EDUCATION CUTS MEETING

On Thursday, 17th March the West Cumbria Dyslexia Association members were pleased to welcome the Assistant Director responsible for Schools and Learning, Caroline Sutton, and the Senior Manager for Inclusion (due to start in post on 1st April), John Barrett.  Jo Richardson accompanied them to set up the presentation and take notes.  After a busy day they came to talk to the meeting about the proposed cuts in education, and some changes of direction.

There was considerable interest in this talk and people came from all over the county to hear what the cuts would mean and to ask questions.  They came from Carlisle, Penrith, Kirkby Lonsdale, Kendal, Barrow, Ulverston and many places in between.  The people most interested were, of course, parents, teachers responsible for special needs in schools, trainers, specialist teachers and even head teachers.  Most wanted to know exactly what is being cut.

We heard in the presentation both the proposals from government and what the authority has already decided about the direction they wanted to take.

First the government’s approach was explained.  Some of it will be familiar  --- community involvement, personal budgets to give parents more say, accountability, support for best practice and a focus on needs which are lifelong.  They are also going to require the local authority to publish what will be available.  That might be useful.

The local authority’s aim was stated to be a commitment to joined up provision more fairly distributed across the county.  There would be less bureaucracy, more choice for parents and a reduction in multiple assessments.

However, to do all this there will be a reduction in the number of specialist advisory teachers, from 60 to 22, plus 6 higher level teaching assistants.  (There was no mention of teaching assistants’ salaries!)  They would cover all the specialisms, autism spectrum, speech, language and communication, specific learning difficulties (i.e. dyslexia), severe learning difficulties either physical or medical, the deaf, the blind and behavioural problems.  Their help would be confined to children with statements, and as the LA has not given statements for literacy for some years, unless there are other needs, that excludes dyslexic children from specialist help through the county.  The school will have to provide help from their own budgets.  Teachers and assistants who have been trained to deliver literacy packages in school depend on the support, guidance and assessments of specialist teachers who also monitor the results.

One encouraging aspect of the changes was that there would be an emphasis on early identification of problems with reading, with 3 specialists to deal with the early years.
This would prevent the downward spiral so many children experience when reading difficulties are not picked up early enough, but identification is only the first step.  Then you need specialist help to help them read.

CONCERNS

One of our major concerns is that there would appear to be more severe cutbacks for children who can’t read than for anything else.  Yet reading ought to be the first and major priority in schools.  For example, we were told that there would be 0.2 of a specialist advisory teacher in literacy for the whole county ---- that is one teacher, one day a week for the whole of Cumbria with its 375 schools.

Some Reading Intervention would continue in the immediate future, and the Literacy Panel will continue next term, but schools would have to buy in outside help from their budgets.  There will be no more School Action Plus where the school can call in someone like an Educational Psychologist to assess and advise.  So although it was stated no school would have more than 1 ½ % cut in its budget, when the school will have to pay for specialist help on top the cuts are deeper than appears.  In schools 300 teachers have done training in dyslexia, but they tend to be full time class teachers, and not free to work one-to-one with a dyslexic child.

SUMMARY

To sum up, early identification will be good.  Schools tell us they are limited in help they can provide because they can’t afford it, but the responsibility will be fully with the school and the parents, and the specialist one-to-one help which dyslexic children need will be increasingly out of reach for most schools.  We have found over the years help has been difficult to get for these children.  It’s going to be almost impossible now.

Article in West Cumbria News and Star newspaper

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