Post-16 Transitions: a Longitudinal Study of Young People with ...

In some cases, school embodied the best of ‘traditional’ special
education. Sophie1 for instance, is a young woman with severe
and complex learning difficulties who was 18 at the time of
interview, but had attended the same small special school since
the age of five. Her mother described the school in the following
terms:
“I mean it’s a very good school, we think it’s a very good school.
The head teacher is exceptional and we’re not alone in saying that
you know. She is very good with staff and cheerful and with the
County Council so I think we’ve been very lucky there.”
This ‘exceptional’ head was able to offer the sort of personalised
support which young people and their families needed. In this
context, the formal processes of review and planning simply
formed part of a close and continuing stream of interaction
between school and family.
Sophie’s difficulties present significant educational problems to her
teachers, but ones that are well-understood and can be met by a
committed staff. However, young people who present behavioural,
emotional or social difficulties appear to be much more difficult for
teachers to deal with and these young people face the real threat
of a breakdown of the relationship with school. Carl is a young
man with severe autism who attends the sixth form of a special
school for pupils with moderate learning difficulties. As he entered
the teenage years, he began to present acute behavioural
problems in terms of violence to family, teachers and other pupils.
He also began to engage in sexually inappropriate behaviour. The
school was on the point of excluding him and was only dissuaded
from doing so when it secured extra funding from the LEA to
provide one-to-one support. As Carl’s needs have eased, he has
remained in the school post-16, and at the time of interview was
attending a link course at a local FE college with which the school
had a good working relationship. Plans were already in place for
him to complete the transition to the college full-time in the
following year.
However, not all such problems had equally positive outcomes. A
number of young people we spoke to had had somewhat turbulent
school careers, particularly in the latter stages where their difficulties
and frustrations reached crisis point. Matthew, for instance,
described himself as having dyslexia, though it appears to have
been his behavioural difficulties which caused the greatest problems
for his teachers. After an unsuccessful time at primary school, his
difficulties were identified by his secondary school. He was not
regarded as having sufficiently severe problems for the school to
seek a statement, but he nonetheless received a level of support
which both he and his mother regarded as valuable. Despite this,
Matthew found relationships with his teachers and his peers difficult.
He was bullied and himself became a bully in turn. He misbehaved
in lessons and was given to outbursts of temper in which he might
hit other pupils. The school’s approach was supportive, but as his
SEN teacher told us, ultimately it was ineffective:
1 All names have been changed to protect the identities of the
young people who took part in the case studies.
52 Post-16 Transitions of Young People with SEN: Wave 2