[SENco-forum] What are we for?

This is a point where I fundamentally disagree that a SENco needs to be a
teacher.  Not someone who has no relevant qualifications,  but not someone
who has to be a teacher.

Whole class teaching is for teachers. It is presumably what attracted them
to the job. I do not want to be a teacher.  I would be a terrible teacher.
I am really good 1:1 & pretty good in small groups to 12, but after that,
forget it.  I would be miserable having such a wide range of abilities to
teach and would not do the job justice. I applaud those who want to stick
with it especially when more SEN is experienced in one class room than
teachers of yore saw in a lifetime.

Supporting each individual child to reach their potential in school and the
interagency liaison that this takes is the SENco's responsibility.  Knowing
how whole class teaching works so that a each child can be accommodated
within this system and still be able to work to the best of their ability is
the SENco's job -important but not the whole. More important is the advice
given on how to adapt the classroom environment or teaching style to the
child and how that is taken on board usually has little to do with the
whether the SENco is a teacher or not!

Everything listed earlier other than whole class teaching is the SENco's
job. Mostly they are the child's advocate and there to make sure that school
policy reflects not only the Education law but the intent of the law. It is
quite unlike being a teacher and why many teachers do not give SENco's the
credit or support they deserve.

Eventually it may be a whole separate career path of its own like a
psychologist or speech therapist, with elements of all SEN, observations,
assessment and testing, teaching, management and law. Who knows.

Sharon

-PS I understand the problem from another perspective.  As a parent of 4
children with SpLD and 20 years of experience my advice in-school was viewed
as 'interfering'.  In fact the LEA wanted to know why I thought I was the
best person to give advice on my own child.  One Tribunal & a SpLD diploma
later the picture is slowly changing.  My advice has not changed per se, but
now it is listened to.  It is implemented more as it is seen to work. It
will not be actively sort or welcomed, apparently, until I am a teacher even
though nothing in the current PGCE would make me a better or more passionate
SENco.