Alan Dyson

The Impact of Placing Pupils with Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools on the Achievement of Their Peers.

Background Over the past 20 years or so policy and practice on the education of children with special educational needs (SEN) has been aimed at placing increasing numbers of children in a mainstream school environment. Although this policy has been supported in principle by many teachers, parents and local authority officers, there has been much less agreement about whether this principle can be realized in practice, and even if it can, about what the impacts might be on the achievements of pupils with SEN in mainstream schools and, in particular, on their peers. Purpose This paper discusses the key findings from a systematic review of the literature carried out by the Inclusion Review Group, on behalf of the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information (EPPI)-Centre, the purpose of which was to review research evidence on whether the placement of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) within mainstream schools has an impact on academic and social outcomes for pupils without SEN. Design and methods The methodology followed the procedures adopted by the EPPI-Centre. Having agreed on the inclusion and exclusion criteria for studies that could be included in the review, an initial pool of 7137 papers were identified through electronic databases. After having screened all their titles and/or abstracts and having marked out possible papers to be included in the review, 119 paper copies were obtained—all of which were read by one or more of the authors of this paper. This led to a further reduction to 26 studies that were subjected to the EPPI data extraction process and synthesis. Conclusions Overall, the findings suggest that there are no adverse effects on pupils without SEN of including pupils with special needs in mainstream schools, with 81% of the outcomes reporting positive or neutral effects. Despite concerns about the quality of some of the studies that were reviewed and the fact that the great majority were carried out in the USA, these findings should bring some comfort to headteachers, parents and local authority officers around the world at a time when concerns have been raised about the problems that schools face in responding to the twin agenda of becoming more inclusive and, at the same time, raising the achievements of all their pupils.

Inclusion and achievement in mainstream schools

This paper considers the key findings of a DfES‐funded study that explored the relationship between achievement and inclusion in mainstream schools in England. The methodology involved a statistical analysis of nationally held data on all pupils at the end of key stages 1–4, together with a series of site visits to ‘inclusive’ mainstream schools. These were carried out in order to explore school processes that might explain how some schools can manage to be both highly achieving and inclusive. Findings indicate that there is a small, but for all practical purposes, insubstantial relationship between inclusion and academic achievement at the school level although there is also a large degree of variation suggesting strongly there are other factors within a schools make up, rather than its degree of inclusivity, that impact on the average academic achievements of its pupils. This was confirmed from the analysis of the school site visits. The overall conclusion, therefore, is that mainstream schools need not be concerned about the potentially negative impact on the overall academic achievements of their pupils of including pupils with SEN in their schools.

Understanding inclusion and exclusion in the English competitive education system

In this article the processes of inclusion and exclusion are explored in one secondary school. The interplay between processes within the school and the competitive changes within the English education system that have increased exclusionary pressures on some students are examined. The school includes students with visual disabilities and others categorized as having ‘severe learning difficulties’. The emphasis, however, is on how the school responds to the diversity of all its students, the variations in their participation, the account taken of difference within lessons, how students are selected for ‘special support’ and the form this takes. The multiplicity of ‘organizational responses to diversity’, by categorizing students, dividing them by age, attainment, behaviour and interest, are analysed. We question the extent to which diversity of students is seen as an organizational problem rather than a potentially vast resource to support learning. ‘You can imply by all sorts of ways in the hidden curric...

Supporting pupils with special educational needs: issues and dilemmas for special needs coordinators in English primary schools

This paper reports the responses of Special Needs Co-ordinators (SENCOs) in primary schools to a survey undertaken in three local education authorities in the north-east of England. The role of the SENCO has been subject to increasing prescription and guidance. Although policy-makers would like SENCOs to take a more proactive role in the process of curriculum and school development, it has become clear that in making this transformation many are experiencing a number of difficulties. In comparing these difficulties to ones reported in a previous study the existence of a number of problems are highlighted which apparently remain stubbornly resistant to current advice and guidance.

Disproportionality in Special Needs Education in England

Unlike the United States, England does not have a special education system based on the identification of students as having disabilities of one or another type. Instead, the English system enables help to be provided to students on the basis of assessments of their individual “special educational needs.” The authors consider the implications of this position for the disproportional presence of students from different social groups in the special needs system. They argue that disproportionality is a reality in England, as in the United States, though it cannot be understood simply in relation to racial minorities. Nor, within a non-disability-based system, does it arise principally from the misidentification of students as having disabilities. Instead, it reflects broad educational and social inequalities. Disproportionality research, therefore, needs to concern itself with these inequalities.

Education and poverty: mapping the terrain and making the links to educational policy

Although there is widespread agreement that poverty and poor educational outcomes are related, there are different explanations about why that should be the case. The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual synthesis of some of the research literature on poverty and education. From our readings the debates cohere, to a greater or lesser extent, around three different foci: ones that focus on the individual and that we have termed the ‘micro‐level’; some that focus on ‘immediate social contexts’ that might be located in families, communities, schools and peer groups and that we have termed the ‘meso‐level’; and others again that focus on social structures and/or are linked to notions of power and inequality and that we have termed the ‘macro‐level’. In addition, the various literatures highlight a fundamental difference in the way they understood the role of education in producing what we might call the ‘good society’ – and hence what counts as ‘good education’. These two broad positions we have termed as functionalist and socially critical perspectives and together with the micro‐, meso‐ and macro‐foci provide a mapping framework by which we organise the literature and through which we examine a number of educational policy interventions in England that have focused on educational outcomes and disadvantage/poverty. The analysis suggests that perhaps too much policy intervention focuses on the more accessible and amenable meso‐level (and to lesser extent the micro‐level) with too little emphasis on the macro‐level. At the same time many interventions appear disjointed, often lack coherence and seem to eschew issues of power. Different ways of responding to these apparent deficiencies are explored through current developments and potential in full service extended schools and through notions of democratic pedagogy and governance possibilities suggestive of the ‘new localism’ agenda.

Inclusive education and schools as organizations

Inclusive schools have tended to be analysed from one of two perspectives: either as reified organizations with (relatively) stable characteristics which lead to their becoming ‘effective schools for all’; or as ‘sites’ in which micro-political and other policy processes intersect and (frequently) subvert attempts at inclusion. This paper presents acase study of an apparently inclusive school which, it suggests, cannot be understood fully from either of these perspectives. Instead, a third perspective is proposed which concerns itself with the enduring dilemmas faced by educators and the fundamental social and educational contradictions which those dilemmas illuminate. The implications of this alternative perspective for our understanding of inclusive schools are discussed.

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the Classification of Children With Disabilities Part II. Implementing Classification Systems in Schools

This article is the second in a 2-part synthesis of an international comparative seminar on the classification of children with disabilities. In this article, the authors discuss classification frameworks used in identifying children for the purpose of providing special education and related services. The authors summarize 7 papers that addressed aspects of disability classification in educational systems in the United States and the United Kingdom. They discuss current policies for determining which children receive special education services, the origins and evolution of these policies, and current dilemmas and challenges associated with classification schemes and the provision of special education. The authors also describe emerging data and possible models and practices that might be used in educational systems. They conclude with the recognition that both formal and informal educational classification systems will continue to be required within a system that must address the competing priorities of individual needs and the broader social and community goals of education. However, as was argued in the previous article, by understanding the mix of intentions that underpin these policies, as well as periodically reviewing the norms that underlie them, it may be possible to move classification to descriptors that can be used to efficiently and effectively define educational needs and distribute resources.

Education and disadvantage: the role of community‐oriented schools

The proposed development of extended schools in England is part of an international movement towards community‐oriented schooling, particularly in areas of disadvantage. Although on the face of it this movement seems like a common‐sense approach to self‐evident needs, the evaluation evidence on such schools is inconclusive. In order to assess the likelihood that community‐oriented schooling will have a significant impact on disadvantage, therefore, this paper analyses the rationale on which this approach to schooling appears to be based. It argues that community‐oriented schools as currently conceptualised have a focus on ‘proximal’ rather than ‘distal’ factors in disadvantage, underpinned by a model of social in/exclusion which draws attention away from underlying causes. They are, therefore, likely to have only small‐scale, local impacts. The paper suggests that a more wide‐ranging strategy is needed in which educational reform is linked to other forms of social and economic reform and considers the conditions which would be necessary for the emergence of such a strategy.

Full service extended schools and educational inequality in urban contexts—new opportunities for progress?

This paper examines the extent to which the UK governments full service extended schools programme has the capacity to ameliorate educational inequality in urban contexts. It starts by examining a variety of explanatory narratives for educational inequality in urban contexts in the UK and suggests that the dynamics of social exclusion created by urban decline has generated particular types of polarised urban communities whose analysis has often been decoupled from research on educational reform programmes in urban schools. The paper argues for the need to re‐couple educational process with the dynamics of urban context and suggests that the most recent educational policy development of full service extended schools (FSES) may present distinctive opportunities to complete such a synthesis. The paper then locates FSES within a broader set of government approaches that attempt to deal with social exclusion and educational disadvantage. It then draws on research conducted by the authors and others that has examined notions of FSES in the UK and beyond. It will argue that at present the evidence for the capacity of such an initiative to synthesise effectively educational process with the dynamics of urban context and hence resolve successfully the problems of educational inequality in such contexts is at best inconclusive.