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

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“In school he had quite a lot of high profile attention from a lot of experienced teachers but we seemed unable to help him in that it never went beyond the moment. Whatever advice you gave him, whatever skills you tried to teach him, he could not use them in the situation so in the moment he would nod and yes, he understood, but when he went out into the true testing ground which was his relationships with other people, he couldn’t activate or use the help we had given him.” In fact, Matthew’s behaviour became worse, though by the time it reached crisis point, the school decided it was too late to go through the time-consuming statutory assessment processes. Instead, they negotiated with Matthew’s family to place him on a link course with a local FE College. However, this placement too broke down and, we were told, after Matthew had been involved with a group of other students on the fringes of some criminal activity, he was asked to leave. All of the young people so far in this section managed to find a ‘champion’ who offered them and their families personal support and was in a position to marshal resources to support the young person in school. However, not all young people were so fortunate. Stuart is visually impaired and his mother talked of the lack of understanding displayed by the school, even though some of the external trappings of support were clearly in place: “…we found the SENCO extremely unhelpful. We didn’t feel that she was sympathetic to his needs, certainly didn’t understand his difficulties with relationships. You know she was very quick to just tell him what to do rather than facilitate, rather than to see how he could be in the situation. They had an Aspergers link unit and most of the school saw him as having Aspergers syndrome, you know and so just ignored him. She didn’t sort of look for ways of involving him with the unit or with people. She would give him a list of things he ought to do and didn’t recognise that he had the assistant sitting next to him in all the classes [and that] made him sort of different.” Eventually, on the advice of a specialist peripatetic teacher, Stuart moved to a specialist college, where he became much happier. It is dangerous to generalise too far from these cases. For instance, in the sample of 16, special schools appear to be experienced marginally more positively by young people and their parents than are mainstream schools. On the other hand, the populations of the two types of school are not directly comparable in such a small sample. Nonetheless, some themes do seem to emerge in terms of school experience: Schools can and do provide high levels of support which maintain young people in education, bring about personal, social and academic growth and create a stable platform from which transition can begin. As in Carl and Matthew’s cases, support may centre around a teacher or support assistant with the necessary time and commitment. Post-16 Transitions of Young People with SEN: Wave 2 53
Providing support in a consistent and appropriate manner is not straightforward. Mainstream schools in particular may have difficulties because of the range of adults involved with the young person and the relatively ‘open’ nature of the environment. For many young people with SEN, behavioural, emotional and social development needs are part of the overall range of difficulties which they present – regardless of whether they are formally labelled as ‘having BESD’. These sorts of difficulties present challenges for schools and it is not uncommon for schools to find that they can no longer cope. This, as we saw with Carl, can be the case in special schools as well as in mainstream schools. There is also a tendency for problems to be identified late in the young person’s schooling, sometimes so late that the statutory assessment procedures are seen as impracticable. This seems to be a result of difficulties genuinely changing as children become adolescents, and schools’ reluctance (reinforced by the structure of the SEN assessment system) to bring to bear higher-level interventions until lower level ones have demonstrably failed. It is not surprising, therefore, when these interventions do fail and there is little the school can do but move the young person on to some other form of provision. As a result, the later years of schooling are in some cases characterised by turbulence rather than stability, to the point where some young people (Matthew is a case in point) reach the stage where they are effectively out of education. 4.7 Qualifications from school 4.7.1 Qualifications gained Almost three-quarters of young people interviewed for the Wave 2 survey (74 per cent) reported that they had gained some sort of qualification in their final year of compulsory schooling. There were no observed differences according to gender or ethnicity in relation to the proportion of young people gaining qualifications at school, however, some key differences were observed for level of SEN and school type (see Figure 4.7). It is clear that young people with statements are less likely to have gained any sort qualification in Year 11 compared to young people without statements of SEN as would be expected. Similarly, young people who attended mainstream schools were more likely than those who went to a special school to gain qualifications in Year 11. 54 Post-16 Transitions of Young People with SEN: Wave 2
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RESEARCH Post-16 Transitions: a Lon
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Acknowledgements The authors would
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Contents Executive Summary viii 1.
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Executive Summary Introduction This
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help or information from the young
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profound difficulties and those whi
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1. Introduction This report present
Page 16 and 17: Main-stage fieldwork The aim in the
Page 18 and 19: Table 1.2: Estimates of the number
Page 20 and 21: • Chapter ten draws together the
Page 22 and 23: when educational options have a str
Page 24 and 25: of work-related training schemes. I
Page 26 and 27: without very considerable effort on
Page 28 and 29: introduction of a Children’s Bill
Page 30 and 31: 3. Characteristics of Young People
Page 32 and 33: difficulties. The less common forms
Page 34 and 35: Table 3.6: Statement of special edu
Page 36 and 37: Table 3.10: Change in SEN status N
Page 38 and 39: severe learning difficulties/profou
Page 40 and 41: 4. School and Outcomes A primary ai
Page 42 and 43: Table 4.2: Young person’s recall
Page 44 and 45: Table 4.5: Reasons why transition p
Page 46 and 47: Table 4.7: People involved in the t
Page 48 and 49: Table 4.9: Coverage of transition p
Page 50 and 51: Table 4.10: Coverage of transition
Page 52 and 53: Figure 4:3: Reasons why Year 11 dis
Page 54 and 55: Table 4.13: Provider of help to pre
Page 56 and 57: Table 4.15: Most helpful person whe
Page 58 and 59: Table 4.18: Extent to which school
Page 60 and 61: In cases such as these, transition
Page 62 and 63: were choices but young person and f
Page 64 and 65: Figure 4:6: Young People’s views
Page 68 and 69: Figure 4.7: Whether gained qualific
Page 70 and 71: Figure 4.11: Level of qualification
Page 72 and 73: • Over three-quarters of all youn
Page 74 and 75: Table 5.1: Current main activity Al
Page 76 and 77: Table 5.4: Current main activity, b
Page 78 and 79: Table 5.6: Current main activity, b
Page 80 and 81: college for people with LDD, and we
Page 82 and 83: transition plan to have sought advi
Page 84 and 85: 5.2.3 Ease of transition The majori
Page 86 and 87: Table 5.14: Occupation/training typ
Page 88 and 89: 5.3.3 Method of jobsearch and advic
Page 90 and 91: • help to progress into work/trai
Page 92 and 93: Table 5.21: Reasons for current ina
Page 94 and 95: Table 5.24: Advice received when lo
Page 96 and 97: However, he was finding this new co
Page 98 and 99: years, often in quite productive ac
Page 100 and 101: Table 5.25: Parent/carer view on ex
Page 102 and 103: employment or a training placement
Page 104 and 105: Figure 6:2: Benefit receipt, by SEN
Page 106 and 107: had not had any subsequent contact
Page 108 and 109: Table 6.3: Type of support lost sin
Page 110 and 111: Table 6.5: Additional support recei
Page 112 and 113: met by his special school sixth for
Page 114 and 115: education since their child left Ye
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• colleges (33 per cent of parent
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published information against just
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who had a statement of SEN and/or h
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Table 6.12: Parent/carer knowledge
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Figure 7:1: Qualifications gained (
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Parents were also asked to reflect
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“(He is) a bit more independent;
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immaturity and the fact that she is
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8. Leisure Activities and Social Li
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Figure 8:2: Weekday evenings spent
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For some young people, the involvem
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For Li, who has found his own way o
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Figure 9:2: Parental views on young
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Table 9.1: Views on the future, all
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Table 9.5: View (4) on the future,
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9.3 Next activity Almost three-quar
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plans for their futures but for var
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10. Conclusions 10.1 Introduction T
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Transition planning is purposely fo
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needs in both the academic and the
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and most reported that they had mor
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the most severe and complex difficu
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Appendix One: Wave 2 survey Summary
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Table A.1: Profile of participating
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10.5.2 Weighting Table A.3 reports
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• Economic factors • Structural
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gave their consent and who lived in
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Gareth is a young man with learning
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she does not succeed, her Connexion
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examples here are Maria who wants t
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time to themselves. The problem for
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here. He is one of the nicest peopl
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Appendix Four: References Bignall T
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