Member interviews

Member interviews

Member interview series: Philippa Gordon-Gould and Garry Hornby

In our first member interview of this new series, we speak to Philippa Gordon-Gould and Garry Hornby about their new book, 'Inclusive Education at the Crossroads'.

Mar 09, 2023

SEND Network, Garry Hornby, India Dunkley & Philippa

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Liked by Torie Hart

We are delighted to share our the first episode of our member interview series! In this series, we will be shining a spotlight on our members and their work.

We kicked off by speaking to Philippa Gordon-Gould and Garry Hornby about the release of their new book 'Inclusive Education at the Crossroads: Exploring Effective Special Needs Provision in Global Contexts'. This was a great and timely discussion after the government published their response to the SEND and AP Green Paper.

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

'Inclusive Education at the Crossroads: Exploring Effective Special Needs Provision in Global Contexts' is available to buy now.

Video Transcript

So welcome to our membership interview series.

I'm delighted to be joined today by Philippa Gordon-Gould and Garry Hornby.

Thank you both so much for joining me.

Would you like to start by introducing

yourselves and sharing the work that you do with the network?

Philippa, would you like to start?

It's been really good, actually,

to be able to talk to other people who've come up with a number of questions

that I've had during the course of my career as a SENCo.

They've bounced off other people's ideas and questions that have come up.

It's been really interesting to see how frequent similar problems do arise.

But we all have different areas of specialities,

different areas of interest that we've been able to share with one another.

And that's meant that

there's been a really good sharing of understanding and also

we've been able to point one another in the direction of books, literature,

legislation that's all helped to support people to find

the direction they needed and the understanding they needed when

they got it felt a bit in the rut or in need of extra information.

So yes, from that point of view the network's been fantastic.

That's great. Thank you.

That's so good to hear that you're getting a lot of use out of it.

Would you also just like to introduce your background?

And I know that you're a freelance teacher

and you've got a lot of experience as a SEND practitioner.

So would you like to share that with the network?

Yeah, I suppose primarily I came to SEND

from the point of view of as a parent, and I think that's really helped me

to bring an understanding of what it's like to have children with SEND sitting

on the other side of the fence and talking to the education world about the struggles

that you've had with your own children and getting through

the sort of network of difficulties faced by the policies that have been put

in place at government level and at school level and local government too.

All that has been the experience that I've had as a parent

has been invaluable when it's come to actually sitting on the other side

of the desk and talking to parents and helping children.

So I think I feel I can empathise

and offer them some really good understanding of what

it's like on each side of the fence as it were.

I think that's really invaluable and a lot of our users will really resonate

with that coming from both the parent side and the practitioner side of things.

Garry, would you like to introduce yourself and your experience within the sector?

I was originally a mainstream teacher,

physics, science and maths and then moved into special education,

a special class teacher, then trained as an educational psychologist.

That was out in New Zealand then for the last 30 years I've been involved

in higher education, first teachers colleges and then universities and

mainly training for specialist teachers, special ed teachers,

and then research and publications on the topic.

So I'm now retired and into sort of writing with colleagues in various

parts of the world, including Philippa in England.

I don't know whether that give me a little bit.

That's brilliant.

Thank you so much.

And most of the reason why we're speaking to you today is because

you've both written a book, Inclusive Education at the Crossroads

exploring Effective Special Educational Needs Provisions in Global Context.

So would you like to just say a little bit about that, how the book came about,

and what the sort of general stance of that piece of work is all about?

Okay. Do you want me to start with that, Garry?

Both as teacher and SENCo

I tried very hard to see how I could support parents better within mainstream schools.

So it was my mission, as it were, to try and

Look at what was actually happening

in school, I trained late as a teacher, as a mature student,

and very much had the end goal of wanting to realise how children in mainstream

school could be given the support that they needed.

As I said, coming at it from a parent's

point of view, that was really, really important.

so I have to admit that it was an uphill struggle to see what was possible

and to cope with all the frustrations that I encountered as a teacher

and felt that an awful number of teachers were experiencing similar problems.

It was even more obvious to me what those

problems were and what was driving them when I became a SENCo.

So when it was actually, thanks to the pandemic,

gave me an opportunity to take a break from teaching and look at some

of the research that I'd started to do and explore a bit further.

And it was during that time of research

that I wanted to start to look at how things were going on abroad as well as

in our own country, because I wondered whether it was all

to do with what we were doing here or whether there was some universal problem.

And it was during the course

of that research that I came across some research that Garry had written.

I picked up his paper, one of his papers,

and thought, this sounds really interesting,

I want to get in touch with him and talk to him about it.

So that started the communication

and from there we realised we had a lot in common about our concerns

and came to the conclusion that we should write a book together.

So it was very fortuitous to meet.

And what was that research, Garry, that you had it in common?

From my own experience work as a special class teacher,

I became aware of the importance of working with parents and I did a lot

of writing early on about working with parents and then more latterly.

Looking at the inclusion issue.

Inclusion versus special education.

And what kind of provision is the most

effective in preparing young people with special needs for life after school?

And I've written quite a bit on that.

the 2014 book I called Inclusive Special Education

and I did an article on that as well in the British Journal of Special Education.

And that's where it sets out how we might combine a focus on being inclusive

with a focus on providing for special educational needs.

So that's the area that I wanted to contribute to the book,

because I firmly believe that we need some kind of combination of both approaches.

This idea that we can include all children

in mainstream classrooms is just not practicable.

It just does not work.

There's always a small proportion of children who are going to need help

outside of that if we are going to give them an effective education.

So they're passionate about

letting people know that that's my view and how to do it effectively.

When I met Philippa with my practical experience of working in schools

in England and other places, it was a great combination because I

was providing theory and research and Philippa was providing the practical

realities as a teacher, SENCo and also as a parent.

My kids also had mild, specific learning difficulties going through

schools and a little bit of feeling for that.

But yes, I think it was the combination

of our views were similar, but we could contribute very different

on different aspects of practical theory and the research.

So we thought, well, let's put this together and see what it comes up with.

Yeah, that brings up the point that the book is actually part of a series

that's called A Connecting Theory and Practice.

So fundamentally, that was the underlying drive for our book.

We wanted to put those two things together.

Often we work in silos as teachers and

researchers can be in a bit of a bubble of their own as well.

And getting that crossover and good understanding between the two

was really an interesting part of doing this exercise.

Yes, absolutely.

I wanted to ask about you were talking about

this sort of move towards a more all encompassing inclusive approach and I

know your research is quite sceptical of that.

So I just wondered,

in your opinion, what are the dangers to the quality of teaching and learning

when it comes to the move towards full inclusion?

Quite a big question!

Very big question.

I think that we are seeing

this is one of the reasons why we wanted to look around the world,

because we wanted to see what was happening in our country.

Was that really something

that the countries were experiencing or did they have the skills and wherewithal

and the resources to be able to implement inclusion in an effective way?

Clearly we weren't doing so.

The 2019 investigation that was done

by the House of Commons Education Select Committee

produced a report that was highly scathing and highly critical of what was going on.

I think that was just the sort of end result, really

of all the complaints and the concerns that had been raised by parents

and by teachers and clearly ofsted were identifying

problems within schools to meet the needs of SEND appropriately.

And local authorities too were really struggling.

So I think what we wanted to do is to understand

what it was that was breaking down, was inclusive inclusion really doable,

if only we could put the right things in place and the right training and so on.

And a lot of the criticism initially has been levelled very much

at teachers that perhaps it was not sufficient teacher training

that was at the root cause of not being able to implement full inclusion properly.

So we wanted to uncover all that and see

what was at the heart of effective implementation.

And one of the things that was really,

really interesting for Garry and I to listen to and engage with was a series

of podcasts that were produced by now, you have to help me out here.

Somebody Banks, wasn't it? Joanna Banks.

Joanna Banks. That's right.

About the reforms that were proposed in Ireland.

Now, Ireland has a tradition of a very

good, effective school system, which includes SEND provision special schools.

But there was a real concern about whether that keeping those special schools

amounted to genuine inclusivity and equality for all children.

So there was a lot of soul searching going on in the background of the proposals to

readjust the system and readjust legislation.

So that reflected a much more inclusive approach.

And it was very interesting because their model, of course,

was New Brunswick in Canada, where they have a fully inclusive system.

So part of our research was also based

on looking at how effective that was and not just the sort of surface stories,

but also what was being said in the background

by people on the ground, by teachers, by parents and by pupils as well.

So we really wanted to uncover what was

going on, whether inclusion was really workable.

And that was what led to us looking at what was happening

in various countries around the world in terms of implementing the inclusion

agenda that's come from the United Nations.

And so we have chapter three or four.

Chapter four, isn't it, that we look at a whole range of countries

and what's happening with the implementation.

And then I think, chapter nine, we actually compare four specific countries.

Barbados, where I am now, New Zealand, where I lived for a lot of years,

the USA and also Finland to look at approaches there and look at what

use the strengths and weaknesses and what comes out of their approaches, to look at

a way forward, looking at the international set up,

as well as looking more specifically at England.

I think a lot of the chapters focus on what's going on in England from various

stakeholder perspectives, teachers perspectives, school leaders,

parents, and then this is a managerial funding body, local authority perspective.

So we've got an international focus, if you like, of what's going on around

the world with the information of implementation of the inclusion agenda.

And that's thrown up some suggestions that we come up with later

in the book as to what really should be in place.

And we focus on more of a combination

of an inclusive philosophy with special education technology, if you like,

and we actually finish the book with a list of recommendations.

What needs to be implemented for the best

possible education for all children with special needs and disabilities.

I think the other key issue that we needed

to address was was the human rights of the child, was the

driver behind the idea of inclusion, and particularly full inclusion?

Were they really being met by an inclusive

ideology or were they more likely to be met by ensuring that the quality

of education that they were receiving was good.

And we felt everywhere we looked, we felt really concerned that the quality

of their education was being diluted in many of the inclusive systems.

Not because the will wasn't there,

but a lot of the time the resources weren't there.

And there was an underestimation of whether

of the cost that would be incurred in providing efficiently and effectively

for special educational needs across the board.

Within mainstream,

one thing that we considered was that within mainstream you've got many

different schools in which you find lots and lots of different

disability of various kinds, whereas in special schools you've got the chance

of bringing those children with similar disabilities together under one roof.

So from a cost point of view, although it may seem that the special

schools themselves were more expensive, the overall costs were probably no greater

by having children in those special schools than in the mainstream school.

So there was that moment we looked at of the cost factor.

If I can jump in there, Philippa.

I mean, the key issue there as well is the cost

to society as well as the cost of the individual

child and their family, the cost to society.

We don't provide an effective education,

children leaving school without the skills in order to live

independently or get jobs in the community or shelter, work.

And part of my research, which is reported in, I think,

chapter ten, where we sort of compare what happens when you have children

that have an appropriate education that has been vocationally focused

in the last few years of life with a transition plan that helps them

transition to post school life in terms of vocationally and socially compared

to here you have children with similar disabilities

in mainstream settings where it's much more difficult to provide that vocational

training and the social, interpersonal training.

And the sort of results that we sort of looked at is that you really need

to have for some children, you really need to have that specialist

teaching, certainly in the secondary school.

So I think that sort of we try to bring

out and harks back to Mary Warnock really were when I was starting working

in special ed in New Zealand in the mid 1970s.

The Warnock Report came out in 1978, was tremendously influential worldwide

and one of the things was encouraging as many children as possible to be

integrated, as it was called, and in mainstream schools.

But then we report in the book

that Mary Warnock reviewed the situation in 2005 when she came out with a

Book, where she said that she felt that the good intentions that the Warnock

report had had had not been fulfilled and that many children with special needs

that were being integrated weren't getting an appropriate education.

And she felt that the human rights are important to have a human right to have

an appropriate education in a place where you feel you belong.

And this wasn't sort of happening.

So we we sort of addressed that, you know, that we take through the whole last 30,

40 years of special education and how we've moved, you know,

with very good intentions to include as many children as possible,

but realising that for some children, that's not meeting their needs anyway.

Can I ask, do you think there's a fear,

either from practitioners or from parents of labelling children from a young age?

And that's what's creating the pushback

against specialist settings, specialist environments,

and almost trying to push full inclusion in mainstream schools is to perhaps

kind of antidote that and try and ensure that children don't face the potential

consequences of that? Because we know that there are links

between labelling and quality of life and mental health.

So what would you say to that argument?

I was just thinking about that the other day with Garry, because

this is something we address in a big way in our third chapter, actually,

and consider what the payoffs, if you like,

of early assessment and making sure that a child has what they needs in place

early on against that labelling that people are anxious about.

But I think if it's done carefully enough,

the main concern for the child is having their needs met.

And I think it's not having needs met over a long period of time that can build up

to a child feeling not only different, but also inadequate compared to their peers.

And that's not something that is really very much of a concern when they're really

little, quite young, but as they get older and they get into secondary school,

particularly, the last thing they want is to be seen as different.

So I think there's a much better chance of they're not feeling labelled or perhaps

even having had the chance to come to terms with their difficulties and made

the best of them and progressed in spite of them.

If those difficulties have been properly

acknowledged early on and then they begin the right support,

I think it's often it's the adults in the room that are more concerned

with those labels than the children themselves.

Particularly at the early stages. Yeah.

And often just by it's not the label itself that

creates the stigma and the bullying and all that sort of thing.

It's the fact that the kids are different.

And even if you give kids a different

label, the other children in the class will soon work out which is which.

And that's come out from the research I did in sort of special school kids

that spent time in mainstream school and special schools,

that they were bullied in the mainstream schools because they were different.

And going to a special school was

something that they thought was wonderful, because with all of the children who had

similar difficulties, they could get the extra help that they needed.

And the fact they'd been to a special school or had special help

in the end was a positive, it didn't limit Jamie Oliver's career.

The fact that he was bragged that he was a remedial child, wasn't he?

In the primary school, he had extra help with reading.

It didn't stigmatise him and make him feel as if he couldn't achieve.

He got the help that he needed and became a brilliantly high achiever.

And I think that's what we have to do,

we have to focus on giving kids the help that they need.

But there is this issue of if we label, they'll be stigmatised.

Well, no, they'll be stigmatised because

of their behaviour, because they're different, not because of the label.

Well, because they haven't been given

the support to learn how to cope with those difficulties.

I think it's very much a question

of interpretation, isn't it, how we help the child interpret those

difficulties within the society in which they're functioning.

I'll tell you about one of my children who he felt very much on his own when he was

in his mainstream school as a very dyslexic child.

We were actually living abroad

at the time, and I remember him saying, Mama,

I try sometimes to look up at the ceiling when the teacher asks me a question,

because that's what other people seem to do.

And then the teacher said to me the other

day that the question wouldn't fall from the sky.

And I felt so sorry for him.

He eventually did go to a school that was specifically designed for children

with dyslexia, and when I asked him after his first week at school how he felt about

it, he said, Mummy, they speak the same language as me.

And I thought, really?

This says it all.

And there he had the opportunity to explore his strengths,

to reconcile himself with the difficulties that he had and overcome them.

And as an adult now he's all stronger

for them and for what he had done, and knowing that he has the resources,

the inner resources now to go out into the world and say, well, this is me.

Yeah, I have these difficulties, but I can cope and I can do well nonetheless.

That's such a wonderful story, thank you for sharing that.

I just wanted to ask, in your research if you have found any

evidence of mainstream schools that have successfully promoted inclusion?

Because we know, for example,

just in the UK, over half of our state funded specialist

schools are oversubscribed, so you talk about a combined approach.

So I would assume we can't just say we need more specialist schools.

What kind of practices can SENCos and teachers implement into their

mainstream setting to try and promote inclusion?

Yeah, so, of course, there are many schools that do very well.

They tend to be the better resourced on the whole.

Sometimes they're better resourced because they have attracted more money.

They have been identified as having a number of severe difficulties

in the school and that attention has enabled them to apply for more funding,

with funding and with success breed success.

And you tend to get more teachers who are interested in special education coming

to the school with good quality of staff, with good training.

So it tends to snowball once the schools

start to have some self confidence about its ability to cope.

I think when schools are realistic about the difficulties that they have,

that they address the ones in front of them, so they are honest about what

those difficulties are and they respond accordingly by bringing in the expertise,

bringing in the knowledge, supplying the teachers with the necessary

training and letting that be disseminated amongst all the staff.

So the school is working as a whole

to support individual children's needs and not just in isolation.

It's not just ATA, for instance, that is dealing with a child's needs.

It's a whole school approach that this often has a much more successful outcome.

Yes, I certainly agree,

and I think we've tried to emphasise that in the book, which I must promote here.

We look at the organisation of schools,

we look at the need for teachers to develop competencies.

While I'm at it, my previous book is this

one, which is potential evidence based teaching strategies.

And to my mind,

this is it's interesting to see their focus on evidence-based practice in this

latest document that's just come out today and that's widely talked about.

But of course, what needs to happen is that teachers need to learn

to use evidence based strategies and implement them in the classroom,

and they need the support in order to do that.

So that makes an enormous difference.

And it's good for kids with special needs,

it's good for the average child, it's good for the above average child.

So I think there's a lot of evidence out there and a lot of research evidence out

there now of what teachers can do cater for a wide range of children.

But when you look at the wide range

of difficulties that children with special needs exhibit, and we do this in chapter

five, Philippa, we look at every different type, chapter seven, isn't it?

We look at every different type in chapter seven of Special Needs

and look at, you know, what are the challenges that children

with visual impairment, with learning difficulties,

with emotional behavioural issues, what are the challenges that they present

to teachers and what teachers will need to what strategies teachers will need to do.

And when you look at that, there really is a wide range

to think that any teacher could cater for the whole wide range of special needs.

It's very, very difficult.

And use it cooperative learning and peer tutoring, formative assessments and all

the things that I've discussed in here, it's going to be a help differentiation

and direct instruction and all these things.

And parental involvement.

Yeah, I would say that's probably

one of the most important things that a school can do to support

inclusion is to start with those relationships with parents.

And a lot of parents need a lot of support.

Children are going through the education system for the first time.

They're not aware of how it all works.

They often are very anxious themselves about their own children's difficulties.

They want to know how to help,

and sometimes they can feel intimidated by the school system.

It's incredibly important that they feel

that there's a support network for them there, both amongst the other

parents of children with SEN, but also from the expertise that's

available within the school and the surrounding community.

So all those things contribute hugely to successful inclusion.

Just going back to the other point about

the diversity of difficulties within an inclusive classroom.

Garry, we looked at the group makeup of classes.

So you might have one class in a school

in the same school with, say, a Dyslexic child and a child

with ADHD, or you might have a class that has

a couple of children with ASD or a couple more with ADHD.

That combination of the types of difficulty are crucial to how a teacher

is going to manage. It's not just the individual

itself or that particular type of need within the classroom,

but it's the way those children with those needs interact and to what extent they

impact on the learning in the classroom as a whole.

Thank you. Thank you.

That's been so insightful.

This interview has absolutely flown by.

I want to give you an opportunity

at the end just to ask a question to our network.

You've got access to

a lot of experience and lots of different characters and individuals.

So I wondered if there's anything

that you're curious about and that you would like to find out from them.

What we'll do is we'll post it as a thread alongside the interview.

So anything just off the top of your head that you would like to know?

I'd like to know what the greatest challenge is for any SENCOs at the moment,

particularly when they're grappling with the thought of new reforms.

And I know that some schools are almost

jumped the gun, as it were, and started to think what those might involve.

Have they been helpful or has it disorientated you somewhat?

What kind of help have you had to introduce new policies that might be

along the lines of what the government is going for now?

Brilliant. Thank you.

We'll definitely put that to our network.

Garry, do you have anything to add?

Just to ask what would be helpful to teachers?

I mean, your teachers are extremely busy and they don't have a lot of time to read

books or to seek new ways to deal with things.

And we've tried to with this latest book to put into actual guidelines for teachers.

And as I said, through the state based Practise book,

I've actually put in links to videos YouTube videos to show how peer tutoring,

popular learning and things like that can be done.

It's useful, I think, quite often to look at getting copies

of the e-book and books will be available in the next few days as an e-book.

I think then it's easier for teachers

to sort of access that and access the sort of ideas within it.

But if there's anything that anybody I get

all the feed now on the SEND network, which is great.

So if there's any sort of ideas

that people have of how we can help people, can support people to do what is

an incredibly difficult, challenging, but incredibly important job.

Teachers make enormous differences

to children's lives, particularly those with special needs,

like myself, who was saved by my 11 plus teacher,

who identified me as a young man with a stammer.

And she was determined to get rid

of my stammer and by the end of the year she had me.

And if she hadn't done that,

how on earth would I have been able to do all the things that I've been able to do?

So teachers may have incredible impacts on young people's lives.

We're busy. So how do we find out?

How do you find out these techniques

and ideas and things so we can be more effective, so we can enjoy our job better

and have a bigger impact on people's lives generally?

I mean, that's something that we are

trying to do, obviously, on the SEND network.

Thank you so much for your contributions, for your questions.

We'll definitely put those to our members and hopefully get some responses from you.

Would you like to end by just shouting out

your book and letting everyone know when it's out and where they can get it?

We'll definitely put the links in.

Cover here for the week.

They can't miss the cover! The 9 march supposedly.

Next Thursday, 9 March.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Bye.

Multiple Contributors

SEND Network, India Dunkley, Philippa & Garry Hornby

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Torie Hart

over 1 year ago

Thank you both for sharing so much insight with the SEND Network, and thank you @India Dunkley for leading a great conversation.

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