Power and Partnership in Education

Parents, Children and Special Educational Needs

Derrick Armstrong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000154580
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Recent legislation - the 1981 and 1993 Education Acts - have emphasized the need for parents to work as partners with professionals in the assessment of children's special educational needs. This book explores that notion of partnership and subjects it to critical scrutiny. It describes the assessment process from both the parental and professional standpoints, looking in particular at the parent-professional relationship and the barriers that might inhibit effective partnerships between parents and professionals. The child's viewpoint is equally important, and later chapters examine children's own accounts of the assessment process.

Chapter 1

Parents as partners in the assessment of special educational needs

The involvement of parents in the formal education of their children in the United Kingdom stands today at the crossroads between two ideologically conflicting conceptions of its purpose. On the one hand, there is the view, encapsulated in the social welfare policies which were in ascendance during the period of post-war reform, that the state in partnership with its citizenry can and should work towards improving the conditions of people’s lives, especially for those who are disadvantaged. On the other hand, there is the view, espoused by the neo-liberal ‘new right’, that a system of state welfare stifles the independence and self-reliance of individuals, the family and local communities. From the former perspective, parent-professional partnership in education was seen as central to achieving the desired improvements for future generations. The neoliberal perspective, by contrast, with its origins in the demise of the post-war economic miracle, has taken a much more cautious view of the ‘benefits’, of partnership, radically confronting what it sees as the professional self-interest of a ‘left-wing’, interventionist bureaucracy (Cox et al. 1986).

In this chapter these differing attitudes towards the role of parents in educational decision-making are examined. The contribution of parents within the procedures for assessing children with special educational needs is considered in detail, with particular reference to the Warnock Report (DES 1978) and the 1981 and 1993 Education Acts. Whereas the 1980 and 1986 Education Acts and, more especially, the 1988 Education Reform Act made widespread and fundamental changes to the organization and control of the education system in this country, the pattern of reform in special education has, to date, been less affected by the thinking of the new right. Although local management of special schools has been introduced and, at the time of writing, the first special school in the country is about to be awarded grant-maintained status, the principles of social welfarism implicit in the main legislation concerning the assessment and resourcing of children with special educational needs (the 1981 Education Act) have recently been reaffirmed in the 1993 Education Act. Perhaps this is because children with special needs are seen as especially vulnerable and therefore more dependent upon the goodwill of the community in the form of a state-supported safety net. None the less, it would be quite wrong to think that the absence of market forces legislation relating to the assessment of special educational needs suggests that these different philosophies are compatible. The circumstances in which special needs legislation is being implemented in the 1990s are very different from those of the late 1970s when the principles underlying this legislation were formulated. This difference has increasingly become a source of tension between professionals and parents as gaps appear between their respective goals and strategies for achieving these goals. Whilst professionals frequently find themselves in the role of gatekeeper to declining resources in the context of ever-growing demand, there is evidence that the parents of some children with special educational needs, particularly those who are most articulate in advancing their interests through well-organized pressure groups, are increasingly willing to challenge professional judgements through the courts. As will be argued here, the pressures on resources both from within and from outside the education system, together with the contradictions implicit in professional roles, help to explain some of the conflict that occurs between parents and professionals. Yet, in this chapter it is also argued that the disempowerment of parents within the assessment system does not stem simply from conflicts between the ideology of conception and the ideology of implementation. Contradictions within the model of parent-professional partnership espoused by Warnock and the 1981 and 1993 Acts are identified as likely to reduce the power of parents in the decision-making process. This critique will suggest that the inadequacy of thinking about the relationship between ‘power’ and ‘needs’ is a central weakness of the partnership model.

POST-WAR EDUCATIONAL REFORM AND A NEW AGE OF PARTNERSHIP

The years following the end of the Second World War were characterized by social reform as aspirations arising from a new world order were fuelled by increasing prosperity and technological advance. Whereas the years preceding the war had been ones of industrial decline, unemployment and wastage of talent, in the new era rapid economic growth and the revolution in production processes made demands on the education system that coincided with and added to the momentum of change in society. A new vision of the contribution of education to social development and prosperity began with the 1944 Education Act and was followed by a flurry of research activity and government reports. Education was seen as the key to change in society, by reformers who saw it as the catalyst and vehicle for realizing their aspirations for the masses, and by those at the forefront of the new economic revival who saw it as the means of preparing a skilled and motivated work-force.

These changes in British society were mirrored in debates taking place in the political and social science literature of the time. The political and economic stability which characterized early post-war Britain was reflected in claims that affluence and social mobility were eroding the traditional class system (Abrams and Rose 1960). However, Goldthorpe et al. (1968), who investigated the so-called embourgeoisement of the working class did not find any convincing evidence of the working class being assimilated into the middle class. Given the evidence of increased working-class affluence, it was suggested by some commentators that it was actually the cultural traditions of the working classes rather than any inherent imperfections in the system that were the main barriers preventing social mobility based on merit. A sophisticated form of this argument is to be found, for instance, in Bernstein’s (1962) claim that the linguistic deprivation of working-class children meant that they did not command the complex grammatical forms which would give them access to power.

Fraser (1959), in a study of schoolchildren in Aberdeen, found home environment to be a factor more closely associated with progress in school than IQ. Jackson and Marsden’s (1962) study of working-class children attending grammar schools illustrated the difficulties encountered by such children as they sought to come to terms with the cultural and value differences between middle-class schools and working-class families. In a longitudinal study of more than 5,000 children born in 1946 and followed from birth to adolescence, Douglas (1964) found children from manual working-class backgrounds to be more prone to the negative effects of their social and physical environment, particularly during their junior school years. The test performances of these children tended to decline as they progressed through school. However, Douglas noted that, where a great interest was taken in the progress of these children at school by their parents, test performances showed improvement. Another national research project, this time carried out on behalf of the Plowden Committee (CACE 1967), involving interviews with more than 3,000 parents about their attitudes towards education, provided further evidence of the important link between parental attitudes and attainment.

The growing weight of evidence which identified parental attitudes, linked to disadvantaged social background, as the most significant factor having a negative effect upon educational progress was encapsulated in the recommendations of the Plowden Report into primary education (CACE 1967). This Report concluded that the influence of background factors such as living conditions and parental attitudes were crucial to children’s educational prospects and, therefore, that where negative and ill-informed attitudes persisted concerted efforts must be made to persuade parents of the value of education for their children. This, it was argued, could be achieved by encouraging the involvement of parents in their children’s education through co-operation and partnership with teachers. Paragraph 151 of the Report argues that the principle

that special need calls for special help, should be given a new cutting edge. We ask for ‘positive discrimination’ in favour of such schools and the children in them, going well beyond an attempt to equalise resources. Schools in deprived areas should be given priority in many respects. . . . The justification is that the homes and neighbourhoods from which many of their children come provide little support or stimulus for learning. The schools must provide a compensating environment.

The Plowden Report, therefore, advanced the new and highly proactive principle of compensatory intervention. This was made concrete by a recommendation for Educational Priority Areas to be designated for the allocation of additional resources. Three principles underpinned positive discrimination in the use of resources.

First, there was a belief that it was the duty of the state to intervene in order to maximize opportunities for all its citizenry. Acceptance of this belief at that time reflected what is a very simple but basic truth about social welfare principles; namely, that they are more likely to influence policy during times of economic growth. Decisions about resource allocation are inevitably concerned with the prioritization of needs and interests. The availability of resources does not of itself determine resource allocation because a prior decision is always made about the level of resource that it is ethically and/or politically desirable to make available. Yet, addressing the problem of social disadvantage at times of economic expansion is a benevolence that can be afforded both economically and politically because it threatens neither wealth creation nor political stability. Within a climate of economic recession, however, welfare programmes are more likely to be sacrificed precisely when they are most needed. Social reform becomes threatening, not simply because welfare programmes are expensive or ‘uneconomic’ but also because they raise hopes that the system cannot or will not meet. In consequence, needs become individualized as social responsibility is rejected.

The second principle that underpinned the Plowden Report’s support for compensatory education was that of ‘partnership’ between parents and professionals. In working with parents of educationally disadvantaged children the Plowden Report envisaged professionals exercising their specialist knowledge on behalf, and in support, of the best interests of children and their families. The rhetoric of partnership was enthusiastically embraced as symbolic of the fresh wind of change sweeping through society, but the ideology of partnership was always derived more from belief in a new professionalism based upon the rational application of knowledge than from any principle of participatory democracy. In so far as the inadequacies of working-class family and community life were held responsible (whatever the underlying causes) for the educational deprivation from which many children suffered, the idea of partnership was centrally concerned with improving the labouring classes to make them fit for democracy. It was not concerned with transferring power directly to those whose lives up to that time had been blighted by the injustices of an exclusive and discriminatory system of education. The partnership demanded of parents by compensatory education required their acceptance of the disinterested, humanitarian rationalism of professional judgements.

Some years later Kirp was to describe the model of professionalism based on this benevolent humanitarianism as one which ‘contemplates professionals and administrators working on behalf of an ever-expanding clientele towards an agreed common goal’ (1983: 83).

However, once again the economic context in which parent-professional partnership occurs is highly relevant. Whereas this model may match the demands placed on professionals during periods of economic growth and social reform, it is a model that is subject to increasing tensions during periods of social and economic upheaval and dislocation. The real significance of partnerships between professionals and parents may lie not in the incorporation of parents into decision-making processes but rather in the incorporation of educational professionals into the state bureaucracy.

A third principle, highly significant for the development of a programme of compensatory education, was the rejection in the Plowden Report of the idea that educational ‘handicap’ arises from individual deficits. This view, in particular, was to have important consequences for the future of special education in Britain. For Plowden, the absence of opportunities was understood in terms of deficits within working-class families and communities. This view lacked the depth of analysis which would have enabled consideration of the way in which social institutions, including the education system, themselves create and reinforce the social and economic disadvantages which can undermine the pursuit of learning and educational success. None the less, it was an analysis which differed significantly from earlier (and later) analyses of needs in that it acknowledged that there should be a collective responsibility towards those individuals who experienced learning difficulties in their education.

Criticisms of the Plowden Report are not confined to the recent assaults of the new right. Acland (1980), for instance, has argued that research was used both sparingly and selectively to justify the ideological position adopted by the Plowden Committee. It placed an emphasis upon education as a pathway for individual advancement and social mobility which is at least questionable and which ignores the wider social and economic context of deprivation and its reproduction. Moreover, its assumptions about professional judgement disregard the way in which professional interests may be advanced through the creation of ‘needy’ client groups who are subsequently disenfranchised on the grounds that they lack the knowledge to exercise power rationally. Yet without doubt, the Plowden Report represented a milestone in educational thinking and one which continued to influence policy making in the United Kingdom right up to the emergence of neo-liberalism in the 1980s. As will be argued in the following section, it also contained ideas which laid the basis for the fundamental reappraisal of the system of special education subsequently undertaken by the Warnock Committee (DES 1978).

PARENT-PROFESSIONAL PARTNERSHIP IN SPECIAL EDUCATION

It is perhaps not surprising that the system of special education in Britain, located as it was on the fringes and directly involving the interests of a comparatively small section of the population, lagged behind the changes taking place within the mainstream of the system. The 1944 Education Act had introduced new procedures under which local authorities were made responsible for the provision of special education for handicapped pupils. Yet the concept of ‘need’ remained tied to a view of handicap as something intrinsic to individuals and focused towards providing education within limits defined by the nature of particular disabilities. This definition of needs as the product of individual handicap had significant implications for the role of parents in decision-making interactions with professionals.

Educational decision-making in respect of the handicapped child was subordinated to medical decision-making. Therefore, the criteria governing decisions about the education of the handicapped child were medical criteria related to treatment and generally outside the domain of most parents’ expertise. Furthermore, there was an assumption inherent in the concept of handicap that the condition necessarily disables the child in his or her relation to the world. Whilst needs were conceptualized as arising from disablement, rather than created by the nature of social interactions directly and indirectly involving the child, it followed that responses to the child would be defined by the child’s disability rather than by educational goals such as equal opportunity, inclusiveness, transformation of potentiality into actuality and so on, all of which are areas of legitimate concern to parents and which, as value positions, are not determinable by expertise. Thus, the disempowerment experienced by parents had its origins in the conceptualization of children’s disabilities which dominated professional practice at that time.

The Handicapped Pupils and School Health Regulations (Ministry of Education 1945) identified eleven categories of handicapped pupil (later amended to ten – Ministry of Education 1959). A child could be ‘ascertained’ by a school medical officer as suffering from a condition described by one of these categories of ‘disability of mind or body’. Following ‘ascertainment’ the child would be placed in a special school, yet, as Galloway and Goodwin (1979) have argued, the 1944 Act and subsequent regulations only empowered the authority to request a formal certificate of ascertainment. They did not compel it to do so when it wished to place a child in a special school. Section 34 of the 1944 Education Act was explicit in stating that formal ascertainment was only needed when an LEA wished to impose attendance at a special school against parental wishes. None the less, local authorities very often ascertained all children placed in special schools.

This served to emphasise the separate nature of special education, with an implicit assumption that ‘special’ education could only be provided in schools or classes recognised by the DES as efficient for the education of children with a particular category of handicap. The formality helped to ensure that transfer from special schools to the mainstream was a rare event.

(Galloway 1985a: 29)

Thus, these procedures served to reinforce the division between ordinary and mainstream schools and in doing so emphasized the stigma of special education.

Confusion about the ascertainment procedures resulted in parents being deprived of rights they had been given under the 1944 Education Act. In addition, parents were brought into a formal relationship with professionals through the ascertainment procedures at a time when interprofessional conflict over domains of responsibility for the assessment of special education needs was becoming increasingly acute. This conflict was a factor contributing to the sense of powerlessness parents experienced as interests other than the child’s became a focal point of the assessment (Tomlinson 1982).

In the period leading up to the 1981 Education Act evidence was mounting of the dissatisfaction parents felt with the role allotted to them by LEAs and professionals. The self-reports of parents on this theme are many (see, for example, Booth and Statham 1982; Hannam 1975). These reports were scathing not only about the limited contribution parents were allowed to make to decisions affecting their children but also publicized how the paternalistic interventions of professionals at the early stages of decision-making could have long-term effects on the ability and willingness of parents to take on board their responsibilities towards their children in the future.

Tomlinson (1981), in a study of the assessment of forty children, identified as ‘educationally subnormal’ found that on the whole parents did not feel themselves to have been sufficiently informed by their LEAs of the reasons for the decisions that had been taken. There was a widespread perception on the part of these parents that little had been offered by way of an explanation of thei...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Parents as partners in the assessment of special educational needs
• 2 Parents and professionals: the experience of partnership
• 3 Barriers to partnership
• 4 Involving children in the assessment of special educational needs
• 5 Children’s perspectives on assessment
• 6 The child’s contribution to the assessment: the negotiation of deviant identities
• 7 Professionalism and power: the construction of special educational needs
• 8 Partnership and professional identities
• Bibliography
• Index