VIEWS RECRUITMENT
How can training support recruitment and retention
of SEND staff In the first in a new regular column for Education Today we’re delighted to hear from NAOMI HOWELLS, Managing Director at recruitment specialists Class People, who looks at the importance of training to support and retain SEND practitioners.
Since 2022, there has been an increase of 87,000 pupils identified as having SEND, bringing the total to over 1.5million pupils. This in turn means that more than half a million pupils have an Educational Health Care Plan (ECHP), requiring specialist support from a qualified educator. At the same time, the UK has witnessed many of its Pupil Referral Units close, with a preference for inclusion into the mainstream. Whilst this has been highly welcomed by affected pupils and their families for improving educational opportunities, the strain it places on the infrastructure of the current education sector is phenomenal. Only 5% of teachers work in a special needs setting; the retention rate of SEND teachers has not been adequately studied; and estimates propose over 55% of schools do not have adequate staff to properly support children with additional/ special needs. What is particularly unusual, is that the UK does not have formal specialist SEND training as a recruitment pathway, unlike education systems globally including South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. It is for this reason that recruitment and retention of SEND teachers and teaching assistants should remain a priority.
Training is key to reversing this trend particularly given that lack of training in managing student behaviour and SEND are the top two reasons for teachers leaving (TES, 2019). Meanwhile one third of teachers would like further training and CPD on SEND. Teaching partners (assistants) offer a sustainable answer, providing each pupil with specialist support, while alleviating demands on the classroom teacher. Unfortunately, many previously qualified TA/TPs left the profession during or after the pandemic, seeking better job security or earning potential elsewhere. Innovation is therefore key.
A focus on training and development can deliver competence and confidence working with SEND children, which also offers a fulfilling, lifetime career. Continued professional development can support retention, at the same time a focus on innovative recruitment practices can deliver work-ready candidates. At Class People, we recognised the increasing demand for additional classroom support, as a leading trend post-pandemic. It was demand that could not be met within the existing talent pool, so we resourced further afield to identify people who had not previously considered education as a career opportunity, providing direction and opportunity for them to train and to successfully place them within schools. Our focus for recruitment has shifted to attitude and aptitude rather than qualifications, working with the Department for Work and Pensions to pilot talent acquisition from other industries such as ex-forces rehabilitation and former medical or care staff for example. Many in these circumstances are fuelled by a desire to make a meaningful difference, at the same time bringing soft skills and life experience that make them credible candidates. On-the-job training and part-time qualifications can formalise learning, but in the meantime, schools gain access to credible pools of talent with appropriate transferable skills.
To date, we have placed 47 candidates into full-time employment across the south west, through this method.
22
www.education-today.co.uk EARLY YEARS
The ‘Voice of the Child’: are we truly listening to children?
This month, in our ongoing collaboration with Edge Hill University curated by ALICIA BLANCO-BAYO, Early Years Lecturer and WTEY Programme Leader at the University’s Faculty of Education, we’re delighted to hear from SAM WIDDUP, an Early Years SEND Advisory Teacher for Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council
studying for an MA Education Early Years at Edge Hill University.
‘Listening’ to children’s voices: on the surface, this would appear to be a task which is simple in nature- they speak, and we acknowledge and attend to what they say. However, during preparatory groundwork for my own Master’s research project, I have found it necessary to problematize this very notion. Of course, when being reflexive within research we are encouraged to consider the ‘listener’s’ own lived experiences, and biases formed as a result of those lived experiences, which inevitably impacts upon our interpretation of what we ‘hear’. However, this is not the issue which I will be considering within this discourse. The debate which has captured my attention is how this act of listening to children may be more of a tokenistic gesture than a genuine interest and investment in what children have to say (Brooker, 2011). This problem poses a threat, not only to early education practices, but considerably to the field of educational research. The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child might be attributed to the growth in interest in listening to children, and as a result, the new direction in early childhood education political philosophies, including the language choices within early education policies (Brooker, 2011; Mukherji and Albon, 2018). ‘Child’s voice’ and ‘child centred’ are terms which are now commonplace within the realms of early childhood education in the U.K. and form much of the intentions behind the Early Years Foundation Stage framework. However, to what extent are children’s voices truly represented within early education? Are adults and policy makers making decisions on behalf of children, with the regard that we ‘know what is best’ for our children and that we are better informed as adults to make those choices for them? There is an argument for the inherent belief that young children are not capable of forming, making and expressing their own opinions due to their earlier stage of development (Greene and Hill, 2005; Wescott and Littleton, 2005; Mukherji and Albon, 2018). The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child urges us to consider children as a social group of their own. However, it can be viewed that this is indeed a marginalised group, whose values and voices are not given the same prominence as other, more established social groupings, such as adults (Greene and Hill, 2005; Brooker, 2011).
Within the field of educational research, children have more often been passive and powerless, commonly the subjects having research carried out ‘on’ them as opposed to ‘with’ them (Greene and Hill, 2005; Wescott and Littleton, 2005). The importance of genuinely portraying children’s voices and placing children at the heart of my practice, has been key in the selection of the approaches I take both as a practitioner and as a researcher. It is an integral part of my educational and research philosophy, to ensure that children’s voices are captured within the work I do so that children’s perspectives and what is important to them in their education, is at the centre of everything. Brooker (2011 pp. 140) motions that “children are active social agents who contribute to the construction of the settings they attend”; which reinforces the importance and necessity of including their views into research and policy that ultimately underpin early childhood education practices: what goes on on the ground floor.
REFERENCES
Brooker, L. 2011 Taking Children Seriously. An Alternative agenda for research? Journal of early education research. Volume 9:2 pp. 107-187
Greene S. and Hil Ml, 2005 ‘Researching children’s experience: methods and methodological issues’, in Greene S. and Hogan D. Researching Children’s Experience: Approaches and Methods, SAGE London
Mukherji, P and Albon, D 2018 Research Methods in Early Education 3rd Edition SAGE Publications London
United Nations General Assembly 1989 The Convention on the Rights of the Child Wescott H. and Littleton K. 2005 ‘Exploring meaning in interviews with children’ in Greene S. and Hogan D. Researching Children’s Experience: Approaches and Methods, SAGE London
December 2023
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