Special Education
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I am intending to migrate to the UK as a special educator. I currently teach in the United States but special education here has become a nightmare with all the paperwork.
How is special education conducted in the UK.
Do they have the inclusion setting model, resource rooms, comprehensive special education programs, wings within general education settings????
How much paper work do special educators have to do?
Thanks in advance for the information |
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I am a 15 year veteran of Special Needs Eduction in the States, and now teach in the UK. Here, students listed on the SEN (Special Educational Needs) Register in the school are seperated into catagories. All SEN students are tracked by the SEN department, and the neediest kids are given an LSA (Learning Support Assistant). Fortunately, they are in charge of doing the hourly lesson tracking of the student, but each teacher is legally responsible for each and every IEP. There is a LOT of paperwork. I have a 3 inch binder of IEPs, notes, contacts, differentiated lessons, etc for the 48 inclusioned students I saw this past school year. The major shock about SEN here that floored me was the 'sets'. They are the groupings of students according to abilities, such as High, Middle, and Low...things that would not be allowed in the States since the mid-80's. Within those sets all students on the SEN are inclusioned. This is a good thing, as I was in on the ground floor of Inclusionary Practices in the Milwaukee Public Schools as a pilot classroom, so it CAN be a breeze. Resource rooms are being phased out of many schools, but are still in place to deal with SEN kids that cause a disruption.
Good luck. But yes, the paperwork is a nightmare.
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Hi,
I kind of think it depends on the school you find yourself in over. Some are more fastidious than others. At my school, the head of SEN stands up in briefing and reads off a list of the neediest SEN students and a brief on how teachers can support them, then about Nov or early Dec IEPs are given to department heads to distribute and you are suppose to read them and file them. Except that there will only be one copy of each IEP for each student per department (if we're lucky and receive them all). We share classes in our department and there is no rule on which teacher gets the IEP. Teachers usually stick the IEPs in folders and pretty much forget about them. If there's an issue the SEN teacher comes and speaks to that teacher privately. Is all rather "blurry" and confused here.
I kind of think something between the conditions described in the last post and those in this post would be ideal, but who knows...
Good luck anyway. |
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