Planning for the future

Press, 19 October 1976, Page 21

Planning for the future

Real hope for children with specific learning difficulties is now with us — like morning after a long long night. It has been a night of ignorance mainly, because no-one has really known until now how to treat children with learning difficulties. The experts openly admit that the last has yet to be written on the subject — they are still debating definitions — but they are sure enough now’ of its basic nature to begin to tackle it. But there is still a long way to go. The greatest obstacle to quick answers is a very simple thing: teacher time. Without teachei time the best training courses are virtually wasted. If pupil X, with a specific learning difficulty is looking belligerent at the hack of a classroom while teacher is taking a class in new maths, teacher cannot stop to take pupil X aside for a quiet chat. Courses for teachers are burgeoning now, but only after a dearth of them, teachers’ colleges have not really entered the field yet. Trainee teachers are thoroughly grounded in reading, but that is about as far colleges take it. Even the four clinicians staffing the four special reading clinics in Christchurch to which children can be referred, include two “straight from the classroom,” described as "good teachers of reading.” Four clinicians spread over the demand in Christchurch is also not enough. It is no reflection on their dedication that a senior psychologist said that the Education Department often drew a blank when pupils were referred to its Psychological. Service for help. The service often passes children on to the clinics. 4 “We have no panacea,” he said. Many teachers know enough to recognise the basic symptoms, but not enough to do much more than refer the children to the Psychological Service

or to the school’s remedial reading teacher — if it has one. But most do not. Parents of Children with specific learning difficulties may have heard one teacher after another through the primary and standard classes describe the problem as no more than a learning lag — a rate of development that will suddenly become normal when “the time is right.” When the right time never seems to come, the fair deduction is that the child has a specific learning difficulty, but has, by that time, missed years of tuition. At that stage, the only solution is remedial teaching in reading — but by whom? The teacher is probably not a master of specific learning difficulties; the clinicians are spread very thinly over a need as wide as it is deep; and schools with their own remedial reading teachers are scarce. Besides, the Department of Education prefers to train classroom teachers, not create remedial teachers. At that stage, too, the child has probably developed an aversion to reading that makes him opt out of awkward situations at every opportunity, either by withdrawing, or by becoming a nuisance. Remedial teaching at this stage, too, must not only undo the teaching that was wrong for the child and begin again another way. but break through the barriers constructed by a wounded self-esteem. The subject is huge. Volumes have been written that touch only the fringes. So, many good ideas have yet to surface through administrative and financial quagmires. But the beginnings are with us. In-service courses for teachers are multiplying every quarter. These can last up to 12 weeks each. Last year 200 senior primary " school teachers attended. Ideally the senior teacher will become a re-

source teacher, to whom the most difficult cases will be referred. The Department of Education hopes to have at least one resource teacher in every school within a “reasonable time.” Teacher time — lack of it is the biggest problem — is becoming available. The “continuous staffing” scheme, to become compulsory in all primary and intermediate schools next year will reduce the teacher-pupil ratio to one teacher to 31 pupils (at present 35).

In schools of differing sizes this has the effect of giving an allocation of extra hours that a headmaster can u.ae in any way he chooses. In a school of 700 pupils he will gain 75 hours a week; in a school of 300 pupils, 27.5 hours a week. According to the Education Department headmasters have already shown themselves dis-

posed to use the extra al-> location to consolidate basic skills, especially reading. This spells hope to hundreds of children in infant classes now.

Team teaching, an increasingly popular method, also holds answers for children with specific learning difficulties. This takes advantage of teachers’ strengths, freeing, for example, one teacher to work with a class of five with specific learning difficulties for one period, while the two others take the balance of pupils. There is a part-time teacher scheme which can be used to swell the ranks of those handling children with specific learning difficulties. Each district senior inspector has a total number of hours he can allocate to special needs by employing parttime teachers.

The Canterbury allocation is about 220 hours a week to reading — that is, about 17 teachers working from five to 10 hours a week.

In Canterbury the Christchurch Teachers’ College is spearheading pre-service courses for graduates in specific learning difficulties. The course is in its third year, and has an annual intake of 15 students. It began, its lecturer said, because “teachers kept asking for help and advice.” • Other teachers’ colleges in New Zealand have yet to follow suit. Speld, the Specific Learning Difficulties Association, has been described by one member of the Department as a “necessary irritant.” It has done more than any body of people to champion the cause of this group of afflicted. It now enjoys an increasingly cordial relationship with teachers and principals, many of whom now refer parents to Speld tutors whose fees are often nominal. The New Zealand Council for Educational Research is conducting exhaustive researches into causes of malfunction and

teaching methods.

The external examination system must be looked at soon. School Certificate and University Entrance pose real problems for the students with specific learning difficulties. Parents of children sitting School Certificate can apply for aegrotat assessment, but the application needs the support of the school.

But when do specific learning difficulties cease being specific learning difficulties and simply become lack of required ability? This is the kind of logic often thrust back at parents seeking aegrotat passes. How can consideration be given a student whose problem has not even been clinically defined? Some line must be drawn, however. If a student of above-average intelligence is prevented from holding the job of his choice because his reading is too slow and his spelling too bad to allow him to pass a paper which he could manage orally, then some way around the present provisions should be found.