29th November 2019 15:02
By Blue Tutors
There has been a lot in the news lately about students with special educational needs or disability (SEND) not being given the resources they need, the resources which the Department for Education have committed to providing. This is awful for the students concerned; it is a difficult time when someone is diagnosed as a SEND student, and the least we should be able to do is lay out a plan for them quickly so they feel supported.
The logic behind committing more resources for SEND students is sound; they might otherwise struggle to meet some minimum criteria at a stage of their development and drop out of the education system, or be directed on a path away from academia. However, it’s fair to ask why this is a problem; when someone isn’t gifted at school, which obviously isn’t their fault, what are we gaining from investing in a student who will always struggle in a particular area?
It’s important to understand why someone might be classed as a SEND student. Sometimes a student is simply performing badly, and we have not been able to define exactly why, but in many cases it’s a clear specific reason which we can try to address. For example, imagine reading a 4 digit number and struggling to recall those digits in order 5 seconds later, or having to read every sentence 2-3 times before understanding the meaning. Think how difficult it would be to do well at school if this was the case.
With many SEND students, solving the issue might be near to impossible, but what is definitely possible is developing coping mechanisms which allow them to study as if their learning disability is practically non-existent. Our tutors have myriad examples of students improving hugely in a short space of time after someone has finally given them an alternative method which works around the issue. This is virtually impossible for a teacher to do in a class of 20 students, but it’s easy for a gifted thoughtful tutor.
We would like to claim that our tutors are so amazing that a 3-4 grade increase is totally their doing, but the truth is that sometimes such a small change can unlock a student’s potential, and suddenly we realise that they can excel academically.