Damaging cuts to classroom support
HE principle of mainstreaming – educating children with special needs in mainstream education rather than in special schools – has had widespread support for a long time but criticism of the practicalities has been mounting more recently. Mainstreaming can give children with additional needs the chance to mix with their peers and help others to understand and sympathise with pupils who struggle in class. But there are now serious doubts about whether the policy is working in practice.
The latest criticism comes from the teaching union the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), which has said council cuts are undermining mainstreaming from within. Not only are many Additional Support Needs teachers stressed and overworked, the lack of resources means they are unable to meet the requirements of pupils with additional needs – in other words, neither teachers nor pupils appear to be benefiting much from the policy. Mainstreaming, says the union, is being done on the cheap.
The EIS is not the first to raise concerns. Earlier this month, ENABLE Scotland delivered a report on mainstreaming which concluded that young people with learning disabilities are losing out in class and suffering isolation and even exclusion from school because the policy is not working. According to the charity’s survey of teachers, parents and pupils, only three per cent of education professionals think the policy is working for all children. As for the pupils themselves, only one-third of those in mainstream schools feel they are getting the right support.
The cause of the crisis is in no doubt: the cuts that have been made to the support that pupils with additional needs receive. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of additional support teachers in Scotland fell by 13 per cent even though the number of pupils with additional support needs has increased by more than 16 per cent since 2013. Some of the pupils being diagnosed with additional support needs would not necessarily have ever been candidates for special schools but cutting support in this way is clearly having serious consequences in schools across the country every single day.
The Scottish Government’s response has been to launch a consultation on updating and changing the mainstreaming policy but it must know already what the problem is. The teachers who spoke to the EIS reported that their day-today job was becoming increasingly difficult and the reason was a lack of equipment and resources. The union said that it fully supported the principle of mainstreaming, but significant investment was needed in specialist staff to ensure that pupils get the support they need.
If the Government still believes in mainstreaming, then it must accept that the policy has to be properly resourced. A teacher who is overworked or does not have the support they need in the classroom can end up spending a disproportionate time on pupils with extra needs; equally, a lack of resources can also lead to pupils with additional needs being marginalised or excluded. Neither outcome is how mainstreaming is supposed to work; only resourcing the policy properly can make it work again for teachers and pupils.