Capítulo 8. Children with Additional Support Needs and Disabilities: New Technology and Inclusion

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Sheila Riddell


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Capítulo 8. Children with Additional Support Needs
and Disabilities: New Technology and Inclusion

*Sheila Riddell

Centre for Research in Education, Inclusion and Diversity, University of Edinburgh

Introduction

Scotland has a long tradition of inclusive education, with most children with additional support needs and disabilities (asnd) being educated in mainstream settings. Indeed, less than one per cent of school children are placed in a special school or unit. International treaties, such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (uncrc) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (uncrpd), emphasise children’s right to high quality inclusive education. Article 24 of the uncrpd requires states to ensure “an inclusive education”, reinforcing the fundamental right to be educated in an inclusive environment with reasonable adjustments to ensure full participation. This interacts with Article 7 of the uncrpd, which states that disabled children and young people should have access to primary and secondary education “on an equal basis with others in the communities in which they live”. This conceptualisation accords with the Scottish Government’s presumption of mainstreaming, a principle underpinned by the Standards in Scotland’s Schools (etc.) Act 2000, which ensures that the vast majority of children with asnd are educated in mainstream schools alongside their peers.

These international treaties have provided impetus for a new focus on children’s rights in domestic policy and legislation. The Education (Scotland) Act 2016 gives children and young people the right to redress if they believe that the education provided by the local authority is inadequate (Riddell, 2020). Additionally, the rights of disabled children and young people are underpinned by the Equality Act 2010, which prohibits discrimination against disabled people. In this context, discrimination is defined as (i) the provision of less favourable treatment to a disabled person compared with a non-disabled person for a reason relating to their disability; or (ii) the failure to make a reasonable adjustment, such as providing information technology to support curricular access. Under both education and equality legislation, children and young people in Scotland have the right to access inclusive education and additional support including assistive technologies. However, there continues to be a gap between government rhetoric and grassroots reality, with persistent social inequality in educational outcomes linked to social class and disability (Organisation for Economic and Co-operation Development [oecd], 2007). As I argue below, the global pandemic of 2020/21 has illustrated major social inequality in digital access, so that children with (asnd), particularly those from deprived backgrounds, have struggled to access adequate education during the period of school closure. The central questions addressed in this paper are:

1. How extensively and effectively are new technologies being deploy
ed to assist in the inclusion of children and young people with
asnd?

2. What can we learn about the potential and limitations of new technology from the educational experiences of children with asnd during the Covid-19 pandemic?

This paper begins with a brief overview of the Scottish education system for international readers, and then outlines key social characteristics of the asnd population which have a bearing on their need for and access to assistive technology. Subsequently, the somewhat limited academic literature on the use of new technology in Scottish schools is discussed, including data published by the Scottish Qualifications Agency on digital access in high stakes assessment and research by call Scotland (Communication, Access, Literacy, Learning).4 After these scene-setting sections, the paper describes recent research on children’s educational experiences during the Covid-19 global pandemic, when schools in Scotland and the rest of the UK were closed for many months, with access restricted to vulnerable children (a vaguely defined group) and the children of key workers. The paper concludes by considering the lessons to be learnt from educational experiences during the pandemic, when the limitations, as well as the possibilities, of digital education have been exposed. Particularly for children with asnd, major problems in accessing online learning have emerged, serving as a reminder that social inequalities may be reinforced, rather than rectified, by the growing use of new technology.

Scottish Education and the Concepts
of Additional Support Needs and Disability

Scotland is one of the four nations of the United Kingdom (UK) and has a population of just over 5 million, of whom just under 700 000 are of school age. About 5% of the school population are educated in independent schools, the majority of which are fee-paying. Almost all children are educated in mainstream schools, although children with asnd may spend a proportion of their time in a learning support unit within these schools.

Following legislation passed in 2004, the Scottish Government replaced the term “special educational needs” (sen) with the much broader concept of “additional support needs” (asn). Children with additional support needs are defined in a somewhat circular manner as those requiring additional support in order to benefit from education. The umbrella category of asn includes children whose underlying difficulties may be due to a range of factors including social, cognitive, physical, sensory and emotional / mental health difficulties. Some asn categories are associated with familial problems, so that children living with parents who misuse drugs or alcohol would be described as having asn. Somewhat controversially, children of gypsy/travellers (specifically those experiencing interrupted learning), and those for whom English is not their first language, may also be categorised as having asn.

Tomlinson (1985) distinguished between normative difficulties (measured against some objective standard) and non-normative difficulties (based on professionals’ subjective judgements). She noted that, across the developed world, the growth in the proportion of children identified with sen from the late 1970s onwards was mainly due to the expansion of non-normative categories, such as social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, applied disproportionately to young men from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. These deficit labels, she suggested, might be used as a justification for the high rates of unemployment experienced by young men leaving school with few or no qualifications, many of whom had previously found work in various types of manual labour.

Although additional support needs is the most commonly used term within the education sector, schools are also obliged to identify which children are disabled. The Equality Act 2010 defines a disabled person as someone who has a long-term physical or mental disability which has a long term adverse impact on their ability to perform normal day to day activities. Education is considered to be an example of such an activity. In Scottish schools, the term “additional support needs” rather than “disability” tends to be commonly used. In this paper, I refer to children with “additional support needs and disability” (asnd), in recognitions of the additional legal protections enjoyed by disabled children and young people, including the right to reasonable adjustments.

Proportion of Pupils Identified as Having asnd

Over the past decade, there has been rapid growth in the number of Scottish children considered to have asnd, rising from 5% in 2007 to 31% in 2019. The size of this increase suggests that it is due, at least in part, to a widening of the criteria used to identify asnd, rather than the emergence of more difficulties in the population. In 2007, only children with particular types of educational plans (Individualised Educational Plans and / or Coordinated Support Plans) were included in official asnd statistics. Since then, there has been a proliferation in the types of non-statutory plans which are used, including Multi-Agency Support Plans, Additional Support Plans, Behaviour Support Plans and Looked After Child Plans. Non-statutory Child’s Plans are also being used more extensively, whereas iep’s are being used less frequently. The least commonly used plan is the csp, which is the only one providing clarity about exactly which additional services will be provided by the local authority, and which may be used if the child or parent wishes to challenge provision in a tribunal.

There has also been a major increase in the number of categories used in Scotland, which have grown from 12 to 24. Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties is the largest category, followed by English as an Additional Language and Moderate Learning Difficulties. Sensory and Physical Difficulties, described as normative because they are measured against an objective standard, continue to be applied to a small proportion of children with little change over time. It is noticeable that recently adopted categories in Scotland, such as Looked After Children, Family Issues, Interrupted Learning and Substance Abuse, refer to wider societal issues, although some of these account for relatively small numbers of children.

It is also worth noting that particular categories are used disproportionately with different social groups. The Scottish Government uses the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (simd) as its preferred measure of deprivation across many social policy fields. This is an area-based measure which is calculated using a set of indicators based on factors such as educational level, crime rates, housing and employment in a given postcode. The analysis below is based on groupings of neighbourhoods into simd deciles, with simd-1 being the most deprived and simd-10 the least deprived. As shown in Figure 8.2, pupils identified with asnd tend to live in more deprived parts of Scotland.

Figure 8.3 illustrates the association between deprivation and certain category of need. In all of them, pupils are more likely to live in more deprived neighbourhoods. However, there are two exceptions, notably Dyslexia and Abler Pupils, where pupils with these labels are more likely to live in less deprived neighbourhoods. Indeed, Abler Pupils are twice as likely to live in the most advantaged neighbourhoods as opposed to the most deprived. The association between level of deprivation and asnd is weakest in relation to low-incidence normative categories, for example Physical and Sensory Impairments, and is strongest in relation to categories associated with family and social difficulties (Family Issues, Substance Abuse, Looked After Pupils) and English as an Additional Language. Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, a high incidence non-normative category, is almost three times as likely to be identified in the most deprived as opposed to the least deprived parts of Scotland. This large and expanding category is frequently associated with social stigma and increased risk of school exclusion, and for these reasons is often resisted by parents (Riddell & Weedon, 2016).

While children living in the most deprived neighbourhoods are more likely than those living in the least deprived to be identified with asnd, the reverse pattern is evident in relation to those receiving a statutory support plan. As explained earlier, this type of plan is extremely important because it acts as a legal guarantee that the local authority will actually fund the additional support specified in the plan. It also necessitates that there will be an annual review of the child’s progress and changing requirements, and, perhaps most importantly, acts as a gateway to the tribunal allowing the child or the parent to hold the local authority to account.

Children with asnd living in the most affluent neighbourhoods are more than a third as likely as those in the most deprived neighbourhoods to be issued with a statutory support plan. Research shows clearly that local authorities and schools tend to play down the importance of statutory support plans because they are worried about the financial implications of making legally binding commitments to individual families. As a result, children who receive a csp are almost always supported by parents who have the social and cultural capital to understand the very complicated legal frame­work, and have the economic resources to purchase legal support if required (Riddell, 2020). Therefore, middle class parental lobbying is the critical factor in determining which children have guaranteed access to additional learning services and resources, including new educational technologies.

New Technologies and Access to the Curriculum
for Children with
asnd

For many children with asnd, technology in the form of bespoke software and hardware is an essential element in overcoming barriers to learning. Education legislation passed in 2002 placed a duty on local authorities to publish a triennial accessibility strategy setting out its approach to delivering fully inclusive education. The strategies were intended to explain what changes were underway to ensure that disabled children and young people were fully included in the curriculum, communication and the school physical environment, and review the effectiveness of changes already made. A review of the first round of accessibility strategies was undertaken by the Scottish Schools Inspectorate and the Disability Rights Commission in 2003, concluding that there were some signs of progress but much remained to be done. However, in 2020 the Scottish Disability Equality Forum reported that only 13 out of 61 schools and local authorities surveyed had a current accessibility strategy, and it was therefore impossible to know what actions to improve access had been made since the legislation was passed. It appears that accessibility for children and young people with asnd has dropped down the political agenda as years of austerity in public services have reduced local authority budgets.

Information on the use of educational technology in formal assessment is available from the Scottish Qualifications Agency (sqa), which has responsibility for the administration of school examinations. Pupils with asnd are entitled to request reasonable adjustments to normal assessment arrangements, and any request is likely to be grated if the school states that these adaptations are normally in place. Recent sqa data show that most special arrangements involve extra time, the use of a computer or human reader, technology or scribe for writing and adapted papers in digital, coloured or large print formats. The sqa does not analyse the social background of the pupils requesting particular types of adjustment, the nature of their difficulties or the type of school in which they are located. This type of analysis would be very helpful in examining the balance of requests for adjustments between pupils in private and state schools and in urban and rural locations. It would also provide insight into the different types of technology in use in different settings.

sqa data suggest that over the past decade fewer requests are being received for readers and scribes, and a greater number of requests for technological adjustments are being made. However, as noted above, these data by themselves provide no insight into the social status of those requesting and benefiting from the adjustments.

Having reviewed what is known (and unknown) about the use of new technologies in Scottish schools, I now consider the findings of research conducted during school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic, when virtually all education was delivered online rather than face to face.

Use of New Educational Technologies
in the Global Pandemic

Following the passage of the Coronavirus Act 2020, schools in the four UK nations were closed for an indefinite period of time to help reduce the virus transmission rate, effectively suspending many children’s access to education. In Scotland, local authorities were required to support in-home learning and provide education and childcare for children of key workers and vulnerable children. There was no clear definition of which children should be counted as vulnerable (Scottish Government, 2020b), and whether the category was intended to include all or only some of the group of children identified as having asnd, who now make up more than a third of the Scottish school population. Despite the stipulation that hub schools should remain open, only 1% of all children attended these schools, of whom the majority were children of key workers rather than those with asnd (Scottish Children’s Services Coalition, 2020). Low uptake was attributed to practical problems such as lack of transport and a sense that families wished to avoid the stigma of having their children labelled as vulnerable. Local authorities’ normal duties to assess and meet the needs of children with asnd were suspended, as long as failure to comply with these duties could be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic. Implicitly, the duty on parents to ensure that their child receives an education was suspended. The First-tier Tribunal for Scotland Health and Education Chamber deals with asnd appeals and is a critical part of the architecture supporting children and young people’s rights. However, changes to tribunal regulations meant that only time-critical cases proceeded, with no face-to-face hearings and minimal involvement of children and young people. Tribunal hearings were generally dealt with by conference call or by a judge without the input of other members.

These emergency measures, which were introduced rapidly and with little or no consultation with children and young people, were initially justified in human rights terms to protect public health (Nolan, 2020), and could be interpreted to have been decisions taken in the “best interests” of the child (uncrc, Article 3). However, analysis of the impact of the emergency measures indicated that they had serious consequences for children’s rights (Observatory of Children’s Human Rights Scotland, & Children & Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, 2020).

The online delivery of education during the pandemic meant that local authorities were unable to ensure equal educational access, since children’s home environments inevitably reflect wider social inequalities. Local authorities were also unable to control educational quality or to ensure that reasonable adjustments, including auxiliary aids and services, were available, with negative implications for children with asnd and their parents, including those with particular communication needs and learning difficulties. It was also impossible for local authorities to ensure that “vulnerable” children attended a hub school. Since the category of “vulnerable child” was undefined, no official data were available on school attendance and parents did not want their child to be categorised as vulnerable.

The following section summarises research findings on the impact of these changes, including the negative impact of reliance on digital learning for children with asnd, particularly those living with social disadvantage.

The Impact of the Emergency Measures

There is a broad consensus that school closures have had serious consequences for children’s educational progress and have exacerbated existing social inequalities (Green, 2020; Major & Machin, 2020; Reay, 2020;). In a review of evidence for the Sutton Trust, Montacute (2020) notes the importance of the home learning environment for children’s educational development and the difficulties faced by parents living in areas of social deprivation due to financial pressures and overcrowded housing. A report by the Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities (scld) (2020) highlights the negative impact of social isolation, economic disadvantage and withdrawal of normal support.

Cullinane and Montacute (2020) note the way in which online learning has exposed the digital divide between more and less socially advantaged groups, reflected in differential ownership of digital devices, varying internet access and school-level differences in digital competence. A survey of teachers working in the independent and state sectors found that independent school pupils were twice as likely to access to online lessons every day compared with their state school peers (Montacute, 2020). Within the state sector, children attending schools in areas of social deprivation were less likely to receive online lessons delivered in real time compared with their peers attending schools in more socially advantaged areas.

Concerns are also raised about the impact of school closure on future school attendance. A Nuffield Trust funded survey (Sharp et al., 2020) shows that English head teachers in more socially deprived neighbourhoods believe that parental fear of the virus will depress school attendance following the reopening of schools. By way of contrast, head teachers in less deprived areas believe that normal patterns of attendance will resume because parents are better informed about the relatively low risks of the Covid-19 to children.

While recently published studies highlight the amplification of educational inequalities arising from school closure, there has been little research on the specific experiences of children and young people with asnd and their families. Findings from a qualitative study exploring the lived experiences of children with asnd and their families during the pandemic are reported below (Couper-Kenney & Riddell, 2021).

Learning Resources and Digital Access

Education during lockdown was largely delivered by time asynchronous digital means. Schools provided students with access to online systems for communication, such as Microsoft Teams, G oogle Classroom, Seesaw, Class Dojo and other apps. Some families found that they needed to purchase or borrow more devices to enable each of their children to access the work. Internet access was critical, and families in rural areas were at a substantial disadvantage due to poor coverage.

Beyond devices and internet connection, families experienced challenges navigating the online systems which had been hastily set up and typically supplied without any training. Secondary education is delivered by different subject teachers who, during the period of school closure, often used the platforms differently. Parents in the study described the challenges of accessing, then effectively translating, schoolwork for multiple children to meet their individual learning needs.

I ended up converting most of [the work set by teachers] the morning of each day into physical resources. Again, I was fortunate to have lots of cubes, pens, drawing paper (Sarah, mother of three boys, simd-5).

Some websites were free but some materials signposted by the school required subscription payments so we just googled and found our own free materials instead. I actually spent most of my time in an it support role instead of directly instructing them on anything! (Helen, mother of Harrison and Hayley, simd-7).

Half of the participants in the study found that they needed to create educational opportunities for their children, buying books, finding materials online, and adapting worksheets from school. Families with a wide age range needed to find ways of occupying all their children simultaneously, since there was no alternative childcare. This required foresight, creativity and an ability to adapt the materials provided:

Often I have ended up getting all three children doing Micah’s activities because they are a lot more fun than Mia’s (Michelle, mother of Mia, Micah and Mae, SIMD-6).

I tried to do a combination of work and play to challenge both Sally and Stuart but also that would allow them to work together (Samantha, mother of Sally and Stuart, SIMD-6).

The sudden nationally and internationally proliferation of resources to support education and recreation during the pandemic was overwhelming for many families. So many opportunities were being offered, often without payment, but the requirement to filter and plan usually fell to parents. The requirement to be online to access learning materials and also for social and recreational reasons contributed to exhaustion. Additionally, some disabled children were excluded:

[There were] wonderful things being offered for other and especially younger kids, Maths with Carol Vorderman, pe with Joe. There are so few resources out there for kids like Brianne. Especially ones that are free (Beth, mother of Brooke, Brianne and Brody, SIMD-10).

School shared lots of tweets but most were irrelevant to my son’s needs. This completely overwhelmed me in the beginning. My mental health took a dive (Dot, mother of two boys, SIMD-9).

For other families, suddenly having access to free online resources was illuminating and significant. Families requesting support for children struggling with full time school attendance have often been told that online learning is impossible. Some months before the pandemic, Emma was forced to deregister her disabled and chronically ill children from school. As a result, they were unable to access the online curriculum provided during lockdown, since their login to the Scottish schools online platform had been deactivated. Another parent saw this as evidence of ableism, since online learning, previously deemed “impossible” for disabled children, was now implemented on a vast scale:

My overall view, that it is clear due to Covid-19, is that the Government is able to change society in a way that suits all, so our request for a fairer and equal society can clearly be done. It is about willingness. Keeping people safe and alive has been the ultimate narrative in lockdown (Annie, mother of Ava and Andrew, SIMD-1).

Conclusions

To summarise, Scotland has a well-established tradition of inclusive education, with educational technology being placed at the heart of enabling children with asnd to access the full curriculum. The Scottish Government has launched a number of initiatives to encourage full curricular access for all. However, a number of promising initiatives, such as the duty on local authorities and schools to publish accessibility strategies, have been allowed to disappear from view, so that the legal requirement remains but there is no way of assessing what, if anything, is happening. Children’s rights are of growing importance in Scotland, including the right to independent legal redress. However, as argued above, unless parents are able to act as champions for their children, there is little chance of using dispute resolution mechanisms. In particular, the growing group of children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds who are categorised as having social, emotional and behavioural difficulties are frequently unable to access new technologies to assist with their learning and lack the resources to contest local authority and school decisions.

The qualitative study reported in the paper (Couper-Kenney & Riddell, 2021) suggests that school closure has had profound effects on children with asnd and their families. When the emergency measures were introduced, children’s rights experts argued that they were justifiable to protect public health and, in line with Article 3 of the uncrc, might be interpreted as decisions taken in the best interests of the child. However, as noted by Nolan (2020), serious questions remained about the extent to which the government took adequate steps to safeguard the interests of the most vulnerable groups, including those with asnd and those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. For these children, the risks to health and wellbeing of staying at home in these circumstances outweighed the risks of returning to school (Scottish Government, 2020a; Ferguson et al., 2020).

Disabled children’s right to be included on the same terms as others in their community (Article 7 uncrpd) was not always upheld, as demonstrated by the difficulties reported in this study. The limitations of digital education were powerfully illustrated during the pandemic, underlining Zhao’s acknowledgement that online learning, while offering opportunities for some students, is unlikely to work for large groups of children (Zhao, 2020). Indeed, the reliance on digital learning in isolated home environments positioned children as atomised individuals cut off from face to face contact with teachers and other pupils. This appears to be at variance with the principles of inclusive education, which seeks to reduce differences by supporting individuals through the creation of supportive communities and through the provision of additional educational aids and services. Further work is needed to consider how the principles of inclusive education may be preserved during national emergencies involving school closures, and how new educational technology may be operationalised more effectively in home environments without reinforcing inequalities.

References

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4 call Scotland was founded in 1983 as a Research and Development Centre. Funded by the Scottish
Government, its aim is to find ways of using assistive technology to help disabled children and young people overcome barriers to learning.
call works with individual pupils in school, advises professional and provides consultancy services on the use of appropriate technology. Recent projects have included work on digital books and examination papers (Further reading available at https://www.callscotland.org.uk/about/).