SCN0133

Written evidence from Dr Simon Gibbs and Professor Julian Elliott

1. Regarding the assessment of and support for children and young people with ‘special educational needs and disabilities’, we wish to make the following points, some of which should be self-evident but are none-the-less important.
2. Not all children learn in the same way at the same rate.

3. The differences between children are often subtle and arise from a range of interacting causes, only some of which may be innate.

4. Children from families living in poverty (around 25% of all children; further, 121,000 children have no permanent home) are not necessarily intrinsically biologically, neurologically different from others of the same age. However, poverty and socio-economic discriminations are associated with educational disadvantage.

5. Cultural and social differences appear to be strongly associated with rates of exclusion from school.
1. Thus, DfE data show that of the 6,685 children and young people excluded from schools in 2015/16:
1. Boys 3 times more likely excluded than girls;
2. Pupils of Black Caribbean heritage more than 3 times more likely excluded than all others;
3. Children eligible for FSM, 4 times more likely to be excluded than those not eligible;
4. Children with SEND were 7 times more likely to be excluded than children without any identified SEND.
6. This and other evidence (see, for instance,  Gibbs, 2018; Gibbs & Elliott, 2015) suggest that categorising children (as is currently required by SEND legislation) is associated with biased and insensitive treatment.

7. Experimental studies have also shown that when the educational difficulties that some children experience are labelled and categorised important information about children’s individual needs is obscured / lost (Foroni & Rothbart, 2011, 2013; Rothbart, Davis-Stitt, & Hill, 1997).

8. It is, therefore, important to consider both the intended and unintended implications and consequences of the categorisation of children and young people (see Florian et al., 2006).

9. Taking the notion of ‘dyslexia’ as an example (Elliott & Gibbs, 2008; Gibbs & Elliott, 2010) it is possible to see that the distinctions made between those ‘with’ and ‘without’ a categorical label are arbitrary and potentially discriminatory because appropriate interventions may be denied for lack of a label.

10. It is also important to recognise that behaviours manifest by children do not necessarily have their basis in biological / neurological disorders but may arise in response to or be exacerbated by the educational environment (Gibbs & Powell, 2012; Hinshaw, 2018; Pas, Cash, O'Brennan, Debnam, & Bradshaw, 2015).

11. Within the current SEND guidance  it is not, therefore, inevitably valid to imply that behaviours are appropriately conceptualised as having medical / psychiatric connotations and that they may be subsumed within the broad category of ‘Social, emotional and mental health difficulties’ (DfE, 2015, p 98, sections 6.32 & 6.33).

12. Whilst categorising children may serve a bureaucratic statistical requirement, it does not convincingly serve the best interests of children, young people or their educators. As has been attributed to Einstein ‘Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.’
13. We suggest, with Florian et al. (2006), that steps should be taken to instantiate a process by which children and young people’s individual educational needs are described in detail rather than, as now, defined and classified in ways that are more redolent of medical pathologies.

By Dr Simon Gibbs (Reader in Educational Psychology, Newcastle University) and Professor Julian Elliott (Professor for Education, University of Durham)[1]

References

DfE. (2015). Special educational needs and disability code of practice: 0 to 25 years. London: Department for Education

Elliott, J., & Gibbs, S. (2008). Does dyslexia exist? Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42(3-4), 475-491.

Florian, L., Hollenweger, J., Simeonsson, R. J., Wedell, K., Riddell, S., Terzi, L., & Holland, A. (2006). Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the Classification of Children with Disabilities: Part I. Issues in the Classification of Children with Disabilities. Journal of Special Education, 40(1), 36-45.

Foroni, F., & Rothbart, M. (2011). Category Boundaries and Category Labels: When Does A Category Name Influence the Perceived Similarity of Category Members? Social Cognition, 29(5), 547-576. doi:10.1521/soco.2011.29.5.547

Foroni, F., & Rothbart, M. (2013). Abandoning a label doesn't make it disappear: The perseverance of labeling effects. Journal of experimental social psychology, 49(1), 126-131.

Gibbs, S. (2018). Immoral Education: The assault on teachers' identity, autonomy and efficacy. Abingdon: Routledge.

Gibbs, S., & Elliott, J. (2010). Dyslexia: a categorical falsehood without validity or utility Advances in Learning and Behavioral Disabilities, 23, 287-301.

Gibbs, S., & Elliott, J. (2015). The differential effects of labelling: how do ‘dyslexia’and ‘reading difficulties’ affect teachers’ beliefs. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 30(3), 323-337.

Gibbs, S., & Powell, B. (2012). Teacher Efficacy and Pupil Behaviour: the structure of teachers’ individual and collective efficacy beliefs and their relationship with numbers of children excluded from school. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(4), 564-584. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8279.2011.02046.x

Hinshaw, S. P. (2018). Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Controversy, Developmental Mechanisms, and Multiple Levels of Analysis. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 14(1), 291-316. doi:10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-050817-084917

Pas, E. T., Cash, A. H., O'Brennan, L., Debnam, K. J., & Bradshaw, C. P. (2015). Profiles of classroom behavior in high schools: Associations with teacher behavior management strategies and classroom composition. Journal of School Psychology, 53(2), 137-148. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2014.12.005

Rothbart, M., Davis-Stitt, C., & Hill, J. (1997). Effects of arbitrarily placed category boundaries on similarity judgments. Journal of experimental social psychology, 33(2), 122-145.

June 2018