Many children will have a special learning need at some time during their school career and will need to have some extra support and help to access and keep up with the curriculum. Primary schools are set up to cope with children within a wide band of ability and have a responsibility to integrate all children within their local community. The only children who may have to go to a special school are children with serious mental and physical delay or profound physical difficulties.
All schools are required to have a teacher who acts as a Special Education Co-ordinator. This person is in charge of monitoring all youngsters who have any kind of special need that may affect their ability to access the usual curriculum. This could be a learning difficulty in the area of literacy (dyslexia) or numerary (dyscalculia), hearing or visual impairment, emotional and behavioral difficulties, physical disability, or a wide range of medical or neurological conditions.
Sometimes, a child will need one-to-one help or to be part of a small group instead of a whole class for some of the time. It can also be important that work is what is called differentiated (same subject, or learning topic, but adjusted to a level the child can cope with). This means children can still participate in what is going on and retain their self-esteem moving at their own pace.
Some children, whose special educational needs are of particular concern, will need to be seen by an educational psychologist who will assess the ways an individual child thinks and learns in great detail. Children can be referred directly to an educational psychologist by parents, or in partnership with the school. The educational psychologist will spend some time getting a full learning background and pinpointing the precise difficulties the child is experiencing.
Part of this process will involve talking to parents about their worries and concerns and taking an early history of the child’s development that might prove helpful. Usually, educational psychologists will keep in touch with schools and monitor a child’s progress. They will give specific advice on how a child might be helped to overcome their difficulties.
Some youngsters will have difficulties that require support beyond the normal financial resources of the school. If, after initial advice has been taken and support given, a child fails to progress in the way the school and parents have hoped then a ‘Individual Education Plan’, or IEP, might be necessary. This is a legal document that gives the child a statutory (legal) right to a range of provision extra to normal school resources. In this case, the educational psychologist, or other agencies outside the school, will recommend a ‘multi-disciplinary’ assessment of the child’s physical, social and mental abilities. The outcome of this assessment will be clear recommendations of the type of support the child needs and should have access to.
If you suspect your child has some kind of special need or learning difficulty, it is good to check this out with your child’s class teacher. The sooner any difficulties are picked up, the sooner something can be done about them and the right help given.