The National Literacy Strategy and children with SEN: issues to consider
It has been argued (Lingard, 2000; Miller, Lacey and Layton, 2003; Wearmouth and Soler, 2001; Wall, 2003) that some of the changes in literacy teaching brought about by the NLS since its introduction in 1998, such as increased amounts of whole class teaching, and the ‘coverage’ of large numbers of objectives and targets, have contradicted other key government policies ie the inclusion agenda and the requirement for attention to individual learning needs, particularly as set out in the statutory General Statement on Inclusion in the National Curriculum for England and Wales (DfEE/QCA 1999). Some of these concerns are discussed below.
An evaluation of the initial NLS pilot schools (Sainsbury, 1998) showed that although children with Special Educational Needs had made progress, they had progressed less than other groups of children, with increasingly less effect as the level of special needs increased. Some of these concerns were met by additional forms of guidance from the NLS (DfES 1998) and more recently there has been a systematic attempt to address the needs of children with literacy difficulties and those with enduring special educational needs by creating three ‘waves’ of intervention which are linked to the SEN Code of Practice.
However, concerns remain. It is useful to discuss the following points with students:
- Is ‘exposure to teaching’ the same as learning? How do children learn literacy skills – what is the balance of direct teaching and learning? Most aspects of literacy learning are acquired through frequent repetition and revisiting. This is particularly important for children with literacy difficulties and SEN.
- Is teaching within the NLS dominated by too many fragmented targets?
- Has the structure of the literacy hour in some respects lessened the effectiveness of Teaching Assistants and Learning Support Assistants, due to time spent in whole class teaching sessions and working to class rather than individual targets?
- Has the role of children’s participation through talk been diminished by the pedagogy of the literacy hour, particularly for children with SEN? A small study of teacher and pupils discourse in the literacy hour showed that the longest utterances were made by the teacher with only 2% of pupil utterances exceeding ten words and 90% of these being no longer than five words. For children with special educational needs, nearly 90% of their utterances were of one to three words. The contributions made by children with SEN were not only fewer than might be expected from their numbers in the class, they also tended to be of the shortest length. (Lee and Eke, 2004)
- Has the emphasis on literacy and numeracy diminished time spent on the rest of the curriculum, which often includes important opportunities for speaking and listening and social development. Has this diminished learning opportunities for all children, but particularly for children with SEN?
References
- DfES (1998) The NLS Framework for Teaching, Additional Guidance, Including all children in the literacy hour and daily mathematics lesson, and Removing barriers to achievement from http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/literacy/communities/inclusion/
- Lee, J. and Eke, R.(2004) ‘ The NLS and pupils with special educational needs’, Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, Volume 4 Number 1pp 50–57
- Lingard, T. (2000) ‘Is the National Literacy Strategy raising the achievement of lower attainers?’
British Journal of Special Educational Needs, Vol 27 No 3 pp 118-123
- Miller, C., Lacey, P. and Layton, L. ‘Including children with special educational needs in the Literacy Hour: a continuing challenge’, British Journal of Special Educational Needs, Vol 30 No 1 pp 14-20
- Sainsbury, M. (1998) Implementation of the NLS, Summary Report, DfES http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/publications/literacy/63545/650931/919411
- Wearmouth, J. and Soler, J. (2001) ‘How inclusive is the literacy hour?’ British Journal of Special Education, Vol 28 No 3 pp 113-119
Further reading
A useful article from Kate Wall reviews the literature in this area:
- Wall, K. (2003) ‘Pupils with special educational needs and the National Literacy Strategy’ in Support for Learning Vol 18 No 1 pp 35-41
 
|
