) England

In England I found the special learning needs were catered for in a variety of ways from special withdrawal programmes to in-class support.

Every class had a funded teacher’s aide to help with identified needs and the school had identified children who were 2 sub-levels behind their expected age levels to target for extra literacy and mathematics programmes.

These groups followed a set programme called ELS, ALS and FLS at the various levels e.g. (ELS = Early Literacy Support, ALS = Additional Learning Support, FLS = Further Learning Support) for approximately half an hour 3-4 times a week in a withdrawal situation.

There was also a 15 minute 1:1 twice a week reading programme called Catch Up Literacy which improved reading fluency.

As well as these types of programmes the school had a programme called EAL (English Additional Language) and to qualify for it they had to have another language spoken in the home. The school had approximately 45% of its roll in this category.

They also operated some reading recovery and ABC teaching groups for younger children who were showing the need. Within the class the teacher’s aides operated a literacy and numeracy 5 minute box system for other children in need.

Maths was also catered for through a Springboard catch up programme.

All children in these programmes had Individual learning plans and short term goals that were reviewed regularly with both parents and teachers.

At the other end of the scale there was a small withdrawal group of identified Yr 3-6 Gifted and Talented children who were seen to be in need of extension and they were working with a teacher on a programme called Adventure in Thinking – philosophy and an apprentice business course. They also tapped into the London Gifted and Talented network and a programme called Serious Fun on Saturdays.

Attached to this school there were also 3 Special Learning Needs classes for the area.

These operated on an inclusion plan within the school with some children being mainstreamed where possible and others included from the school for extra help if it was appropriate. All the children in these classes could generally speak and did not have severe physical and mental difficulties (mainly Asperges /Autistic and learning disorders). These classes were small and had a teacher and 2 teacher’s aides.

All the teachers that were interviewed felt that the home / school partnership was crucial to the child’s learning and tried to encourage this wherever possible.

Due to a very high ethnic / low socioeconomic mix at the school this impacted greatly on the learning needs.

2) Scotland

As a complete change from this, the school visited in Scotland was an Independent school paid for by the parents. In Edinburgh 30-40% of children were enrolled in these types of schools compared with 5% over the rest of Scotland and this impacted greatly on how the schools were run. A lot of the programmes run at this school were additional due to the amount of funds at their discretion.

It had an additional support learning teacher who oversaw and taught some of the programmes that were made available to the students when necessary.

They were assisted mainly through special withdrawal programmes and attended sessions 1, 2, 3 times per week depending on the curriculum area required and the level of need. They also had an additional support teacher to address ESOL difficulties.

All parents received regular updates at least four times per year on the children’s progress and regular updates of the ILPlans were sent to the parents.

The programmes themselves were very tailored to the specific children as these were older children Yr7-13 and needed to address the subject specific criteria but as a general rule they would need to be 1-2 years behind especially in reading to receive support.

Some of the external pressures that the school had were that the parents were asking

 “If I’m paying why are they not learning” “If I’m paying then I want it my way”.

A lot of pressure from the universities to gain college entrance exams, and having a charitable status was seen to be of value and therefore the need to share knowledge with local state schools was preferable. There was also a lot of pressure to interact with the local community e.g. share resources.

This school also had a K-Y 6 fee paying contributing school in the vicinity and any learning needs were often identified there before they arrived at the school.

The school had a high expectation that parents needed to take responsibility for their child’s learning as well as the school and that wherever possible 99.3% of difficulties would be accommodated depending on observations of behaviour and responses to learning.

From there I observed programmes in 2 schools in Sweden.

The Swedish public school system is made up of compulsory and non–compulsory schooling. Compulsory schooling starts at 7 years of age through to 16 at two schools but most children attend non-compulsory preschool classes attached to the primary schools at the age of 6 and continue to Upper Secondary education at an approved educational facility until the age of approx 19 (or up to 4 years).

Furuparks

My friends school in Lulea was a primary school (7-12 yrs) offering preschool classes and an attached before and after school childcare facility. It was very interesting as it had two parts that operated within the school.

A trial had been done at the school for Yr1-6 where the children would have one teacher for 3 years before changing and also that there would be Yr1, 2, 3 children in the same class. After Yr3 the Yr4, 5, and 6 children would be clustered back together but keep the same teacher for 3 years. This was found to be of benefit to some children and some teachers enjoyed working in this way so the trial continued in a part of the school with traditional classes alongside them in a different area.

As well as that the school was well known in the area for coping with special learning needs and had 2 special needs trained teachers attached to the school to cater for 5 particular children who attended from outside the school area.

One of these teachers also had responsibility for running specific remedial programmes for children who came from within the school and helped with organising programmes for diagnosed needs in different classes.

These teachers were specifically working with a range of needs particularly memory processing difficulties and language impairment.

They also had 2 teachers’ aides to help with the in-class support of these children especially the socialisation aspects.

The programmes were specifically tailored to each individual child or group depending on ability and stage of development and all children who needed it had individual learning programmes and goals.

After talking at length to the principal it became obvious that he was able to use funding from the day-care facility to employ the childcare workers all day and to provide extra staff at all times in every classroom and throughout the day in the playground. Most of these people had childcare qualifications that enabled them to work with small groups while the teachers worked with specific groups in another room giving both the class and teachers much better access to the curriculum especially in the lower levels of the school.

The pre-school class also had two teachers to 20 children and a childcare worker at all times. By doing this he was able to improve the quality of programmes at all levels and I felt this was the one major difference to our system that catered for diversity by being a constant support for learning not just when learning needs demanded it.

All children who were identified as having learning needs were referred by their teachers to senior management and from there they were looked at as to what interventions may be required. They all had individual learning plans filled in twice a year and parents were informed on a regular basis. They also had access to outside agencies to refer children to such as social workers etc.

Children who were identified as having Swedish as a second language were also catered for by a specialist teacher who withdrew these children in small groups.

They were also given instruction in their own base language if there were a group from the same country to enable them to stay bilingual.

The second school attended was a non-compulsory secondary where a relative of my friend worked in the special learning needs unit.

In this school they catered for 16-20 year olds and had different models to care for students with special needs.

1) For students who did not pass the 9^th grade in the compulsory school in Swedish, English or Mathematics they had an Individual program offered which consisted of the student and the teachers in the unit assessing the individual and setting goals and targets for achievement so that possibly they would catch up to their peers or at least be able to enter one of the national programme courses later on.

2) For some students who had Swedish as a second language they gave them help in achieving the basic requirements for passing this and entering a national programme.

3) For students who just needed to catch up one subject but are enrolled in a PRIV course e.g. Nurse Aide they provide the help to pass the one subject not held.

This unit seemed to have a very high ratio of adults to young people and a lot of one to one tuition took place especially in reading and language.

The teachers were particularly interested in the persons whole being and were very concerned about their welfare. There was a lot of contact with parents where applicable especially where there were specific learning needs.

I also observed a class of gifted and talented mathematics students who were identified as needing extension and they were being taught by a lecturer from the local university.

As well as this I talked with some students in a trial Nurse Aide programme that was being offered at the school as a pre-tertiary course. This involved classes in the national programme as well as specific job related ones and it seemed to be a cross between an apprenticeship and normal schooling and equipped the young people to be employed straight away once leaving school.

Finally in all schools visited a hot lunch was provided to all children.

This was free in Sweden at all levels and in Britain it was tied to the parents income level but most parents opted to pay if they had to as they then did not have to think about what food to send with the children. I felt that this was something that helped the learning as most children ate the food provided and were supervised during this period and if they didn’t eat questions were asked and they were encouraged to find something to eat as it would help them learn.

In conclusion it would be fair to say that at no time did I see specific programmes tailored for dyslexia but that at all schools if the child was in need of help and dyslexia was one of the possibilities that might be the problem, then the teachers involved with them would look at ways to plan to address these learning needs.

Recommendations for NZ

·        Another adult in every classroom to enhance learning.

·        The use of structured learning programmes for remedial small groups that are tailored specifically for learning problems e.g. ELS, FLS.

·        Look into the possibility of providing free lunches in specific areas where there are the greatest learning needs and see if it made a difference to the children’s welfare and learning ability.

Successes for New Zealand

I feel are that we have a very structured reading programme that is successful and widely recognised around the world and a curriculum that allows for individuality in teaching and learning and is not based on workbooks and tests that children need to pass to progress to the next level but caters for individual learning styles and diversity very well.

 Debbie McLarin