C.E. Jottings

IPSEA: Children and Families Bill - call to action

The folowing is taken from an email from IPSEA, with thanks for the valuable work they are undertaking. Children & Families Bill - take action Step 1: Understand the impact of Part 3 of the Bill IPSEA needs your help with protecting children’s rights to a proper education. We have created 3 documents to help you understand what the Children & Families (C & F) Bill means for children/young people with special educational needs (SEN) and/or a disability. Click here... Read more →

MaSt - What's more ... Systemic failure of children with SEN statements

“…. there will always be a group of pupils who – however they are labelled – are likely to have difficulties in accessing the everyday classroom learning experience.” (The Making a Statement project – final report” Webster & Blatchford, Institute of Education February 2013.) I looked at this report in my previous posting. It is an interesting report, worth, in my view, the time spent in reading it. But …. And it is the “buts” that I keep coming back... Read more →

New report points to systemic failure in teaching of children with statements of SEN

I have been reading (and re-reading)a new research report from the Institute of Education: “The Making a Statement project Final Report. A study of the teaching and support experienced by pupils with a statement of special educational needs in mainstream primary schools” by Rob Webster and Peter Blatchford. The Executive Summary of the report concludes: On basis of the evidence from our research, we suggest that the new EHCPs avoid expressing support for pupils in terms of hours, and instead... Read more →

The Conductive Web R.I.P.

The Conductive Web is no more. This morning I deleted the Netvibes account for The Conductive Web. The Conductive Web was one of the first attempts - maybe even the very first - to attempt to aggregate links to all conductive education blogs in one place. The Conductive Post, introduced in 2009, proved itself a much more attractive solution in every way and I ceased to maintain The Conductive Web. This morning, I visited The Conductive Web Netvibes pages, a... Read more →

The Economist on early years' education, an international trend

Over the years, I have often found myself making the case for the conductive education of very young children with cerebral palsy, in the face of doubt, disbelief or downright dismissal that education has anything to offer. Surgery? Yes. Drug treatments? Yes. Therapy? Of course. But education? I am not aware of any mainstream schools or nurseries that offer specialist education programmes, led by specifically trained teachers, for the very young with cerebral palsy. Perhaps somewhere there is but I... Read more →

If no-one knows what's working, how does anyone know what's being "destroyed"?

Guardian award-winning columnist, Suzanne Moore, last Wednesday contributed a bizarre, hissy-fit of an article "Michael Gove is destroying our school system" that prompted blogger Tom Bennett to respond with "The Intellectual Abyss in Education: Suzanne Moore and why everyone's an expert". After first pointing out the essential "pot-calling-the-kettle-black" contradiction on which Suzanne Moore's article rests, "Gove, the amateur, the journalist who knows nothing about education, [is] put in his place by Moore, the amateur, the journalist, who apparently knows so... Read more →

Children & Families Bill published: for SEN see Section 3

The following is from IPSEA: Children & Families Bill published IPSEA has issued a Press Release about the new Children & Families Bill. At 5pm on Monday 4th February, the Children & Families Bill was presented in Parliament. The Bill was published today. Section 3 of this Bill is based on the draft SEN provisions that IPSEA analysed in October 2012. Our Press Release has some initial observations. Edward Timpson, the Minister responsible for SEN, has written a letter explaining... Read more →