The educational experiences of pupils with a Statement for special educational needs in mainstream primary schools: results from a systematic observation study

Abstract

Findings from the Deployment and Impact of Support Staff project showed that day-to-day support for pupils with special education needs (SEN) in mainstream UK schools is often provided by teaching assistants (TAs), instead of teachers. This arrangement is the main explanation for other results from the project, which found TA support had a more profound, negative impact on the academic progress of pupils with SEN than pupils without SEN. There is, however, surprisingly little systematic information on the overall support and interactions experienced by pupils with the highest levels of SEN attending mainstream schools (e.g. those with Statements). The Making a Statement project was designed to provide such a picture in state-funded primary schools in England (e.g. schools attended by children aged between five and 11). Extensive systematic observations were conducted of 48 pupils with Statements and 151 average-attaining ‘control’ pupils. Data collected over 2011/12 involved researchers shadowing pupils in Year 5 (nine- and 10-year olds) over one week each. The results, reported here, show that the educational experiences of pupils with Statements is strongly characterised by a high degree of separation from the classroom, their teacher and peers. A clear point to emerge was the intimate connection between TAs and the locations, in and away from the classroom, in which pupils with Statements are taught. The currency of Statements – a set number of hours of TA support – is identified as key factor in why provision leads to these arrangements, and appears to get in the way of schools thinking through appropriate pedagogies for pupils with the most pronounced learning difficulties.

Keywords:

• inclusion
• pupil experience
• Statement
• teaching assistants

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ayshea Craig and Alison McWhirter who collected much of the observation data and Paul Bassett who conducted many of the statistical analyses on which the analyses in this paper are based. We are indebted to the schools, staff and pupils who welcomed researchers into their classrooms to share a week in their lives, and to the local authority staff who facilitated our initial contacts with schools. The Making a Statement project was funded by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation. We are very grateful for their interest in this work and for funding the study.

Notes

1. In line with common usage, we use the term ‘teaching assistant’ to cover equivalent classroom-based paraprofessional roles, such as ‘learning support assistant’, ‘special needs assistant’ and ‘classroom assistant’. We also include ‘higher level teaching assistants’ in this definition.

2. All full-time equivalent teachers and support staff in publicly funded schools, including all local authority maintained schools and academies.

3. Pupils with MLD have much greater difficulty than their peers in acquiring basic literacy and numeracy skills and in understanding concepts. They may also have associated speech and language delay, lower self-esteem, lower levels of concentration and under-developed social skills, compared to pupils without SEN.

4. It is noted that whilst the same can be said for pupils with a Statement for BESD, effort was made to select pupils whose Statement also covered learning difficulties connected to BESD, and whose needs resembled, or were consistent with, those defined as having MLD.

5. Better Communications Research Programme. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/cedar/better/.

6. Researchers also coded the direction of interaction (e.g. adult-to-pupil; pupil-to-adult; peer-to-pupil; or pupil-to-peer).

7. Inter-rater reliability. Kappa scores for on-task and off-task behaviour were consistent between pairs of observers: 0.61 for R1 and R2; 0.60 for R1 and R3.