Assesements and Individual Education Plans for children with SENs

A talk by Geraldine Graydon of the National Parents Council - Primary

Mags O’ Donoghue, Chairperson of the West Cork Parents Action Group and her fellow committee members are mighty women when it comes to organising information evenings and workshops for parents of children with special education needs. On Thursday 29th September WCPAG had another line up of interesting and informative speakers at a well-attended event at the Parkway Hotel in Dunmanway. It’s fair to say that WCPAG are making a significant impact on the level of awareness of our children’s’ educational and other needs and that parents, professionals, service providers and teachers in West Cork have much to be grateful to them for.

Among the line up of speakers was Geraldine Graydon from the National Parents Council – Primary, who gave a detailed talk on the importance of carrying out appropriate assessments for children with SEN and about the best way of feeding the results of those assessments into Individual Education Plans (IEP) for each child. It would be impossible to do justice to all the ground that Geraldine covered in her talk but what follows is an attempt to summarise the key elements of her recommendations. Graydon is a parent of five children herself, the youngest of whom is a 16 year-old boy with autism. She completed an MA thesis from UCD in September 2004 which argues very persuasively for the recognition of autism as a distinct disability.

On Thursday 29th, however, Geraldine was addressing the general need of all children in mainstream schools who may need formal SEN assessments and IEPs and what she believed would be essential to the implementation of the Education of Persons with Special Needs (EPSEN) Act 2004. Although that Act is now in place, many of its provisions have yet to be implemented and many provisions referred to and covered by the Act have also yet to be fully defined and are unlikely to be so for at least five years – if not longer. There is no requirement within the Act for a reasonable time limit to be met which likely means that we will all be hanging around for some time yet before we know what on earth is actually going to happen. In the meantime parents, school principals and other interested parties, Graydon argues, should be guided by best practice for which she says there is much useful evidence and experience to be gleaned from other countries who have already formalised good arrangements for the management of special needs children in schools. Anyone who is interested in the Department of Education’s current guidelines can find them in their Special Education Departmental circulars SPED01/05 and SPED02/05 – available on the Department’s website at www.ed.ie.

Assessment

Graydon suggests assessments ought to aim to answer two distinct questions. Firstly, does the person have a disability and what services might be needed for him or her, if
so. Secondly the assessment should consider all other factors that might be of relevance. Graydon believes that the automatic triggering of resources on diagnosis is not in the best interests of the child although it is difficult to see exactly why that would be the case. What no one can dispute is Graydon’s insistence on the need for a comprehensive assessment which covers all aspects of a child’s needs: psychological, educational, therapeutic, social, and physical. She also stressed the need to use a variety of assessment tools and methodologies and stressed that there has been over-reliance at times on certain types of assessment tests to the detriment of many children. For example, the ubiquitous IQ test has been a thorn in the side of many parents and children who have ended up going down wrong paths as a consequence of an IQ test result, Graydon says. “A high IQ test result does not prove that a child is not having difficulties. Children may have high IQ and yet be unable to avail of their intelligence because of verbal or other communication difficulties. An IQ test alone should never be the basis for deciding, for example, whether a child should be either included or excluded from mainstream or special schools.” Adaptive behaviours, task analysis and dynamic assessments of the child’s thinking processes can all reveal extremely important information about any disability that s/he may have. Visual and auditory learning skills may vary greatly and observations of environmental factors and the way in which children are praised or criticised are all vital to establishing a comprehensive picture.

Reports from the assessments ought to be equally comprehensive and parents should be offered a step-by-step guide to recommendations flowing from the assessment. Graydon also stressed the importance of parents being involved at every stage of the assessment and especially in the discussion of recommendations so that nothing is recommended with which they strongly disagree.

Individual Education Plans

IEPs are slowly becoming a part of every school’s reality as teachers and parents up and down the country attempt to get to grips with them. Graydon urges people not to make them too complicated to begin with. “Start simple’ she says ‘ and build gradually on them, as you get a closer understanding of the child’s development and learning abilities” Again, we have yet to see definitive guidelines from the National Council for Special Education on IEPs – something which is urgently required if children are not to continue languishing in school classrooms without a proper framework within which either to learn or to integrate with their peers. The Special Education Needs Officer (contactable through the NCSE itself) for each school’s catchment area can convene a full IEP team which should involve parents, psychologist, teacher, resource teacher, SNA, therapeutic professionals, service provider and other experts as necessary. The IEP should be focused on the child’s educational profile within the curriculum matched to the results of the assessment and it should cover curricular, extra-curricular and social aspects of school life with realistic objectives set in all areas – not just on reading, writing and arithmetic. ‘And remember’ Graydon says ‘the IEP is not set in stone. It’s always possible to revisit the plan if it turns out not to be working in some respects. Regular reviews will be important and it’s essential to plan ahead for major changes such as changing schools or moving on to secondary school. Secondary education needs to be thought about well in advance so that an orderly and appropriate transition is set up for the child.’

Graydon concluded her talk by telling a story about the duck, the squirrel and the eagle who attended school together. It was agreed that flying, climbing and swimming would all be on the curriculum and that they would all attempt to do everything. The duck excelled in swimming but was not very good at running and climbing. She had to stay behind each day to catch up on running and climbing which made her very tired and so she her swimming abilities began to suffer too. The squirrel was great at climbing and running but could not get the hang of swimming which made him feel terrible. The eagle was the problem child who was brilliant at climbing, though he used his own particular methods of getting up and down trees. The moral of the story is: a duck is a duck, a squirrel is a squirrel and an eagle is an eagle and we should simply respect the differences between them.

NB – the next WCPAG evening is being held at the Parkway Hotel Dunmanway on the 12th of October on the theme of integrating and including children with SEN in mainstream schools. Speakers include: William Kinsella, psychologist and lecturer at UCD; Martin Clancy, school principal who has done terrific work on including children with SEN in his school; Caroline Dwyer, a parent who has had severe problems securing SEN services for her children and Seamus Greene of the National Parents & Siblings Alliance. Be there or be square. Contact Mags O’ Donoghue on 028 31411.