[senco-forum] SEN select committee report

One glaring omission from the report is the fact there's no mention of
the importance of employing school staff who are themselves
significantly disabled or have first hand experience supporting people
with disabilities outside the school environment. This is an important
issue given most schools remain strictly 'disability free zones' as
far as adult staffing is concerned.

How big a problem is this? Well the DRC (Disability Rights Commission)
continues to highlight the fact that disabled people are grossly under
represented within the teaching profession. Indeed this is one of the
worst if not the worst of all professions in this regard. Furthermore
I've noticed in the schools in which I've worked the same applies to
the employment of TAs (teaching assistants) and other staff, which is
somewhat ironic given so many TAs are required to work with disabled
students.

Why is this issue important? Well to begin with if schools are
incapable of recruiting supporting and retaining disabled adult staff
then obviously there's far less chance of them also 'getting it right'
in regard to provision for their disabled students. Furthermore
schools are missing out on the insights and wealth of experience of
disabled staff, who can do so much to help make provision for disabled
students work better on a truly practical level.

Instead disability provision and how it's implemented is usually left
up to senior managers, none of whom have any first hand experience
living with a disability. As a consequence the schools disabled
students end up with provision that's all to often far less optimal
than it might otherwise have been.

It's all very well the report recommending more training for able
bodied trainee teachers and existing school staff. But what about the
need to have more staff in schools for whom accommodating disability
is already second nature?

David Bowles