'How to do it' Guides

How To Remove Barriers To Learning For SEN Children – Lessons From Lockdown

In the first of two articles, Alison Ekins draws from the detailed perceptions of parents and students with SEN in lockdown to identify and better understand barriers to learning.

There is also a need to stand back and reflect on what we, children with SEN and their parents have learnt through this recent time of Lockdown. It is essential that we use this as a valuable learning experience, as an opportunity to enhance our understanding of what we provide to support children with SEN, and the effectiveness of it.

What if the school itself is a barrier?

Removing barriers is a familiar phrase and concept in the world of SEN, where we regularly look at ways to remove barriers to learning and participation for children with SEN. This is, and has been, well-embedded, in our SEN Codes of Practice[i] and also in our Teachers’ Standards.[ii] However, what if school itself is the barrier to learning and participation for some children with SEN? What have the recent lockdown experiences taught us about the barriers that school in itself present for children with SEN?

We have been afforded a unique opportunity to have a “Principled Interruption”[iii] from the established practices of education. It has given us an opportunity to “make the familiar unfamiliar”[iv]) and we need to grab that opportunity with both hands to really reflect on what it has taught all of us about education, and how our current systems impact on our students and the progress that they are able to make.

We need to tap into the insights and experiences of our students and parents, along with our own insights and the knowledge that we have gained as teachers and education professionals through this time. We then need to use the insights gained to review and reflect on the effectiveness of the practices that we have in place and ways that we may need to develop and change them to respond to what this time has taught us about education.

Research with Parents

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