Jonathan Glazzard (Professor at Leeds Beckett University): Inclusive education

In this episode, which was recorded just before the coronavirus restrictions were put in place, Claire meets with Jonathan Glazzard, professor of Inclusive Education at the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University.

Although Jonathan initially wanted to work in secondary education, he taught for ten years at two primary schools, eventually being promoted to assistant headteacher. Earlier in his teaching career, Jonathan took on the role of being the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) for his school. It was through this aspect of his work that he developed a passion for inclusive education and which, in turn, led to him pursuing and gaining a master’s degree in Special Educational Needs (SEN).

Jonathan then moved into initial teacher education having become interested in helping to develop student teachers. Within this role, Jonathan took on modules related to special educational needs and inclusion which became the focus of his teaching and, eventually, his doctorate.

Jonathan and Claire talk about how, when they were training to be teachers, there was little, if any, preparation for encountering children with special educational needs much less becoming a school coordinator for this area. Despite improvements in this area, Jonathan talks about how there is still work to be done for further progress to be made.

Within this episode, Jonathan also talks about mental health and wellbeing – in particular how, despite a lot of progress, there is still a stigma around mental health. Jonathan highlights that further work still needs to be done around understanding the causes of poor mental health in children, such as social factors and the increasing difficulty of the curriculum and exam stresses.

Jonathan also shares some advice for teachers and leadership teams and suggests some possible approaches. He discusses the importance of whole-school strategies and an inclusive curriculum, and shares details of some online resources and thoughts on more specific issues which schools could face.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Inclusion is an ongoing process.
  Just as all children are different, all additional needs are different. While there is a wide variety of resources and training options for teachers covering different aspects of special educational needs, one size cannot fit all. Teachers cannot expect a training course to give them a solution that will work for all children. There is a need to constantly reflect on practices and approaches in order to find what does work for individual children.
• Children with additional needs don’t necessarily need approaches that are significantly different to other children.
  In many cases, the teaching for children with additional needs can be almost identical to that given to the rest of the class. Overall, good inclusive teaching is all that is needed to benefit every child, but will especially help those children who do have additional needs.
• Have realistic expectations.
  Although the term ‘special educational needs’ has become somewhat synonymous with ‘low ability’, teachers should be mindful of not assuming that additional needs will automatically hold a child back. There are many different types of need and some children with additional needs will not encounter any problems with their learning. Expectations should be set based on the individual child and, even where some children might find it more difficult to achieve at the same rate as their peers, it might not mean that expectations need to be lowered.
• Teachers can sometimes be defeatist about their own teaching skills.
  As schools have become increasingly inclusive, teachers can feel as though they need to have more and more training to deal with children with additional needs. Schools have also called more frequently for specialists to help and, while this is indeed needed in many cases, it isn’t always necessary. Over time this has had the effect of disempowering teachers and there is not always a need for additional training or specialist help. All teachers are teachers of children with special educational needs and teachers will already have a lot of skills and strategies they can use to good effect.
• Mental health is not the same as mental illness.
  The persistent stigma around mental health has, in part, been maintained by avoidance of using the term. Mental health has, over time, come to be mean ‘mentally unwell’ and people have then avoided using the term. Just as the term ‘physical health’ covers the whole range from being physically fit to suffering from ill-health and needing medical intervention, we should not shy away from using ‘mental health’ in the same way. Everyone has ‘mental health’ and the term should be used more to describe good mental health as well as when it is not so good.
• School-based programmes around mental wellbeing can be successful.
  Where schools have been most successful, there has usually been a whole-school approach championed and maintained by senior leaders and a positive and inclusive environment and curriculum. In these schools, the number of children who need referring with mental health issues has reduced. Some schools have found that using outside organisations (such as a local football club) to deliver parts of their mental health curriculum has been useful, as the children have a more informal relationship with the adults.
  Developing mindfulness programmes and using well-trained peer listeners has been positive for many children, as they might prefer to talk with people their own age rather than directly to an adult.
• Signs of mental illness are not always identifiable.
  Many teachers will find that the first signs of a child struggling with their mental health are physical (self-harm marks or tiredness) or through a change of behaviour. However, some children can appear outwardly fine but, inside, be quite mentally unwell. Here, good programmes and systems are key to educating children about their own mental health and knowing where they can go for help.
• Talk about mental health
  One important way to remove the stigma is to just talk more openly and regularly about mental health and feelings. This can be particularly useful for boys who can, through a sense of imposed gender expectations, feel as though they need to keep their feelings hidden or somehow ‘in check’.
• The curriculum needs to be more inclusive.
  Although there are movements in the right direction, the curriculum has, over time, become increasingly academic. Vocationally orientated children can feel marginalised and there is still work to be done here to improve.
  Units around race, gender identity, sexuality and disabilities need to be featured more prominently in the curriculum, in particular the history around these and how perceptions of them have changed over time. This also should not just be delivered through assemblies or only feature in PSHCE lessons. They need to be embedded and threaded throughout.
  
  

BEST MOMENTS

“A year into my teaching career, I became a special educational needs coordinator and I had no underpinning knowledge. And that’s when I started to think actually this is not good enough. Trainee teachers need input and that’s really what motivated me to focus on special educational needs in the university sector because I felt that I wanted them to have that input.”

“I think that new teachers are going into teaching and there is pressure on them to feel that they are getting things right, right from the beginning, and there is pressure on them to deliver outstanding teaching right from the beginning. And, actually, learning to be a teacher is an ongoing process.”

“One of the problems is that we’ve had this stigmatisation of mental health for many, many years and what we’re now trying to do is destigmatise mental health. But the reason for that stigmatisation is that we’ve automatically assumed that mental health is the same as mental illness. Mental illness is only one facet of mental health.”

“We know that the majority of children with poor mental health will benefit from things like physical activity, social connectivity … they will benefit from a sense of belonging in the school, they’ll benefit from good self-esteem, they’ll benefit from an assessment process that actually boosts their self-esteem rather than tells them they’re failures. They’ll benefit from a curriculum that’s rich and exciting and broad.”

“I feel that the government’s emphasis on placing mental health into schools is actually absolving the government of addressing the real systemic factors that create poor mental health.”

“A good mental health curriculum should be giving children strategies to manage their own mental health: teaching them how to manage stress and anxiety and depression.”

“The problem is that there’s so much information for teachers [about mental health]. Teachers are really, really busy and they haven’t got time to do all that searching. We need to pull it together.”

“It's very, very important that parents understand that we are not trying to impose a particular identity or viewpoint on your child. This is about preparing children for life within a socially inclusive, modern, contemporary society in which they will interact with people who are different and, therefore, it is really important that we treat everybody with respect.”

“Some of these issues with parents are very challenging for schools to deal with. And ultimately, if you are a school within specific cultural communities, you might be worried about the parental backlash. That’s not about weak leadership, because schools legally have to teach this. That’s about, in those situations, when that happens, somebody coming into the school from the DfE and Ofsted and actually addressing those issues and supporting them.”

“When do we actually, in the curriculum, educate children about disability? We don’t, basically … All children need to be educated about different types of disabilities and they also need to be educated about the fact that people with disabled identities can achieve brilliant things such as the Paralympics. They need to not see disability as a tragic thing.”

“We have to teach the Equality Act, and the Equality Act says that we have to foster good relations between different groups. So we can’t foster good relationships if we’re not actually talking and highlighting to children the fact that there are different views and beliefs.”

“We need to make sure the curriculum’s giving children the skills they need for the future, not just an academic curriculum. I think that we need an assessment system that recognises that broader range of skills and recognises a broader range of strengths and talents; not just recognising maths and English.”

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The mentally healthy schools website: https://www.mentallyhealthyschools.org.uk/
Young minds: https://youngminds.org.uk/

The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/
Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/
Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/
LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/

ABOUT THE HOST
Claire Riley

Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide.

Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff.

Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend.

The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.

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