This is a very important article that aims to recapture the essential learning through play that we have increasingly lost over the years. It is much about ressurecting the sort of fundamental play children used to engage with generations ago, before the introduction of smart phones and other screens, etc.  It is similar to the principle behind the need for 'unsupervised play' enabling children the freedom to directly experience the world through their own experimentation with trial and error. In this way, the physical, psychologocial and cognitive aspects of learning start to join up and amount to a much deeper more profound level of learning than through the abstract lessons of what a child can be taught second or third hand, via an older adult or machine. 

The principles here also reinforce how valuable it is for children to engage with day to day practical activities alongside an adult, copying and practising the skills involved.  We see from watching young children that the things they are most interested in doing are those they see being performed by adults close to them.  This is certainly for an evolutionary reason, to ensure that essential skills are passed on. We deny children the opportunity to do so at our peril and deprive them of critical learning that will enable them to adapt to the adult world.

In addition, encouraging children to engage with adults in this way, takes the load away from adults of feeling that the only way to ligitimately interact with their young children, is to discontinue with their own activities and play with specially adapted, risk free toys. This can put a strain on the relationship, when a parent feels there are lots of more important jobs to be done.  Whereas the joy that can be gained from sharing those jobs with the children and helping them learn the skills they need to become proficient at them, can be a powerful force of family bonding.

A friend of mine regularly took his children with him on hot air balloon flights from the age of three upwards. One of them grew up to gain her own pilot's licence at 18 years old (one of the youngest qualified balloon pilots in the country) before engaging in a highly sought after aeronautical engineering apprenticeship degree, for which she was paid, over the following four years, before becoming a fully employed aeronautical engineer. As a child and teenager, she not only learned the complex skills directly associated with flying a hot air balloon, but also learned other valuable transferable skills such as air and nautical navigation, meteorology and mathmatical calculations, as well as the softer skills of prediction, patience, persistence, resilience, communication, team working as well as assertiveness, independence and leadership skills. The other daughter has also used all these skills to become highly resilient and successful in her own area of interest in the world of theatre and education.

Thanks Michael.  Do let me know if you have any questions about this.  I suspect more will be provoked by Part 2 of this paper which tackles a number of research issues related to ASD and diet. I very much look forward to discussions about that with you. 

Thank you very much for the interesting discussion material coming out of this meeting  I wish I had been at the meeting. Just as a preliminary comment, before reading all the material, I would like to say something about why many SENDCos have been kept in a middle leadership rather than a senior leadership position in schools. 

Firstly, many SENDCos are promoted internally or hired without having trained and qualified with a level 7 NASENCO award so are assumed to be 'training' on the job.  The other main reason which I talk about in my book 'Inclusive Education at the Crossroads' is that there is an inevitable conflict of interest between the role of the SENDCo and the senior leadership team when it comes to allocating a school's notional funding for the provision of SEND.  They also experience a conflict of interest with Multi-Academy Trust leadership teams, whose job is to distribute high needs funding in its schools for the support of its students with high levels of SEND on statutory support.

The SENDCo role is essentially designed to protect the best interests of the individual students involved and oversee the appropriate use of the funding for whom it is intended. This goes for both pupils on SEND support as well as those with EHCPs.  Unfortunately, there is no oversight by Ofsted, or other supervisory body, to ensure that this funding is implemented as specified by specialists on a child's EHCP or prior to a child receiving one.  Sometimes, MAT leaders are happy to allow these requirements to remain vague in EHCPs, in order not to have to be bound by any specific statutory advice. 

The issue of unprotected funding, and allocation of staff resources, is at the heart of the conflict between SENDCos and the senior leadership team, and also the tension between them and parents.  Until all funding is properly ring-fenced for support measures to be implemented as intended, and appropriately staffed, all these relationships will not work in harmony with one another, and will continue to cause endless frustration.       

Thank you so much for this interesting insight into PANS and PANDAS. Do you think the causes are related to a disorder of the immune system and therefore linked to neurological development?  The question now in my mind is whether those who have experienced sudden onset of symptoms post vaccination may also be because they are susceptible in a similar way as those children who have suffered PANS or PANDAS following an infection?  Is there any research on this?

Hi Heidi, 

I have a lot of sympathy with this view and believe it is much more widely felt than commonly discussed. Your type of experience is one we aim to open up discussion about and reflect on extensively in chapters 6 and 7 of our book Inclusive Education at the Crossroads: Exploring Effective Special provision in Global Contexts by Gordon-Gould and Hornby. It is important that as a society we confront the real issues facing the effective provision of special needs today.

All the best. 
Philippa