Module 22 – Every Teacher’s Responsibility
Duration: Approx 50 minutes
Student Aims:
· To learn about teachers’ responsibilities
· To identify the role teachers play in different areas of the school
· To understand the importance of the SENCO role
· To learn about the management of resources and finances
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22.1 Introduction
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Providing effective support for SEN students is the responsibility of every single teacher in every single classroom across the UK.
It is important to ensure that all children have the opportunity to have a meaningful education which prepares them for social and academic success in school and in life. This cannot happen when only a few teachers are committed to the cause. Rather, everyone needs to be on board with the support, education and wellbeing of all SEN children, even when they are being taught and supported by other teachers.
This module will outline the requirements of the local authorities, schools and teachers. It will show how there is a common responsibility, specifically by teachers, to uphold the law and ensure that all pupils have a fair chance at a quality education in the United Kingdom.
22.2 Local Authority Support
Local authorities have a legal obligation to ensure that every child over the age of 5 has the opportunity to attend a school that suits them.
This obligation is designed to uphold a national policy that advocates that every child, regardless of their setting or circumstance, should be able to receive the education they need to determine their own future. This means providing SEN and disabled pupils with the same opportunities provided to mainstream students.
In order to provide a level playing field between mainstream and SEN pupils, reasonable adjustments, according to the Equality Act 2010, must be anticipated and provided.
Local authority support comes in the form of arranging education for pupils who would be permanently excluded from school or who would struggle in mainstream schools without SEN provision. Even in the event that a child cannot attend a full-time school, the local authority is required to find an alternative that will allow the child to receive a quality education. This duty is outlined in the Education Act 1996.
Local authorities must provide this service for all children. They are not allowed to reduce or withhold services based on the cost of education or the health conditions that the pupil faces. Local authorities must also focus on the quality of the education the child receives while the child is in school rather than focusing on when the pupil is able to attend school.
22.3 Whole School Support
Local authorities need local schools to function well to be able to uphold their responsibilities. In order for this to happen, there needs to be support from the whole school.
Whole school support is a key tenant of responsibility for the good of both SEN and mainstream pupils. The SEN Code of Practice requires schools to meet the duties of the Equality Act 2010 in regard to pupils with disabilities. They must use their resources – financial, educational and physical – wisely, to meet the pupils’ SEN needs.
Schools must also inform the parents when a pupil begins to receive SEN support and keep them informed of the pupil’s progress. The school also needs to cooperate with local authorities and produce a school SEN information report.
Schools are required to follow the Code of Practice and appoint an experienced or qualified member of staff as the school’s SENCO.
The code requires the school to come together to create a clear focus at every stage of the SEN programme or plan. The needs of the pupil are primary but also include the support of parents. The focus should be on the outcomes of the intervention rather than on the provisions themselves. However, this kind of support does not just materialise because it is communicated in a government document.
The responsibilities outlined here may fall directly on the shoulders of the school, but it is the teachers who are responsible for ensuring the school is able to meet its responsibilities to pupils and to the government.
22.4 Teacher Support
Teacher support comes in many forms.
While it is clear to see how teachers play a significant role in whole-school support, they can only do this when they provide a suitable amount of support within the classroom itself.
Here are some of the ways teachers provide support in the classroom outside of simply ‘teaching’:
Learning Barriers
Every teacher has the opportunity and responsibility to help lower and limit the barriers to learning faced by all pupils, especially SEN pupils. This begins by focusing on their approach to the content of the curriculum.
Teachers need to create more than fact-based learning approaches and instead focus on creating real learning experiences that are memorable, applicable and that can be related to by pupils with disabilities.
Teaching styles are also important. Every teacher needs to evaluate and re-evaluate their teaching style to monitor the success of their teaching in relation to SEN and mainstream pupils. A teaching style is not a stagnant concept. Rather, it should constantly be evolving to improve the quality of teaching and remove aspects that are not useful in the classroom.
A teaching style can always be improved, and it is every teacher’s responsibility to remember this. No SEN child or class group are the same. Increased experience will allow you to draw from a bank of strategies that will help you to adapt to new challenges.
Peer discussion and lesson observation are good ways of learning from good practice. Teachers have the unique responsibility of preparing and maintaining teaching materials. Teachers have the ability to adapt the materials for different pupils and different contexts, and to differentiate for individual pupils as part of their lesson planning.
Teachers are also responsible for what happens in their classroom at every minute of every day. If a pupil has not been successfully accommodated, it is imperative that they find out why, what went wrong and what can be done about it. If inappropriate peer groups have been created, it is up to the teacher to rectify the situation and explore it to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Teachers are in charge of their own attitude. A teacher’s attitude toward teaching, materials, the school, the SEN programme, and their pupils all have a significant impact on the success of the pupils in their classroom.
The SEN Code of Practice requires the teacher to take responsibility for their approach in addition to the assessment of the feelings of the pupil and their family.
The final barriers to learning include the knowledge level and skills of the staff as a whole and an understanding of the deployment of these factors in the classroom context.
The ability to access teacher development resources and apply them in the classroom in the appropriate context is also essential. Issues with resources and training for teachers can be a serious barrier to learning. When possible, teachers must take responsibility for this access and inform the relevant parties when they do not have access to the right resources.
Quality First Teaching
Quality first teaching is an approach to education that aims to provide high-quality teaching for all students, regardless of their background or ability.
Some of the key principles of quality first teaching include:
· Highly focused lesson planning with appropriate objectives and differentiation
· High expectations for the pupils’ involvement in learning and high expectations for engagement
· Focus on high levels of interaction for every pupil
· Focus on the appropriate usage of explaining, modelling and questioning
· Emphasis on dialogue and regular opportunities for pupils to talk on their own and in groups
· Demands for pupils to accept responsibility for themselves, their learning and be able to work independently
· Regular encouragement through authentic praise
Quality first teaching can be found in the ‘Three Waves of Intervention’ model, which is a framework used to provide additional support to students who are struggling with their learning. The model is based on the principle that students should receive interventions that are tailored to their individual needs, and that support should be provided at three different levels or ‘waves’ of intervention.
Wave 1 – Quality First Teaching
Wave 1 focuses on what teachers should offer all children through their teaching. Essentially, teachers should be able to effectively include all pupils in personalised teaching that is of high quality on an everyday basis. This teaching is based on clear goals and learning objectives that the teacher shares with the children before the lesson and returns to when the lesson is over. Teachers carefully explain concepts and vocabulary before use and provide interesting and exciting teaching styles to make use of interactive learning. This type of teaching is described as being one of the best ways to immediately support children who required extra help with behaviours or learning.
Wave 2 – Targeted Support
This level of support is for students who require additional help beyond quality first teaching. It involves small-group or one-to-one interventions that are tailored to the specific needs of the student. For example, a student may receive additional literacy or numeracy support or support for a specific learning difficulty.
Wave 3 – Specialist Support
This is the highest level of support and is for students who require more intensive and specialist interventions. It may involve external agencies, such as educational psychologists or speech and language therapists, and is often used for students with complex needs, disabilities or medical conditions.
22.5 Managing Resources and Financial Management
Although teaching is at the heart of everyday operations, managing resources and finances is essential for the wellbeing of pupils, teachers and the school as a whole.
Teachers can play a significant role in the management of these areas in a variety of ways.
The biggest resource that schools and teachers have is quality first teaching. Although it may vary for every teacher in every school, the promotion and management of this facet of education are essential for overall resource management.
Interventions are also a large resource for schools, particularly in the realm of SEN. Interventions are applied on a personal level, but there must be a whole school provision map for the development and application of interventions. The whole school must be able to draw from this map to be able to highlight the interventions that work for future use and to create and develop new interventions for sharing between teachers.
Professional development opportunities are another essential school resource that must be managed. The SENCO will play a role in promoting educational opportunities for SEN skills; however, teachers must play an active role in promoting, attending and utilising the opportunities available in developing their teaching skills.
Teachers also play a role in the support and guidance of local authorities (LAs). LAs are responsible for providing full-time education that is suitable for all pupils.
Teachers are also responsible for finding external support when required. The SEN Code of Practice requires teachers to be able to reach out for extra support to help pupils in the classroom. This responsibility falls squarely on the teachers’ shoulders because they should have the knowledge and training to know when this support is required.
The teacher’s ability to think outside the box is a significant school resource. The ability to produce creative solutions to new problems and to apply meaningful interventions in the appropriate context is a product of experience and training.
In terms of financial management, teachers typically have little control. However, they should have an idea of the notional SEN budget and pupil premiums. The knowledge of this budget allows them to help manage costs and ensure funding is reaching the appropriate areas. It is also important for teachers to have an understanding of the notional costs of educating pupils, buying classroom resources and providing interventions for pupils.
Role of the SENCO
The SENCO is required to oversee the day-to-day running of the whole school’s SEN policy. This means liaising with relevant members of staff to ensure that the policy is 1) being run as planned and 2) policy failures are noted and reported to the relevant parties. This includes coordinating provisions and interventions for SEN pupils and advising staff members of the graduated approach outlined in the Code of Practice.
The SENCO is responsible for advising the school on the SEN budget to ensure the money is being spent in a way that is useful and appropriate for their context. They should ensure that the budget covers the required resources and is not wasted on resources that don’t work or are not relevant.
The SENCO is required to liaise with external support staff and agencies that may be called in to advise on individual students. They need to know how to work with educational psychologists, health care professionals, social workers, early years providers, other schools, and various other voluntary or independent bodies involved in pupil care at the school.
Furthermore, the SENCO needs to take responsibility not just for liaising with these people, but for reporting back to the school governors and the headteacher with this information. This is essential for ensuring that the whole school is able to follow the Code of Practice, protect the pupils, and operate within the SEN legislation mandated by UK law. It ensures that the school can meet the responsibilities laid down by the Equality Act 2010.
Staff Development
The school should be conducting regular internal audits for staff skills to assess the performance of teachers and address any weaknesses. This audit should match up with a second audit of the needs of the school. All of this should come together to evaluate any deficits within the school so that appropriate action for improvement can be taken.
These audits should trigger the relevant continuing professional development education opportunities required for sharpening essential skills and promoting skills that are new or need advancement. These opportunities should take place both internally and externally.
Personalisation of the SEN Programme
The personalisation of the SEN programme is also the teachers’ responsibility. Personalisation is something that naturally follows quality first teaching. Where quality first teaching is the foundation of good teaching practice for all teachers, personalisation is what makes quality first teaching really work for SEN pupils.
Teachers must be realistic when embarking upon the personalisation of the curriculum because it is impossible to create and maintain a custom plan for every single need. They should find a way to help pupils succeed by offering a level of support that ensures all pupils are able to access learning.
It is important to realise that pupils of a similar age will have much in common and that this can provide a foundation for personalised learning.
Teachers can then begin to make room in the programme to manoeuvre. This will enable them to be able to respond to the needs and challenges of both individuals and groups. It allows teachers to then differentiate by age and ability.
Once this is done, teachers can understand how much support the students require and use reasonable adjustments as required. This approach fosters inclusion in the mainstream classroom.
Teachers need to be able to plan lessons and learning effectively. However, these abilities go deeper than planning and go to the heart of curriculum design. The curriculum needs to be constructed methodically and renewed in a manner that promotes efficient, but small, steps for progression.
This practice requires working with a variety of teaching strategies, some of which were outlined in earlier modules. These teaching strategies must be closely aligned with the learning objectives of the class and the needs of the pupils.
The goal of quality first teaching and the personalised approach should be to gain 100% participation from pupils while setting realistic, but high, challenges. Personalisation should help to ensure that teaching and the curriculum are demanding and challenging whilst enabling pupils to understand and articulate their own ideas.
Assignment
Every Teacher’s Responsibility
Time: 30+ minutes
Now it is time to apply what you have learnt in this module. Work your way through this worksheet and do your best to fully participate in every activity set.
Download the worksheet below and complete.
Download Worksheet
Conclusion
The role of the teacher is crucial in supporting the pupil, family, school, and local authority. When teachers live up to their responsibilities as educators, they are able to fully support a system that is designed to ensure that every single child in the UK is able to get the education they need to overcome any obstacle life throws at them.
Although the responsibility of teachers seems large, and, at times, bureaucratic, every single piece of the puzzle is required for the success of today’s pupils and tomorrow’s leaders!
WELL DONE!
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