Our host country, Estonia, is now recognised as an educational success: see the 2022 PISA results. We know that for disabled children and young people, and those with SEN, generalised statistics on academic attainment are not always meaningful, or representative of the ‘success’ of their educational life. However, the Estonians are clear that they attend carefully to all needs, adopting an inclusive approach. Some of the tenets of such an inclusive system are not specific to the realm of SEND: an investment in a wide curricular offer; universal free meals; a highly skilled teaching workforce; heavily subsidised early years provision and a progressive approach to utilising digital resources and technology for learning - all general approaches which have the potential to work well in the context of SEND. Above all, there is an unashamed ambition for schools to address societal inequality.
On a more SEND-specific note, and bearing in mind our own efforts currently undertaken on the Change Programme, it is worth mentioning Estonia’s system of Regional Guidance Centres: these are managed and funded by local authorities, and function in a similar way to our EHCP system in the sense that they are intended to supplement and extend the level and types of support afforded to pupils with additional needs if the initial inclusive approach doesn’t yield the desired outcomes. Committees sitting in the Regional Centres take a holistic approach to their recommendations, and these may include curricular adaptations.
Teachers in Estonia are highly trained (master’s level for schoolteachers; graduate level for early years). Inclusive practice is an integral part of teacher training, and Estonian colleagues have said that one factor which supports a successful inclusive environment is an increased level of autonomy enjoyed by schools and teachers: allowing environmental, pedagogic, and curricular adaptations to be made (and reconsidered/refined) easily, in a person-centred manner whilst acknowledging local contexts. Any pupil with ‘moderate, severe and profound learning difficulties’ will access an individual curriculum by law.
Day one of the conference was dedicated to updates on the Agency’s activities and data. For me, the standout feature of the day was the National Coordinator exchange session, which this time focused on countries’ positions and journeys between special needs and inclusive education. There are, of course, still huge differences between countries, with Italy probably the most inclusive (taking a mechanical approach to the term inclusion) with less than 1% of pupils, who have audio-visual impairments, schooled in separate provision. As we know, the English context is very different, and although the Improvement Plan has a stated ambition to ensure more children and young people will receive the support they need through ordinarily available provision in their local setting, in England we have never committed to dismantling the special school system. The diverse experiences of our European counterparts should however allow us to be nuanced in our approach to that system which will emerge post–Change Programme and I think this is a conversation that needs to be had. For example, what are the implications of the new alternative provision system – and will it possibly mean less of our pupils will require to be schooled separately? And is this indeed the direction we want to take?
The true excitement of day one, however, came as we headed for dinner, picking up the news from back home that an election date had been set – closer than expected in the SEND sector. Naturally, conversation turned to the hopes and fears in the sector regarding the political landscape at such a challenging time for our most vulnerable children and young people.
Day two was dedicated to the final conference on the Building Resilience through Inclusive Education Systems (BRIES). In short, the project set out to analyse the ways in which educational systems responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and to learn lessons regarding inclusive education. The underlying idea is to turn the crisis into an opportunity of learning and improvement. The project involved young people, parents, educational professionals and policy makers and we heard their reflections on the challenges of the pandemic which will surely sound familiar. Pupils spoke of isolation; parents of increased anxiety; and teachers on feeling a lack of agency.
The lessons learnt centred around the theme of communication, and how better (and better thought out) communication flow from policymakers to practitioners, parent/carers and learners will increase resilience in the system. During the work on BRIES, stakeholders quickly drew a direct line between these issues of communication and well-being. Again, anyone familiar with the struggles of our children and young people will immediately recognise the relevance to the English system.
BRIES participants highlighted the essential core elements of effective communication: trust, clarity, accessibility, and transparency. In workshops, we reflected on how well our countries are doing against these parameters. Pupil participants in the project spoke about challenges in communicating immediately with their teachers, as well as finding it difficult to access support from experts. Granted, these challenges were exacerbated by the pandemic and the lockdown, but certainly retain a relevance for disabled children and young people and those with SEN.
The lessons of the pandemic were translated into four ambitions:
1. Providing safe and secure psycho-social learning environments
2. Being able to act proactively, feeling prepared for psycho-social emergencies
3. Creating supportive links in the community around learners and families
4. Using effective communication to address the needs of all learners
BRIES provides a guidance for policymakers to work towards these ambitions including a self-audit tool related to ambition 4 (listed above) which enables an assessment of the criteria mentioned earlier (trust, clarity, accessibility and transparency). The resource is well worth a look: like many helpful tools, it is simple, uncluttered and intuitive. The guidance, a literature review, and a nice infographic are all available here.
The conference ended with a tour of the beautiful old town of Tallinn and a visit to a music and ballet school, from where we descended on Teachers’ House for dinner and entertainment, which included music played by young performers and ended with a disco (!)
DJ’d by two young boys. Fair to say some otherwise very serious educational professionals let their hair down…
Hüvasti from Tallinn.
Dr Daniel Stavrou