Leadership

Schools And Youth Mental Health: A Briefing On Current Challenges And Ways Forward

This joint report from school mental health organisation Minds Ahead and the education and youth think-tank LKMCo, concludes that a scheme modelled on Teach First should be set up in schools to train mental health specialists to work with young people.

The training would involve learning how to manage problems that children face at school such as “bullying, exam stress and low moods”.

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      string(5670) "56 Vol 2.2 n www.teachingtimes.comSchool Business Leadership BriefingSchool Leadership TodayThe Impact Of Integrated Children’sServices On The Scope, Delivery AndQuality Of Social Care Services For DeafChildren And Their FamiliesPublished byResearch commissioned for the National Deaf Children’sSociety (NDCS) by the University of Manchester, published inEvery Child journalSummarySocial care and child protection services across Englandare failing deaf children and their families. As a result,deaf children are more likely to be abused, suffer mentalhealth problems, struggle learning to read and becomeunemployed.This study of 57 local authorities suggests that almosttwo thirds are failing deaf children and their families, withdeaf children 3.4 times more likely to be abused and 40 percent having mental health problems.The research also shows that only 40 per cent oflocal authorities surveyed recognised deaf children as‘children in need’ and, even then, did not necessarilyprovide any services. On top of this, nearly half ofauthorities have no qualified social workers for deafchildren, and too many authorities showed an inabilityto act appropriately to tackle child protection issuesinvolving deaf children.The NDCS has had longstanding concerns that deafchildren and their families cannot access appropriate socialcare support including child protection services. This isdespite the fact that deaf children are recognised by law as‘children in need’ which means that social care agencies arelegally required to provide services for them.The society is now calling on the government to improvethe situation and ensure that a 2005 Department of Healthrecommendation, urging all Local Safeguarding ChildrenBoards to review their child protection arrangements fordeaf children, is carried out.A summary of all that’s new and relevant to education.Leadership BriefingReports updateSalt Review: Independent Review ofTeacher Supply for Pupils with Severe,Profound and Multiple LearningDifficulties (SLD and PMLD)Published byDCSFSummaryThe Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, EdBalls, has pledged more support for trainee teachers whowant to work with severely disabled children in response tothis major review of the supply and recruitment of teachersof children with severe profound and multiple learningdifficulties. The review by Toby Salt, commissioned by thegovernment in September 2009, called for more to be doneto attract and retain teachers who want to teach disabledchildren in special schools and mainstream schools. Keymeasures to extend the existing provision of support include:open discussions with Teach First to bring top graduatesinto schools, particularly special schools, allowing them togain the skills they need to teach severely disabled childrena new six-month specialist course for new teachersto enable them to be better prepared for their firstjob working with children with severe, profound andmultiple learning difficultiesnew arrangements to collect data on skilled teachers tomanage supply effectively for the futurenew training on teaching children with severe learningdifficulties will be developed by the TDA to ensure that everyteacher has access to the quality professional developmentmaterials that they need to develop their skills.Twenty-three recommendations cover recruitment andretention, initial teacher training, increasing special school/setting placements, strengthening knowlesge about disabilities,removing barriers to qualification, continuing professionaldevelopment, and extending existing school clusters.nnnn57www.teachingtimes.com n Vol 2.2School BusinessLeadership BriefingThe E-Skills ManifestoPublished byE-skills UKSummaryMajor employers, including BA, Logica, IBM and HP, havejoined together with E-skills UK, the sector skills council forbusiness and information technology, to publish The E-SkillsManifesto. This sets out their recommendations on how toe-skill the workforce to create what they call sustainableeconomic growth. These include calls to radically improveIT-related education, provide practical help for companiesto innovate and increase productivity, and ensure thatgovernment policy reflects the strategic importance oftechnology.Technology holds the key to innovation and globalcompetitiveness across the whole economy, and willunderpin the majority of future job creation in the westernworld. Half of Europe’s productivity gains in recent yearsare attributable to IT, which is at the heart of new economysectors from low carbon to biotechnology to space.Research shows that the technology professionalworkforce continued to grow throughout the recentrecession. Growing at four times the UK average for thecoming decade, 110,000 new people a year will be neededto enter IT careers. In addition, IT literacy skills are also now aprerequisite for employment for everyone, with 92 per centof new recruits required to have skills in the use of IT.The report says that economic growth is needed tocreate jobs for the future and produce the tax revenueto fund world-class public services. To succeed, bothprivate and public sectors need to become moreinnovative and more productive. It is technology thatenables innovation and underpins productivity rightacross the economy.Partnership between employers and government is thekey to making sure the UK has the technology skills it needs.E-skills UK is placing particular focus on inspiring youngpeople about technology and improving their experienceof studying technology at school. We also need to makeemployer-backed IT degrees central"
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Leadership

Leadership Briefing Reports Update

24 May 2010

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      string(5794) "Donovan Miller.The Foundation runs a Cricket Academy for 16-24 year olds. Some are excluded from school, others are former offenders. There are gang members and Afghan refugees on the project. Young people struggling to find their way in life, who without assistance, might never fulfil their true potential. During their first year at the Academy, the youngsters work with coaches on a personal development plan that aims to help them become more employable. They get visits from local employers and careers advisers, whose staff talk to the young people about job hunting, CVs, courses and aspirations. They also take a cricket coaching course, and in year two, will coach their own community teams. When they do play cricket, coaches focus on how aspects of the game apply to wider life. Decision making, communication, leadership and cooperation take precedence over technique training. ‘It’s how and when you apply your skills that makes the difference,’ Donavan Miller says. Miller’s coaching style is more youth worker than school teacher. The young people thrive on the responsibility he affords them. As practice matches play out on Cricket 4 Change’s Plough Lane cricket ground, the youngsters take time for a laugh and a joke, to chill out while they’re waiting to bat and engage each other with a bit of good nature banter. When the game starts, however, they’re watching, thinking, making decisions about how to best get the upper hand. ‘Through cricket young people learn discipline, responsibility and how to set goals,’ Miller says. ‘We use what happens in the games to show young people the consequences of their actions, and how what they do affects others.’Chris Wright believes that sports provision targeted at health and wellbeing needs, would not just help students with diagnosable mental health issues, or people from poorer communities. ‘It could also be talented, high achieving students who have a high level of expectation around them, either from parents, teachers and peers, who suffer from mental health problems,’ he says.Wright adds that schools need to redefine the purpose of PE and sport, working out how best to use it to teach life skills. ‘For school leadership this is a cultural issue,’ he says, ‘to do with the emphasis schools place on the role of PE and the time they give to it. Schools are under pressure to devote more of their time, and their pupils’ time, to academia and testing. This determines how staff are performance managed and how schools are funded.’Schools, today, seem to have less belief in how PE can help them perform better. In a briefing paper to MPs before the recent election, the YST explained that less than one in five children meet the current recommended minimum physical activity guidelines. To combat this, they want schools to engage the least active through specialist provision.YST wants to see physical activity opportunities embedded into every school day. Every school, the charity believes, should have targeted programmes to engage the least active, while also looking at ways to increase the activity levels of all children. Evidence, they say, shows that increasing the physical activity levels of the least active produces the greatest reduction in chronic disease.YST would also like to see a stronger role for Ofsted in ensuring health and wellbeing provision in schools remains high profile. Current guidance should be strengthened, the Trust argues, and additional measures added, so inspectors can measure explicitly, pupils’ all-round physical and emotional wellbeing. This, the charity says, should be included in school league tables alongside other accountability measures.The Youth Sport Trust also wants the government to include children’s physical activity indications in the Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) The PHOF, produced by the Department of Health, sets out a vision for public health with desired outcomes and indicators. The current framework measures and provides targets for adult levels of physical activity, but not children’s. 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Inclusion

Good Sport, Bad Sport and Children's Mental Health

17 Oct 2017

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Leadership Briefing 5.06 ..."
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Leadership Briefing 5.06 (54)"
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      string(5664) "ResourceTHE IMPORTANCE OF TEACHINGOriginal DocumentThe Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper 2010. The government has signalled a return to traditional educational values in this new White Paper, which sets out wide-ranging plans for school reforms in England, with schools freed from the constraints of central Government direction and teachers placed firmly at the heart of school improvement.KeywordsTeaching, school reforms, improvement, training, discipline, Academies, funding, accountability, CPDSummaryThe schools White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, sets out a radical reform programme for the schools system, with schools freed from the constraints of central Government direction and teachers placed firmly at the heart of school improvement.Drawing heavily on evidence from the world’s best education systems, it outlines how we will raise the prestige of the teaching profession, and how we will transform the quality of initial training and continuing professional development. And it commits Government to cutting away unnecessary duties, processes, guidance and requirements.The White Paper also sets out:· powers for teachers to improve discipline, and trialling a new approach to exclusions· a vision for a transformed school curriculum supported by rigorous assessment and qualifications· more academies and free schools and a strong strategic role for local authorities· changes to school performance tables, Ofsted inspections and governance· a fairer funding system including a pupil premium to channel more money to the most deprived children· school-led school improvement replacing top-down initiatives.New teaching schools, on the model of teaching hospitals, would be set up as “showcases” for good teaching. This would allow for more on the job training.Would-be teachers would face an aptitude test to assess their suitability for the job and the number of high quality graduates becoming teachers would be doubled.Teachers would be freed up through a radical reduction in the size of the obligatory part of the national curriculum.There will be further efforts to persuade people who have had successful careers elsewhere to go into teaching through a version of the current Teachfirst scheme, to be called Teachnext.And science and maths graduates who become teachers will have their training fees subsidised, as would ex-servicemen.The government will make it easier for schools to exclude disruptive children without the fear of seeing excluded children reinstated over their heads. But heads would have to ensure that there was suitable provision available for them elsewhere and fund it.Teachers will be given anonymity when facing allegations of wrongdoing and the need for 24 hours notice to be given ahead of detentions would be removed.A new benchmark for school achievement under what will be called an English baccalaureate is being set. This means pupils will be encouraged to take GCSEs in English, maths, a science, a modern language and a humanities subject.There will also be higher baseline targets for underachievement. Schools will be considered to be “underperforming” if fewer than 35% of pupils achieve five good GCSEs (those graded A* to C).Main Points:Teaching and leadershipThe government will:· Continue to raise the quality of new entrants to the teaching profession, by: ceasing to provide Department for Education funding for initial teacher training for those graduates who do not have at least a 2:2 degree; expanding Teach First; offering financial incentives to attract more of the very best graduates in shortage subjects into teaching; and enabling more talented career changers to become teachers.· Reform initial teacher training, to increase the proportion of time trainees spend in the classroom, focusing on core teaching skills, especially in teaching reading and mathematics and in managing behaviour.· Develop a national network of Teaching Schools on the model of teaching hospitals to lead the training and professional development of teachers and head teachers, and increase the number of National and Local Leaders of Education – head teachers of excellent schools who commit to working to support other schools.· Sharply reduce the bureaucratic burden on schools, cutting away unnecessary duties, processes, guidance and requirements, so that schools are free to focus on doing what is right for the children and young people in their care.· Recognise that schools have always had good pastoral systems and understand well the connections between pupils’ physical and mental health, their safety, and their educational achievement and that they are well placed to make sure additional support is offered to those who need it.BehaviourThe government will:· Increase the authority of teachers to discipline pupils by strengthening their powers to search pupils, issue same day detentions and use reasonable force where necessary.· Strengthen head teachers’ authority to maintain discipline beyond the school gates, improve exclusion processes and empower head teachers to take a strong stand against bullying, especially racist, homophobic and other prejudice-based bullying.· Change the current system of independent appeals panels for exclusions, so that they take less time and head teachers no longer have to worry that a pupil will be reinstated when the young person concerned has committed a serious offence.· Trial a new approach to exclusions where schools have new responsibilities for the ongoing education and care of excluded children.· Improve the"
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Leadership

The Importance of Teaching

25 Nov 2010

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      string(5657) "48Vol 1.3 n www.teachingtimes.comPolicy/ResearchEvery Child JournalEvery year, the number of children identified ashaving special educational needs rises. Expendituregrows to match. But does the £5.1billion investedlast year (up from £4.1billion in 2005-06) offer valuefor money?Ofsted and the National Strategies say no, and thestatistics support them. Children with SEN don’t seemto do any better year-on-year in SATs or GCSEs, despitethe increased spend. Even though literacy and numeracydifficulties are the most common type of SEN, and schoolsspend heavily on supporting children with these difficulties,the percentage of children achievingbelow level three in English and/ormaths at the end of key stagetwo has bumped along the8% mark since 1998. Insecondary schools, onlyaround 50% of pupils whohave SEN and who got alevel four in science, mathsor English at the endEarly support for children struggling withSEN can save thousands of pounds helpingthem at secondary school – so why aren’tmore schools investing in specialist tutors,asks Jean Gross?SEN: Are we gettingvalue for money?www.teachingtimes.com n Vol 1.3Policy/Research Every Child Journal49of key stage two (so can be assumed ‘intellectually capable’of achieving at age-related levels) achieve level five by theend of key stage three.Nor does our investment in SEN appear to have hadmuch effect on behaviour difficulties. About 70% ofpermanently excluded children are on special needs registers.Investment in SEN could have made a difference inpersonal and life skills. But we have no evidence in this area,since we have no agreed means of assessing and recordingchildren’s development in these areas. We do know, from theOfsted ‘Tell Us’ survey, that pupils with SEN are less likely tosay they have good relationships with friends and very muchmore likely to report that they have been bullied.Is there a better way?If the evidence of impact of SEN spend is slender, it isimportant to look at schools which have reduced theirnumber of children with persistent literacy, numeracy,speech and language or social, emotional and behaviouraldifficulties. These schools tend to rely on highly trainedspecialists – specialist teachers, expert mental health workersor speech and language therapists.Most schools do not spend their SEN budgets onspecialists, but on in-class support from teaching assistants.Research has shown that children of all ages receivingsupport of this nature make less progress than children whodo not receive such support but are otherwise similar (that is,matched for SEN status, prior attainment, behaviour, socialdisadvantage and all the other factors that could have ledthem to need in-class support in the first place).These findings, reported by Peter Blatchford andhis colleagues in the last issue of this magazine, makeuncomfortable reading. But most headteachers will still say:“My TAs are wonderful!”And so they are – this low-paid group of workersrepresent some of schools’ most dedicated staff, skilled inmaking warm relationships with children and much valuedby class and subject teachers.So what’s going on? Research shows that TAs tend tomake children dependent – rather than teach them strategiesto manage their own learning.An example comes from a story by David Moore, aninspector, who observed a secondary class being taughtabout the spinning jenny. The worksheets were difficult, andthe TA (who had a physics degree) was encouraging a boyto ask the teacher what they meant. “Don’t get worried”, theboy told her, “I never do”. When the inspector asked himwhat he meant, he said: “Cos she’s here to do the work forme, in’t she?”TAs focus more on activities than on learning outcomes.If the child finishes the worksheet, that’s a success. Thepresence of a TA has also been shown reduce the level ofcontact targeted children have with their peers, and vastlyreduce the amount of contact they have with their teachers.One headteacher said: “Often our children who find ithardest to learn are working with the least skilled part of theworkforce”. Class and subject teachers, knowing that a childhas support, will turn their attention elsewhere. In affluentareas, where many TAs are graduates, this may not matter.In disadvantaged areas, where special educational needs aremost prevalent and TAs often have lower educational levels,it matters a great deal.The impact of specialist expertiseThe Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts programmesgive examples of the results that can be achieved withspecialist teachers. In 2008-09, over half of all childreninvolved in Every Child Counts had been identified by theirschools as having SEN. But as a result of an average 20 hoursof one-to-one help from a teacher with one year’s specialisttraining, two in three of these children achieved level two orabove in maths at the end of key stage one. None had beenpredicted to do so.Results for the Every Child a Reader programme aresimilar. About 57% of children on the programme have SEN,but nearly 80% catch up with their peers after an averageof 40 hours of daily one-to-one tuition from a highly trained‘Reading Recovery’ teacher.These results appear to be lasting. Researchers fromthe Institute of Education (The impact of Reading Recoverythree years after intervention) monitored the progress of 73very disadvantaged children who took part in Every Child aReader in 2005 when they were in year one. Even though thechildren had wide-ranging problems associated with generalability, language, behaviour and home environment,"
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Special Needs

SEN: Are we getting value for money?

8 Mar 2010