Paces

Xavier support

I have this week sent the following letter to Ms J Haddrell, Assistant Director General, Department of Education, Training & The Arts, Queensland, Australia.

Whilst fully respecting the importance of the issues Andrew rightly raises and the contributions to the short but important debate that followed, I decided that some sort of action was required.  I had an acknowledgement from the Northern Ireland Assembly re Buddy Bear,  but haven't heard further news as to whether they won the financial backing needed.  I shall be interested to follow the Xavier story further.

Most of all, I would like to contribute to a growing sense of confidence in the international conductive education community that, no matter what our internal and professional debates within conductive education, we can collaborate across the world through the internet in ways that we can barely begin to imagine.

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23 June 2008

Ms J Haddrell
Assistant Director General
Department of Education, Training & The Arts
Level 22, Education House
30 Mary Street
Brisbane QLD 4000
Australia

Dear Ms Haddrell

Re: Xavier Special Education Unit

You may be surprised to receive a letter from England in the matter of the future of Xavier Special Education Unit. However, I trust you will not find the communication unwelcome.

My simple purpose is to draw to your attention two very recent scholarly publications from the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, of which Australia is a member nation.

The first, Evidence in Education: Linking Research and Policy (OECD 2007), based in studies initiated by a 1995 CERI report and centering on a series of international workshops held between April 2004 and July 2006, addresses the increasing pressure felt by all within the education community for greater accountability and effectiveness and also the increasing prominence given by governments to evidence-based research in setting education policy and in allocating public resources.

The second, Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science (OECD 2007), the outcome of an international CERI project launched in 1999, aims at encouraging collaboration between policy makers, researchers and the education community “to open new pathways to improve educational research, policies and practices”:

We are all familiar with the importance of peer-reviewed, evidence-based practice in medicine, and the thoroughness with which theoretical and scientific knowledge are fused with professional experience. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive of modern medical practice without its emphatic foundation in scientific research across a range of disciplines.

Like medicine, education relies for its theoretical foundation (the understanding of learning and the practice of teaching) on other disciplines, such psychology, philosophy and sociology.

Unlike medicine, however, the theoretical foundation of education is “pre-scientific” – which is to say it lacks as yet either predictive or explanatory power. How children learn is not sufficiently understood to offer a guarantee of educational outcomes. The practice of education is still an art, not a science. The understanding of learning and practice of teaching are not as yet underpinned by a secure base of scientific and theoretical knowledge. This applies as much to the learning and teaching of children in mainstream schools as in special education.

Clearly, one conclusion might be that “more research is necessary”. In the interim, another conclusion might be that for as long as we must depend upon the judgments of professionals and parents as to what works and what does not, we should value, and even celebrate, the schools we have that command the support of these same professionals and parents.

From the late 1940s, a Hungarian physician, Andres Peto, elaborated his theoretical and professional insights into learning and the practice of teaching to create a unified system of education of children with motor disorders now known in the English-speaking world, perhaps losing something in the translation, as Conductive Education. 

The Executive Summary of Understanding the Brain states: “It is possible to take advantage of the brain’s potential for plasticity and to facilitate the learning process. This calls for holistic approaches which recognise the close interdependence of physical and intellectual well-being and the close interplay of the emotional and cognitive” – precisely the position taken by Andras Peto and conductive education.

There is, of course, much more to be said about conductive education as a unified system and, speaking personally, I might well wish to debate theoretical differences with the professionals and parents at Xavier Special Education Unit. Nevertheless, the work at Xavier is internationally known, through conferences, congresses and reports. Their work brings recognition and credit to Queensland and enhances the reputation of Queensland Education.

The OECD, in its reports, confirms both how much in education practice is still to be supported by research evidence and also the challenging but still elusive potential being proposed by neuroscientists.

A bold, innovative and forwarding looking education authority might do a great deal worse that to cherish embryonic education systems and practices which appear to offer ways forward, such as Xavier Special Education Unit; to work in partnership with those committed parents and professionals; and together to seek ways of better integrating the work at Xavier into the mainstream.  Who knows, Queensland Education might consider its most valuable contribution to such a partnership to be funding a post for a full-time conductor and contributing to a research project?

Yours sincerely

Norman Perrin
Chief Executive
Paces Shefield

Special educational needs initial teacher training

An informative table comparing provision in 20 countries for the training of teachers of children with special educational needs can be downloaded from the INCA website. The countries in the table are listed in blocks: ‘UK and Ireland’ (5), ‘Europe’ (8) and ‘the rest of the world’ (7).

Of the 20 countries, 9 offer "specialist initial teacher training": Germany, Spain, Hungary, Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, Singapore, USA. 

18 of the 20 countries are said to offer "post qualification specialisation", the exceptions being Hungary and Spain.

14 of the 20 offer some element of "Special needs education [as] part of initial teacher training".

2 of the 20 rely solely on "post qualification specialisation" as the only means of training teachers of pupils with special educational needs.

In addition to the Table, for each country it is possible to  discover, by means of a simple search facility, a wealth of information about arrangements for the training of teachers of children with special educational needs.  For instance, I copy below an extract from the information on England.

As I read this extract, I am struck by (i) the intellectual and academic poverty of the "basic knowledge and skills in the field of special educational needs" required of all newly qualified teachers; (ii) the question as to whether there is any such "field" as that of "special educational needs" and (iii) a curiosity as to the reason why teachers of children with sensory impairments - and not other disabilities - are required to obtain a "recognised specialist qualification within three years of appointment" as a Mandatory Qualification. 

Is it fair and reasonable to conclude from this that when newly qualified teachers in England (and presumably the rest of the UK and Northern Ireland) begin their first day of teaching in a special school for children with cerebral palsy, they are largely bereft of the slightest clue what they are doing and why?   

As I read this extract, I am also reminded that Conductors have undertaken 3-4 years of specialist initial teacher training to work with children with motor disorders before setting a first step in a classroom in earnest.

In The Times today is the story ("How could my boy be racist") of a boy with Down's Syndrome being charged by the police with assault and racial abuse after an incident at a college between him and an Asian girl also with special needs. Remarkably, The Times allocates nearly two whole pages (minus a very large photograph) to the story. The parents comment on the lack of training and of specialist knowledge of children with Down's Syndrome. This is supported by David Congdon, Head of Campaigns and Policy at Mencap:  ".... it is surprising and concerning that more attention has not been given to the support needed by suspects with learning disabilities" and "Better training about the needs of people with a learning disability would equip police officers when dealing with suspects."

I would stress that my point here is not to criticise the police generally nor those in this case specifically. Indeed, the parents of the boy are reported as saying that the officers who first interviewed the boy "were very pleasant". 

But in the light of this report and the extract quoted from the INCA research, I cannot help but wonder: why would a society that decides against the initial training of specialist teachers to work with pupils with special needs regard as a proper, effective and efficient allocation of scarce resources to the specialist training of police officers?  In a similar way, I once asked my daughters home carers what they new about cerebral palsy. I'll leave you to guess the answer.

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Extract from the 'England' section of the INCA database:

7.5.2 Types of training institutions and courses

There is no longer any initial teacher training (ITT) focusing on special educational needs as a specialist subject. All initial teacher training courses in England must provide all student teachers with basic knowledge and skills in the field of special educational needs (SEN).  Requirements have been introduced to ensure that all newly qualified teachers are:

• Familiar with the "Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs" (see section 1.2.1.)
• Able to identify students with SEN in their classes and know where to obtain help to give positive and targeted support. 

SEN teachers are usually classroom teachers with several years of teaching experience.

Specialist SEN training

In addition to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), teachers of classes of students with hearing impairment (HI), visual impairment (VI) or multi-sensory impairment (MSI) must, in addition, obtain a recognised specialist qualification within three years of appointment.  This qualification must be approved by the Secretary of State as a so-called Mandatory Qualification (MQ). Institutions are approved to award MQs. 

The First Step is Failure

One blog I link to regularly is Sharp Brains: "Your window into the emerging field of science-based Brain Fitness, its implications for Health & Wellness, Education, Leadership, and more."  It challenges me to think 'outside of the box' of my prejudices and much, much further than my intellectual "comfort zone".

With the stimulating Author Speaks Series Sharp Brains is seeking "to provide a platform for leading scientists and experts writing high-quality brain-related books to reach a wide audience".  So far, six guest authors have contributed essays or interviews.

One such contribution is "The First Step Is Failure" by Joanne Jacobs. I was hooked the moment I read: "It’s OK to start school not knowing how to read. It’s not OK to stay that way." In other words, if education, learning, schooling is not transformational, it's nothing.  Joanne Jacobs message is that: "Schools won’t improve until administrators and teachers can admit the problems, analyze what’s going wrong and try new strategies."

These couple of sentences chase all sorts of thoughts round my brain. Not least, I minded of those reported first contacts with conductive education by disability activists who rejected conductive education on the grounds that it did not accept disable children for themselves but sought to challenge them to change, when what the disabled activists would have everyone do is see the need for change only in our environment and culture. (I will try to search out a link).

The quote above, about reading, follows: "I remember a children’s book about a badger (or suchlike) starting school who’s afraid to tell his teacher he can’t read. In the denouement, the teacher assures the badger that she “loves” him “just the way he is.” Surely not. Teachers can’t love all their students in any meaningful way. And the whole enterprise of schooling is about changing children from what they are, such as illiterate, to something better, such as literate."

Parents. Conductive Education. Western Australia

Trevor and Charmaine White have a campaigning weblog with the 'headline' mission statement: "To find a cure for Mitochondrial Disease and Save Our Son". Brave people whom we can only wish every success. Let's hope they avoid the burn out that afflicts so many parents who set out on similar courses. I have lost count of the number of times over the past years that I have wondered whether, if I had known what I know now, I would have ever have begun the journey. (And that is no counsel of despair or defeatism. Just reality. "KBO" was apparently how Churchill signed off his transatlantic phone calls with Roosevelt. "Keep buggering on.") 

Trevor and Charmaine also have a website, which is just as well. There are many disabilities and conditions that I know nothing whatsoever about. Mitochondrial disease is one.

Apart from yet another set of brave parents battling "the system", the posting on their blog caught my attention in other ways too:

- Trevor and Charmaine's enthusiasm for conductive education, and for an unexpected condition;
- their understanding that CE is a school-based system of learning - near enough, I reckon; especially compared with those who still use the language of therapy;
- that the mainstreaming funding for the CE programme is under threat sounds all-too-familiar;

But two thoughts, especially, struck me: the first, here is another powerful parents' blog, like "Terrible Palsy"; where are the blogs from UK parents setting out their battles, for instance, for conductive education for their children?  I'd be delighted to learn of any. The second, how many CE programmes are there across the world, with mainstream or Government funding. It might be interesting (and politically useful in campaigns) to have a list. How might we go about compiling such a list?

I'd like to end this post with what drives parents, time after time - Hope.

"Its amazing how much Jack has developed in 18 Months, from the first day he attended the program until today. I literally have a new little boy, one who is learning to do things for himself unaided. We are a long way from walking but we hope he may crawl this year."

Trevor, Charmaine - my wife and I said the same 20 years ago, when we first encountered conductive education, the same Hope.  I have only this to tell you: it's not about the walking, it's about "the new little boy" Jack is, about his "learning", about doing "things for himself". From one parent campaigner to two others, my very best wishes to you both  - and to Jack too.

The Wrong-Headedness of Educated People

Two cases.
First case.
Dr Bethan Marshall, writing in today's Independent, argues that 'punctuation does not matter'. "It's the meaning that matters," she concludes.  She makes much of her article starting with the one word sentence, "Punctuation", reminding the reader of Dickens magnificent verbless opening to Bleak House, the first paragraph of which begins: "London. Michaelmas term lately over and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall" and the second that famously begins, "Fog everywhere."  I likewise began this piece with two  sentences each comprising a single phrase. Deliberately. And that's the irony. Deliberation implies control. Control implies a learned craft. Meaning is conveyed, in part, by control of punctuation. And Dr Bethan Marshall's article exhibits every evidence of sophisticated control of punctuation for her purposes of style and meaning. And just where did she learn that control?

I admit guilt, here. As one who started teaching English after the so-called 'summer of love' and "Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Min!" in Grosvenor Square, I embraced enthusiastically the notion that teaching English was about 'expression' and 'poetry'; that grammar and spelling and punctuation mattered not a jot. But that was forty years, a life-time ago. Since when the Soviet Union has imploded.  And leading hippies long since moved into corporate management.  So what is shocking is that Dr Bethan Marshall is today a lecturer at one of the country's leading universities, King's College, London (that's "King's" with the apostrophe. of course, before the final 's' and not after it, which would have a wholly different meaning). More yet, she is a lecturer in English Education.  If punctuation does not matter, then it's place in education, in schooling, in the curriculum does not matter, or matters less (less than previously or less than 'expression' or 'meaning'). How then are our children, our pupils, to learn to control the written language, some as successfully as Dr Bethan Marshall?

Second case.
An LEA SEN officer, defending, to a parent, the naming on a child's statement of special educational needs, of an LEA school rather than the parent's preferred conductive education non-maintained special school, asserted that the 'system' in this country was first to recommend the placement of children in LEA schools.

This, I do not believe to be so. The law, as I as a lay person understand it, requires firstly, that the needs of each individual child, for whom a statement of special educational needs might be appropriate, be individually assessed; and that, secondly, the means of meeting those needs by specified. Only then, should the question of the naming of the appropriate school be considered. (And, so strongly is the emphasis on meeting the child's individual needs, that in undertaking this process, an LEA cannot refer to nor apply  general "policies".)

In that regard, the law further requires LEAs to provide parents with a list of all potentially appropriate schools, the list including maintained, non-maintained  and independent schools; that the LEA should have regard to the parents' choice of school, provided, among other considerations, that the parents' choice, if not of an LEA school, should not be an excessive use of public funds.

Nothing in this process, which has been legislated for over the past 10 or so years, should leave any LEA officer asserting (as may once upon a time have been the case) that the LEA is required to place children first at maintained schools. The Law now directs LEAs to meet the child's needs and consider parental choice, if such can be achieved without draining the public purse.

Two cases. What is the connection between them?  These are educated people. More than that, they are people with responsibility for the education and learning and upbringing of others. And they both have an opinion - for in both cases that is all it can be - that is wilfully wrong-headed, to put it no more strongly.

What is to be done? No doubt Independent readers will write to the Editor and leave comments on the newspaper's website.  How the SEN officer might be challenged will be a different story. Partly because the former is 'on the record' and the latter 'off the record', just a comment in a phone conversation that can be denied. Parent's word against an SEN officer's word.  But it is worrying, nonetheless.

Rambling on about the value of education

Walk with me a while down an educational by-way.

The Britain media, and politicians both national and local, are currently obsessed with parents who have sufficient interest in their children's education and upbringing as to be particular about the school their child should attend. Far from being praised or held up as exemplars to others who have less interest in their child, as one might expect, such parents are vilified.  The popular term of abuse is "middle class".

The other evening I was chatting with my Dad. His Mum, my grandmother, died when she was just 50, of a massive epileptic seizure. He once told me that he witnessed the first time she had a seizure: she fell, burning her hand in an open fire. She was an amateur pianist and occasional piano teacher. She would have been about 30 years old then. That was about the time, too, that her husband, my grandad, finally left home, leaving her as a single parent of five children. The local Council, bless their cotton socks, continually wanted to take her children from her and put them in care. She fought, by all accounts, with every inch of her being. Despite the odds against them, she inculcated in her children a love for learning, education and school; all five children in turn passed the matriculation exam to go on from the village primary school to the local grammar school in the town. My grandmother is buried in an unmarked grave, somewhere in a Devon village parish churchyard. There were no funds for a headstone. Parish poor. Working class.

My Mum's Dad, my grandfather, died when I was in my final year at University. A Staffordshire miner. He died of pneumoconiosis - 'Miner's Black Lung". I remember that lovely man bent over with the pain of coughing and the straining to drag oxygen into his clogged lungs. He'd have been a couple of years younger than I am now, when he died. Sometimes, when I'm out on my bike, I remember him pedaling the couple of miles or so to work at 'the Michelin'.  Working class. Proud of it. Yet I remember, too, (and this was what I was actually talking with my Dad about) the conviction in the whole family of the importance of education and me getting into a good local school. (I can tell stories of learning italic handwriting through long hours of copy-practice at night-time at home, but you don't need to know more. I am not romantic about it.) When I in turn came to matriculation, the 11+ (for which, of course, I and others practiced for hours on past papers at home), I remember the importance placed on the list of school choices. And so for my younger brother and sisters when their turn came. Education was important. Schooling was important. Choice of schools was important. And I do not remember that we were in any way unusual among neighbours and other families. How could we be? The demand for education and schooling for all children was a nineteenth century working class-driven ambition that lasted well into the mid-twentieth century at least.

When I started teaching in the 1970s, there were still in Sheffield and probably just about in every other city and town, "ESN Schools" - schools for the "educationally sub-normal".  What went on there I do not know. I do know that when I came to Sheffield in 1976, I learned (for some reason that escapes me now, I had no personal or professional interest) that Sheffield had a national reputation for the quality of education in its "special schools".

Walk with me know just a little further.

I was reading tonight of a "scientifically rigorous and independent evaluation of the effectiveness of conductive education and to help guide parents, cerebral palsy care providers and policy-makers" in which
"Functional and school readiness outcomes are assessed by independent physical therapists and through parental questionnaires. Data from Gross Motor Function Measure, Quality FM, Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory, Manual Ability Classification System, Communication Function Classification System, Devereux Early Childhood Assessment and other qualitative reports will be analyzed using various statistical methods."

What I wanted for each of my own three children as they in turn approached schooling milestones, was a good education, in a good school.  What I wanted for my daughter with cerebral palsy and want, now that she is an adult beyond the reach of mainstream educators, is for all children with cerebral palsy, a good education in a good school.

It is now nearly 20 years since I first was introduced to conductive education. Twenty years in which I have yet to find a comparable system and philosophy of education. Without doubt, conductive education needs the exposure to "scientifically rigorous and independent evaluation" of its effectiveness, for the benefit of parents choosing a school for their child and for policy-makers so that they can remove the blinkers of tradition and entrenched practice.

I want a good education. I want good schooling. Let me be very simple. I am not talking about "interventions"; nor "therapy"; I am talking about "education", "schooling" - the same as for my other two children; as my family wished for me; as my Grandmother wished for her children; as I do for all children with cerebral palsy.  Can we not talk about 'education', quite simply, for children with cerebral palsy? Can we not devise the necessary research into the effectiveness of conductive education as 'education', where 'education' has the same meaning as it does for other children?  Would research, then, into the effectiveness of conductive education - any education - or into "conductive upbringing", be led by a paediatrician however distinguished and honoured, or undertaken by colleagues, from a University Department of Epidemiology? Would assessments be undertaken by "independent physical therapists"?

The walk is getting tiring. I am older now than when I road my bicycle around the Essex countryside as a teenager. But the other day, as I tried to summarise an especially difficult piece of writing, I realised that I was able to do so, thanks to a man who was then close to retirement, who we tormented mercilessly, as he tried to teach a bunch of 13-year old boys how to do a proper precis.  Would we, should we, could we, attempt to research the effectiveness of any "education" or "upbringing" after a trial of just "one four week session" when the effects, the benefits, of education can appear a lifetime later?

Conductive education seeks to teach 'orthofunction', a term that I am not clever enough to comprehend fully, but it means something like the learned capacity for adaptability to one's environment (the important thing is to recognise this as a dynamic; not as a static set of achieved attributes; a journey, if you like, not a having-arrived). My daughter is now an adult in her mid-twenties. Quite recently, the manager of the short-stay place she goes to remarked that she and the others who attended the "Leaping the Void"  adult conductive education programme at Paces were so "positive" in everything they did.

They say you can spot an independent school boy. Perhaps, in the same sort of way, exposure to conductive education, good education, good schooling, produces adults with cerebral palsy who are "positive" about themselves, able to adapt dynamically to wherever they find themselves?  My point is not that independent schools are good; nor even that children with cerebral palsy can only succeed in life through conductive schooling and upbringing. My point is that (unless you take a purely mechanical, functional, test-obsessed view of education as currently in mainstream UK schools), how can you ever assess the effectiveness of education unless you do so over long periods of time?  How can the effectiveness of education be assessed by paediatricians and therapists and, God help us, epidemiologists? ("The branch of medicine that deals with the study of the causes, distribution and control  of disease in populations".)   

The traditional story of the elephant and the blind men is, I know, supposed to teach us the virtue of respecting others' opinions, views and perspectives; as each blind man felt a different part of the elephant, so each had a different, partial impression. Respect and tolerance. So my best wishes to the team from the Department of Epidemiology.  But sometimes I just want to say, I don't care what you think it is - it's an elephant! It's education! Can we just do some educational research? Can we just talk about the best education in the best schools for children with cerebral palsy? And what that would look like? And how it should be achieved? For once? Sometime soon?

"Child Advocate" - a new profession?

We recently had a 'Child Advocate' attend an Annual Review of a child with a statement of special educational needs. 

I intend no reflection on the Child Advocate's performance of her duty by raising the following queries:
1) By what Statutory authority or under what Statutory regulation does a 'Child Advocate' attend an annual review?  Nobody (except myself it seems) thought to ask this question. Perhaps everyone else knows the answer?
2) What training is necessary to become a 'Child Advocate'? What level of qualification is required to be accepted on a 'Child Advocate' training course? What qualification is awarded? Which institutions offer this training?
3) Is 'Child Advocate' a new profession?  If so, who employs them?

Should anyone reading this have answers, I would be most grateful.
BTW a search on Google under 'Child Advocate' and 'training' or 'profession', (search limited to the UK) reveals little or nothing of interest in connection with the above questions.

Potential barriers

Through the Office for Disability Issues, the Government has announced plans "to transform the lives of disabled people, including extra funding for organisations that are run by disabled people".

The ‘Independent Living Strategy’, a cross-government strategy which underlines the Government’s commitment to supporting disabled people to do the things non-disabled people take for granted, aims to increase choice and control for disabled people.

The independent living strategy sits alongside such other strategic documents such as  "Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People" and "Removing Barriers to Achievement" (the SEN strategy) that evidence a move towards a society in which "everybody is treated with dignity and respect and has the chance to fulfil their potential and unlock their talent."

This last quotation, about dignity and respect, potential and talent, is from the first statement in the Executive Summary of the new strategy. Gordon Brown uses a similar set of phrases in his "Prime Minister's Introduction": "everyone has the opportunity to fulfill their potential" "and barriers to access removed".

On the Standard's website, the SEN strategy is introduced with the phrase "The Strategy sets out the Government's vision for enabling children with special educational needs to realise their potential."

Now in the face of such evident earnestness of purpose and commitment, to ask questions about "potential" and "barriers" might seem like quibbles. Many, perhaps most, disabled people and their families will welcome the strategy and press on, rejoicing that at least there is still evidence of forward movement.

My point is not to gainsay that but to raise questions - I think quite serious questions: what do such phrases tell us about the writer's (and our) understanding of "potential", and about how we should go about achieving equality of dignity and respect?

It seems to me that common phrases, cliches even, such as "fulfill their potential" and "unlock their talent" betray, or reveal, an attitude to abilities that is commonly held, indeed underpins, for instance, teachers' everyday thinking and assumptions about pupils and their abilities - everyday assumptions since I was at school in the late 50s and early 60s at least; an assumption that, like IQ, "potential" and "talent" are fixed on the one hand and somehow internal or inside ourselves on the other, waiting to be metaphorically "unlocked".  Such attitudes, it seems to me, are solidly traditional - and stated, as here by the Prime Minister and those who draft Government strategy, without conscious thought about meaning.

What if our potential is not fixed, our abilities and talents not waiting locked inside ourselves waiting to be unlocked. What if our potential as individuals is dynamic, ever changing, susceptible to learning and teaching in structured and unstructured environments?  What if our brains, as the neuroscientists are recently telling us and quite contrary to the traditional and commonly held view, are plastic and capable of learning throughout life? What are the implications for education and training? What are the implications for all of us, never mind just those with disabilities? And ironically, is not one of the greatest "barriers" to achieving dignity and respect, the clinging on to this outmoded view of "potential" and "talent", "ability" and "disability"?

Which brings me to "barriers". This, I will admit, is something of a personal hobby-horse. Let me put it this way: I have lost count of the meetings and workshops that I have attended over the years where, faced with the moment where suggestions for 'ways forward' are requested, some one proposes to undertake a 'mapping exercise' to 'identify gaps in provision'.  (Most often this comes from public sector delegates in cross-sector meetings - largely lacking awareness of what is happening in the VCF or Third Sector). Very rarely indeed does anyone suggest mapping innovation or best practice, and then building on that by extending it. Similarly, I was at a meeting this week, listening to an interesting presentation on commissioning of public services and the Third Sector.  Much was made of outputs, of accountability - criteria determined of course by the commissioning body (local authority, health service, government). I asked how, within the commissioning process they proposed to "commission innovation"; innovation, of course, being what they voluntary sector has long been good at - see a problem, create a solution.  I suggested that without innovation, "commissioning" was sterile, infertile, could only deal with solutions to what we (or rather the commissioning bodies) think we know. Potential is fixed, to put it another way.

So, it seems to me, with barriers; the "dismantling of barriers" as a way forward deals only with what we know; what is or has been known hitherto and not what could be or should be.  It is like walking through Life backwards or driving endlessly watching the rear view mirror or perpetually weeding the garden without planting. It seems essentially negative. By all means remove the barriers, the overgrown hedge across the public right of way. But once the barrier is gone, will everyone be able to use the muddy lane? What is needed is a national plan for public rights of way that allows everyone to enjoy the places the paths lead us through and to. "Removing barriers" is simply a task, not a purpose. We need a positive purpose - and the means to achieve it.

Sheffield is "ah bit shitty"

Some years ago, Paces had some visitors from South East Asia. Walking out of the railway station, the leader, perhaps a little surprised at the city stretching before them, probably wanting to pay a compliment, but struggling with unruly foreign consonants,  said to my wife who was there to greet them, "Sheffiewd is ah bit shitty".

On mornings like this morning, when I have heard of a parent weeping in frustration, disappointment and distress, Sheffield does not at all seem "a big city", if by that we mean a city with a big heart and big vision for itself and for its children, especially those most in need. Indeed, it would seem our South East Asian visitor, had it about right: this city, which aspires to be a leading European city, over the centre of which tower cranes rebuilding its commercial and civic heart, can actually be "a bit shitty".  Not the people of Sheffield understand, but rather the City Council, or rather the Children and Young People Directorate,or rather the  managers of the Special Educational Needs section of that Directorate , or perhaps just those officers in it who decide the educational futures of children they do not know.

A  city that still does not have a  Strategy for children with special educational needs, or  if it has, cannot and does not make it available;
A city that has been seeking to relocate its school for children with physical disabilities inclusively onto a mainstream site since 1989 to my certain knowledge as a former parent governor - and still has no plan, or  if it has, will not make it available;
A city that can so mismanage an application for a Statement of Special Educational Needs that the family is requested to resubmit the application so as to begin the process again, and then, again (again!) mismanages it so as not to conform for a second time to its statutory obligations, and then has the temerity and indifference, the lack of compassion and decency, not to approve the School that the parents wish their child to attend. 

One would perhaps not mind so much if one had confidence in the judgement of the officers who make these decisions. But it is difficult to have that confidence in these officers when they cannot produce for public inspection a Strategy - which, when all said and done, is just visible evidence that they know what they are doing and have a plan; when these officers take 18 years to relocate a school; when they mismanage a straightforward process not once but twice. It is difficult to have confidence in officers charged with making these decisions who distribute lists of special schools to parents (as they must by law, and including Paces School), that after 10 years do not include Paces School and then ask us to believe that the omission was "an administrative error".  It is difficult to have confidence in the judgement of these officers in the placement of an individual child who, I repeat, is not known to them; who will not visit Paces School to see for themselves what we might have to offer; who have asserted that there is no reason to talk with Paces about the education of children with motor disorders in this city. This is best practice?

How can these officers possibly know that the local authority school can provide for this child or that or any, when they give every indication that they themselves do not know what they are doing or why? The decision is perverse.

15 years ago, at a meeting hosted in the Lord Mayor's Parlour in the Town Hall and attended by a large group of people from public, private and voluntary sectors, the proposal was put to the then Local Education Authority to set up in Sheffield, in partnership with the International Peto Institute, a school and centre for the conductive education of the motor disabled.  The senior education officer present responded by insisting that it would be necessary for a committee to review the principles of conductive education.  15 years later, we are still waiting for a response.

In the last 10 years, we have heard much nationally and locally, of cross-sector partnership working; of an increased role for the "third sector" in the delivery of public services; of the relationship managed according to a 'Compact'; of the expansion of choice in education and of an increasing diversity of providers of schools. Just rhetoric? "Yes, Minister".

Any reader who cares to, and there are few enough of you, is welcome to dismiss this as just another rant. A city council officer once told me that in his 25 years working for the Council I was "the single most difficult person he had ever had to deal with". "Which only goes to show," an experienced community Labour Party member said, "what a sheltered life he must have led".  Any reader can dismiss this posting by sticking on it the oh-so-familiar label of "difficult parent". 

However, more thoughtful readers will recognise there are raised here (in the impact on the child and his family, the behaviour of the local authority, my reaction to it), the need for important national and local debates, for instance:  how are children with cerebral palsy to be educated? what is the role of non-maintained and independent special schools? what should parental choice actually mean?

So begins yet another struggle that will no doubt end in a Tribunal hearing; will cost the City public money; will cost Paces and the family precious funds and energies.  Not to mention the stress and distress for a family that do not need it.

Pirate on the beach

While England were building up a half-time lead against Wales, Maisie and Billy sailed their pirate ship across the seven seas. They captured treasure ships and rode out great storms until they came to a tropical island. The sun shone high in the sky over a beach with glistening white sand.  Maisie started to pull her socks off.
"Maisie! Maisie!" cried the pirate captain, her grandmother, fearing she'd catch a chill, as 2-year old pirate Maisie had had a stomach bug all week and not managed to keep her food down.   "What are you doing? Why are you taking your socks off?"
"I'm going for a walk on the beach" said Maisie. And with that she leapt out of the pirate ship into the calm, shallow waters of the living room carpet and stomped up and down the white sands, between the easy chair where Grandad was asleep, one eye half open, and Auntie Sarah in her wheelchair.

There was a sequel. Three days later, long after the adult world knew how the second half of the rugby international turned out, Maisie ran up to her Mum and said, quite out of nothing in particular, "When we go on our holiday, I really am going to walk on the beach."

I have marvelled before at the sheer physical energy that my grandchildren put into their play and how utterly the imagination of the play is real to them, absorbing them completely. Actually, the day Wales embarrassed England in their first match of the Six Nations, it was Billy's fourth birthday. He'd no sooner opened the box with his new football boots in (with real screw-in studs), torn the wrapping from white socks, blue shorts and blue shirt, than he was stripped naked, scrumming to get his new kit on, grabbing his new ball and sprinting out for the back garden stadium, oblivious to the cold wind and the different rugby and soccer codes, shouting, "Grandad. Grandad. Come on. You're in goal", while waving at the uprights of his swing.

It all put me in mind of another little one, 25-years ago, who, on her back on the living room carpet, would flail her legs and arms in the air, struggling to roll over. Did she imagine sailing pirate ships and putting six goals past a hapless goal-keeper?  And if not,  how did her brain develop? How did she learn about the world and herself? How did she separate fact from fiction?  How did she manage, days later to be thinking about her imaginary world and the real world and share the difference with her Mum?  And if she did not do these things, what did Auntie Sarah in her wheelchair, watching her nephew and niece protectively as a good Aunt always does, make of their play-world, real-world now?

And another thing, why, as a society, do we still not show any convicted understanding of the vitality of the link between 'nature and nurture', of the importance of the physical and sensory in the engagement of self with the environment, that drives brain development, so that there should be initial training courses for those who would teach children with cerebral palsy, who can understand about pedagogy and the need for a structured curriculum, that deals with the integration of all aspects of the development of the brain and personality of the child with cerebral palsy?  Never mind the schools and the SEN managers from the LEA who still will not talk to us at Paces, why are those who run the local Children's Centres likewise not beating a path to our door, seeking advice of our trained specialists? What can we do to change the professional mindset that does not see cerebral palsy as being potentially as much a developmental disorder as a physical one?  Nor see, I was reminded last week, of the close inter-connection of all aspects of the education of the person, understood and advocated over 400 years ago by the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola - and asserted more recently and in our lifetimes by the founder of Conductive Education, Andras Peto?

Meanwhile, parents who do understand, who are faced with the reality, continue to struggle heroically against intransigent local education authorities, like the Ramsbottoms of Barnsley for the daughter Isabella.

I, of course, am not an expert, a specialist, a professional, an education officer, a consultant paediatrican, a politician. I'm just another irritating parent, and a soft-in-the-head Grandad. But if I know and can see with my own eyes what the ancient Greeks and Loyola and Peto knew, why can't you?