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News- Page 4
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Education : How boys miss teacher's reprimand
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Posted by sylvia on Wednesday, November 09, 2005 (12:06:14)
BBC September 2005
By Jonathan Amos
The naughty boy at primary school who continues to muck about even after being told off may have completely missed his teacher's displeasure.
The suggestion comes from new research that gives scientists an insight into the differences in "wiring" in young male and female brains.
It seems many school-entry boys have greater difficulty picking up on some emotions, such as anger.
Understanding these differences could be useful in class, scientists said.
"If teachers attempt to control boys by subtle means, such as raised eyebrows, and the boys ignore these cues, it may be that they simply are not able to read them and decode them accurately," explained Professor David Skuse, whose team at the Institute of Child Health in London conducted the research.
"It's not that they are being wilfully oppositional," he told the British Association's Festival of Science, which this year is being held in Dublin, Ireland.
Teachers know
The study on 600 children between the ages of six and 17 was actually undertaken to investigate aspects of autism, a predominantly male condition.
The institute hopes eventually to find the genetic factors that lead more boys than girls into this disorder.
The experiments used a series of computer-based tasks that required children to interpret emotional expressions on faces - happiness, sadness, disgust, anger, fear and surprise.
They also had to remember faces and to follow eye gaze - the sorts of abilities often found wanting in autistic individuals.
The results showed that although there were early sex differences, with girls doing significantly better than boys at the time of school-entry, these differences reduced over time. And by late adolescence, they were all but gone.
The differences at school-entry were specifically to do with the facial expressions tasks.
"At six years, 70% of boys are below the mean for girls; so in other words, 70% of boys are worse than 50% of girls," Professor Skuse explained.
"It means there are a lot of boys at school-entry who are very poor at differentiating other people's emotions from their facial expressions.
"This perhaps wouldn't come as any surprise to teachers to whom I've spoken about this finding - they say boys are less socially aware when they enter school - but I think this is the first objective evidence that there is a substantial difference between the sexes in the ability to read these emotions."
Difficult teenagers
One fascinating observation was that both boys and girls in their early teenage years experienced a dip in their ability to perform some of the tasks.
This, Professor Skuse speculated, was probably because their brains were being rewired at that time.
But he raised the suggestion - slightly tongue in cheek - it could explain the "Kevin factor", a reference to the unruly behaviour of the TV teenage character made famous by comedian Harry Enfield.
"I'm suggesting in a fairly light-hearted way that the social ineptness of early adolescence, the seeming inability to understand the expressions of sadness and anger, would appear to be just a function of the development of their brain at that time.
"It's not a cultural phenomenon, I suggest; it's a real biological phenomenon from which they, fortunately, recover."
The research is to be published in the Journal of Applied Statistics.
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Education : Autistic boy wins four-year fight to attend special school
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Posted by sylvia on Wednesday, November 09, 2005 (11:02:12)
Telegraph August 2005
By David Harrison
The parents of an autistic boy have won a four-year battle to send their son to a special school they set up with other parents because state schools were not catering for their needs.
Samantha and Damien Hilton's landmark victory offers hope to hundreds of parents who believe that education authorities are forcing their children to attend ordinary schools.
County council chiefs in East Sussex had ruled that seven-year-old Max Hilton must attend a mainstream junior school 20 miles from his home in Crowborough.
When his parents, Samantha, 35, and Damien, 33, rejected the decision, saying that sending Max, whose autism is "pronounced", to a primary school - and one so far away - would be "disastrous" for his development, the council threatened them with prosecution.
Now, however, an appeal tribunal in London has agreed with the Hiltons and ruled that Max should attend the independent Step by Step school for autistic children two days a week and Herne juniors, a state primary in Crowborough, with one-to-one support, three days a week.
The National Autistic Society last night hailed the "dual-placement" ruling. "We have never seen a case like this before, where an autistic child's education is divided between the public and independent sectors," a spokesman said.
"It sets an important precedent and shows that education authorities can get it wrong. Parents usually know their children better than local authorities. Autism is a broad spectrum disorder so every child must be looked at individually."
The ruling ends an exhausting saga for Max's parents which began when he was diagnosed as autistic four years ago. Along with other parents, they spent two-and-a-half years setting up Step by Step school, at Sharpthorne, near Crowborough, but suffered a setback last year when an earlier tribunal backed a council decision to send Max full-time to a local primary.
The Hiltons defied the ruling and sent Max to Step by Step, at their own expense, two days a week and to a local primary school three days a week - an arrangement they said was crucial for his development.
The council responded by threatening to prosecute them over Max's "unauthorised absence" from the state school. Mrs Hilton said she would rather go to jail than deprive her son of the chance of having a more fulfilling life. The case was highlighted by The Sunday Telegraph and received widespread media coverage. In February this year, with Max ready to go to junior school, the authority said he should go to Wallands junior school in Lewes, 20 miles away, in September.
Mrs Hilton said: "I was shocked and frightened for Max. He simply couldn't cope with that. Wallands is a good school but it has no provision for autistic children and it would be a totally unfamiliar environment for Max. He needs constant one-to-one support but at lunch and break times he would be left on his own. It would be disastrous for him."
The appeal tribunal, which praised Step by Step, agreed that Wallands would be "distressing and difficult" for Max and ruled that it would "not be appropriate".
Mrs Hilton, whose six-year-old son, Charlie, is also autistic, said she was thrilled and relieved. "It's been such a long, stressful struggle to get the right provision for Max that it still hasn't really sunk in that we won," she said.
She now plans to complain to the ombudsman about the education authority. "They should not be allowed to put us through what they have," she said.
Autism, a brain development disorder, causes problems with social interaction, communication, imagination and behaviour. There are more than 500,000 autistic people in Britain, including more than 100,000 children, according to the National Autistic Society.
Boys are four times more likely to develop the condition than girls. Scientists still do not know what causes it, but agree that it is a mix of genetic and environmental factors.
The Government has encouraged councils to educate children with special needs, including autism and other disabilities, in mainstream schools, saying that an "inclusive" approach is better for their education.
The Conservatives say "inclusion" is really an attempt to cut costs and have pledged to reverse the policy and give parents the right to have their children educated at special schools.
A spokesman for East Sussex county council said: "The decision is an acknowledgement of the excellent provision made by Herne junior school."
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Education : Schools address needs of autistic kids
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Posted by sylvia on Wednesday, November 09, 2005 (00:38:09)
Star Gazette News August 2005
By Ray Finger
The hiring of a psychologist specializing in autism to work in Corning-area schools is a big step forward in serving those children, an expert and parent say.
The Corning-Painted Post school board voted last month to create the new position. Officials hope to hire someone by the fall.
The district is among many around the state and across the country to develop programs to deal with what has been described as an autism epidemic.
The idea is to have someone available to go into schools to work with teachers, parents and others to recommend the best ways to work with autistic children, who number about 40 in the district, Superintendent Judith Staples said.
"It's got to be someone who knows autism extremely well," she said. "We had hoped to develop the autism program even further, but this is our first step. We expect that we will be doing more specialized kinds of things."
Some districts in the Rochester area also are hiring autism specialists, said Dr. Stephen Bauer, a developmental pediatrician who specializes in autism and related disorders. Also the director of the pediatric developmental unit of Unity Health System in Rochester, he has evaluated a number of children from Corning-Painted Post.
"Getting a specific specialist, I think, is a very wise thing," Bauer said. He said the district is large enough for this to be the basis for an even more comprehensive autism program.
It should be possible to educate children with mild autism and Asperger's Syndrome - a term applied to the highest-functioning end of the autism spectrum - in mainstream classrooms, Bauer said. However, he said, most teachers and school psychologists don't have much experience with autism and can benefit from an in-house specialist.
The Elmira school district has had a special-education assistant supervisor with expertise in autism for quite a while, said Joyce Carr, the district's supervisor of special education.
That has been very helpful, especially as the number of students with autism continues to go up, she said.
Elmira uses Schuyler-Chemung-Tioga Board of Cooperative Educational Services programs as needed for autistic children who need a highly structured environment, Carr said. There are a lot of children in the autistic spectrum who are in their home schools in the district, she said.
Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by an impaired ability to communicate and have normal social relationships. In the past decade, the national autism rate has gone from one in 10,000 children to one in every 166, according to the Centers for Disease Control and American Academy of Pediatrics.
"This is going to get worse, and if we don't prepare for this, we're going to be overwhelmed," said Anne McElroy Dachel, media relations coordinator for the National Autism Association in Chippewa Falls, Wis. Teachers, speech therapists and other educators are not being adequately trained to deal with autism, she said.
"There must be a response at the university level preparing teachers to be able to deal with these kids because everybody's going to be having them in classrooms," she said.
Smaller school districts generally partner with the local BOCES to serve autistic students, said Beverly George, director of instructional support for the Elmira Heights school district. She said the district serves 10 autistic students, more than half of whom are from outside the district.
"Most of the smaller districts just do not have the numbers to operate a program individually," George said. "However, the autistic spectrum is kind of a wide range of abilities and needs, so it isn't a one-type-of-program-fits-all."
Recognizing that, the Horseheads school district started to develop a comprehensive program for autistic students four years ago, said Theresa Woodworth, autism spectrum disorder consultant who oversees the program districtwide. Starting with seven or eight students four years ago, the program will have 43 children this fall, she said.
The success of the program has resulted from the team approach that involves teachers, speech therapists, occupational therapists, school psychologists, building-level autism consultants and others. "You have everybody on the same page," Woodworth said.
Bauer, who has evaluated about a dozen students from the Horseheads school district, called its program exemplary and fairly unusual. He said the district is among a few forward-looking districts that have recognized that the number of students who have mild autism or Asperger's Syndrome is a lot larger than people used to think.
"With a specific program, it can really help those kids be much more successful in school," Bauer said.
"What I think is striking about Horseheads is that it really has been implemented in a very comprehensive way. It's not just one person who is a consultant," he said. "They really pulled together all the pieces of a program in terms of academic supports, social supports, behavioral supports."
Parent Kris West of Gang Mills, whose son has Asperger's Syndrome and is entering first grade this fall, is pleased that Corning-Painted Post is hiring an autism specialist. While the district already has some excellent resources in its schools, she hopes the specialist will bring additional tools into the classroom to help children.
"There are some teaching techniques that the schools can start using that can help these children stay focused, learn some of the social skills that they need to get through the school day," she said. "If these people can be nurtured in a way where they can develop their emotional and social skills, society will win in the long run."
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Education : Education minister questions his own department
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Posted by sylvia on Tuesday, November 08, 2005 (18:18:32)
The Telegraph August 2005
By Julie Henry
An education minister has challenged his own department over its policy on children with special needs, which parents claim is leading to the closure of special schools across Britain.
Bill Rammell, the MP for Harlow who was appointed the minister for higher education in May, has written to Lord Adonis, the schools minister, describing his constituents' fears of "gaps in provision and the variances in local and regional provision". His letter, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, also questions the validity of the Government's special needs audit, promised in Labour's election manifesto.
The pledge came in response to complaints that the push for children with disabilities and learning difficulties to be taught in mainstream schools was being used by local authorities as an excuse to cut special school services.
The audit was supposed to produce a national picture of the provision available to children with special needs. In his letter, however, Mr Rammell raised fears that its remit is too narrow and ignores a range of children with special needs - including pupils with moderate learning difficulties, autism, Asperger's syndrome, speech and language problems, complex learning difficulties, severe dyslexia and severe epilepsy.
Because of its limited scope, "the findings of the audit will not fully reflect the true level of special educational needs across the country in terms of the resources needed", Mr Ramell's letter said.
The concerns echo those made by parents and special needs campaigners who have condemned the audit as "a cynical manipulation" because of its narrow remit, including only those with the most severe disabilities.
The Conservatives have seized on the contents of the letter to repeat their call for a moratorium on school closures.
David Cameron, the shadow education minister whose son attends a special school, said: "In our campaign to save special schools we have consistently argued that the policy of inclusion has been pushed too far. Now we have an education minister who admits this is the case. The argument for a proper review of special needs education and a moratorium on further closures is stronger than ever."
Mr Rammell declined to speak to this newspaper about his letter. A spokesman said that the minister had written to Lord Adonis on behalf of a constituent, and that it was normal practice for constituents' concerns to be raised in this way.
A Department for Education and Skills spokesman said: "Bill Rammell fully supports government policy on special needs. He simply offered to pass on the views of a constituent as their local MP, nothing more."
The leak of the education minister's reservations is the latest in a series of setbacks for the "inclusion" agenda. In June, Baroness Warnock, the 81-year-old academic who led the 1970s drive to educate children with learning difficulties in mainstream schools, admitted that the policy had failed and left a "disastrous legacy".
Shortly before the general election, Tony Blair was harangued on television by Maria Hutchings, the mother of an autistic child from Benfleet, in Essex, over the effects of inclusion. Parents' groups are also running campaigns against local reviews of special needs provision in Coventry, Dudley, Bromley, Dorset, Richmond-upon-Thames, Leicester and Essex, which they say could result in school closures.
Last month, the Conservatives launched their own special needs inquiry, to which Lady Warnock and Mrs Hutchings will be invited to give evidence, and said the idea of inclusion had hardened into an unbending doctrine that blocked access to special schools.
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Education : Mum fears for son's safety at school
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Posted by sylvia on Friday, September 30, 2005 (15:25:03)
IC Croydon August 2005
By Neil Millard
A distraught mum faces sending her autistic son to a school which admits it is not secure enough to guarantee his safety.
To make matters worse, 12-year-old Mitchell McMenamin is someone who runs off and has been dodged by traffic on a main road after a previous escape.
And his mum, Carol, said if the council does not back down to her demands that he be sent to another £42,000-a-year school in Mitcham she will be keeping him at home for his own safety.
She has the support of not only one of Mitchell's previous headteachers, but the head of the unit where Croydon Council wants him to go in September.
Carol, 48, said: "I would rather have him under my feet at home than see him underneath a lorry."
In March, she was told by his previous school, Carew Manor in Wallington, that they would have to stop taking him because he needs so much attention.
Marys Wnuk, the headteacher of the autistic 'Paper Jack' unit at Bensham Manor School, in Thornton Heath, said in a letter to the council a month ago: "I am writing to confirm that we are unable to ensure Mitchell's safety under the present circumstances. We do not currently have sufficient security here, with visible exits from the classroom to the road where Mitchell could run to."
The letter adds: "Gates are currently not secure and they are generally open. The playground where all the boys go is next to the main road where gates are unlocked and easy to get out of."
Carol, of Milne Park East, New Addington, said what amounts to an empty promise in Mitchell's annual review led to a pledge to give him supervision for 10 hours a week which the council described as "generous".
She said this falls far short of the total time he would spend in school and would not guarantee his safety. The letter also makes it clear that Mitchell needs speech therapy which has not been available at Bensham Manor since January.
Alan Malarkey, director of student services, said he had no idea the letter existed and added that he would have to meet with Ms Wnuk to find out what her concerns were.
But he stood by the autistic unit's ability to provide for Mitchell, despite testimony from its own headteacher that it would not be able to cope.
And as for money, he said they had a fixed amount to spend and he did not "have any choice in this".
He said: "I don't think that's as huge an issue as is being asserted. These things do work themselves out and the outcomes aren't as dramatic as people first imagine they might be. This is a reasonably sensible package. Normally we wouldn't put in any additional support. The school would normally have to manage that. Supervision of that kind all the time is hardly ever a good idea. It doesn't give an opportunity for building confidence.
"Marys may well be categorical but I don't think it's based on sufficient evidence at this point."
Mr Malarkey said Carol, who wants a place at Eagle House School, in Mitcham, could appeal to an independent tribunal and said the claim that Mitchell had run off in the past had never been brought to their attention.
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