A group of 15 teachers reading for a M.Ed. in Social, Emotional and Behaviour Difficulties (SEBD) at the Faculty of Education recently visited a number of schools and services for children and young people with SEBD in Leicester and Coventry, UK.
Over the past decades, behaviour difficulties in schools have been a cause for concern in the UK, with evidence of increasing incidence in behaviour problems, exclusions, and school drop-outs.
In recent years there has been large-scale investment by the national and local educational authorities (LEA) in the UK to prevent the escalation of the problem and to find ways to support schools and parents in responding to the challenges being faced.
Behaviour Support Plans were drawn up by various LEAs, describing how they were going to provide support and resources to schools in promoting good behaviour and responding to challenging behaviour. A national programme called the Behaviour Improvement Programme was also launched some years ago with the aim of improving behaviour and attendance in schools, focused on raising standards of behaviour in schools, improving school attendance, and providing high quality education for all pupils, including those who were having difficulties engaging with the system.
During our visit, we had the opportunity to visit a number of schools and services actively engaged in some of these initiatives.
One of the most interesting services we observed during our visit was the Behaviour and Education Support Team (Best). Best consists of a multi-agency team embracing a group of professionals from the fields of education, health and social care.
It works in partnership with schools to promote students' emotional well-being, positive behaviour and regular school attendance, by identifying and supporting those with, or at risk of developing, social, emotional and behavioural problems.
Another objective of Best is to work with schools to provide effective support to pupils and parents where behaviour is a concern and where such behaviour may have an adverse effect on achievement.
A related service we visited was the Behaviour Support Team in Leicester.
This is a team of behaviour specialist teachers who advise and support schools in meeting the needs of pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. It seeks to work in effective partnership with schools, parents and other agencies, providing support, advice and training.
We had the opportunity to see the team at work in various schools, organising emotional literacy sessions for individual students, small groups of pupils or whole classes, and providing support and advice to teachers and administration.
The LEA in Leicester has invested heavily in the establishment of Nurture Groups in primary schools, and more recently in secondary schools as well.
As the word implies, 'nurture' groups underline the importance of nourishing and supporting the total well-being of each human being from a very early age, with a focus on social and emotional development.
Usually, nurture groups cater for small groups of young primary year children and are situated within the primary school itself. Morning sessions are initiated with a warm welcome, a circle time discussion and breakfast with an emphasis on the development and reinforcement of social skills.
Pupils have the opportunity to develop one to one relationships with their teachers and peers, helping them to develop trust and positive views of themselves and others and engage in such behaviours as sharing and turn taking.
Students are encouraged to work hard to be reintegrated in the mainstream class and they follow the normal class curriculum, rules and routines, but with adaptations and individual support.
In Coventry and Leicester, we also had the opportunity to visit nurture group-oriented centres taking students from different primary schools called the ARC (Assessment and Reintegration Centre).
The students attended the centre three days a week for two scholastic terms. They are exposed to literacy and numeracy skills and various other subjects and practical activities.
The staff seeks to promote a safe and positive learning environment where vulnerable pupils can progress according to their developmental needs, experience encouragement and success, and develop confidence and self worth.
The teachers promoted the children's self-esteem through circle time, achievement, positive peer relationships and activities that empower and redress lost experiences.
The children are also observed and supported in the mainstream schooling. The team works with different agencies, including speech and language unit, social services and child and adolescents' mental health services (CAMHS).
We visited a number of secondary schools where we observed various initiatives taken by the schools in promoting good behaviour in school, including whole school policies, pastoral care, emotional literacy programmes and positive reinforcement schemes.
One particular service we observed in the secondary was the Learning Support Units. These are school-based centres for students who had become disengaged or were at risk of exclusion, and they were provided with short-term support programmes tailored according to their needs.
The aim is to keep students in school while their problems are addressed, making use of positive reinforcement and reward systems in encouraging the students to achieve their goals.
We also visited a Pupil Referral Unit, an offsite centre for students with very challenging behaviour, particularly those excluded from school. The students' strengths and needs are noted and appropriate individual programmes are designed and implemented with ongoing monitoring and evaluation. The long term goal is to re-integrate the students in the mainstream school with adequate support once the tailor-made programme has been completed.
In view of the services we visited, the observations made from everyday practise and the theoretical background presented to us during the course, we understand that there is a crucial need to intervene to support students with SEBD as early as possible in their own context.
This would help in reducing and preventing undesirable behaviour thereby providing a safer school environment for students, as well as helping the students to learn and engage in prosocial behaviour from an early age.
We should seek to develop and administer programs to prevent difficulties from happening rather than acting after the situation has been created. However, we must not ignore the fact that further research has to be done in this context as we understand that systems which work in different contexts might not necessarily give the desired effects in the local context. Nevertheless this experience has given us a broad insight of some of the interventions needed to address problems within the local context with regards to students with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties.
It acted as a 'wake-up call' for us to appreciate the need to address the wide-ranging difficulties encountered by practitioners in the local educational setup as early as possible before they become more serious and more difficult to change. With adequate and timely intervention we are more likely to be effective in supporting the needs of students with SEBD and thus ensure that they will receive quality education within inclusive contexts.
The group of teachers recently presented a report on their visit in the UK to the director general in the Directorate for Educational Services, Micheline Sciberras, and the director of Student Services, George Borg. The visit to the UK, as part of their M.Ed. degree course, was organised by the Faculty of Education in collaboration with the School of Education at the University of Leicester and the Education Directorate. The students were accompanied by Carmel Cefai from the Faculty of Education and George Borg from the Education Directorate, where they met Paul Cooper, a professor from Leicester University, a number of times.