4B:What is 'success' in guidance and support?

The following example is an extract from information sent to staff to help them support a learner who has dyslexia and dyscalculia.

View the sample learner support agreement

Successful managers ensure that staff have regular training and clear instructions to help them carry out their roles effectively. The following example is from the guidance that one specialist residential college for learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities issues to staff to help them address the literacy, numeracy and language needs of an individual learner through a particular subject.

View activities and guidance for Aliya

Where provision is good, staff have identified the literacy, numeracy and language skills that are necessary for the successful completion of the vocational and academic programmes the provider offers. The initial assessment process is used to identify the learners’ levels of ability in literacy, numeracy and language so that the learners can be enrolled onto programmes that are matched to their levels of ability. Staff are skilled in helping learners to make realistic choices about the literacy, numeracy and language programmes that are appropriate for them.

Where necessary, specialist advice and guidance is sought for learners who have sensory or physical impairments or specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia. Initially, this advice and guidance will focus on ensuring that the learner enrols onto the most appropriate programme and has the equipment that he or she needs. Later, the advice and guidance will focus on progression routes and helping the learner to understand the literacy, numeracy and language requirements of the options that are available.

Good providers also ensure that learners with sensory impairments, speech and language impairments, impairments that affect their motor control and those who have specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia have the opportunity, where necessary, to have their literacy, numeracy and language needs assessed by appropriately qualified specialists. These assessments identify, among other things, the support the learner will need, including specialist equipment and materials. These assessments are carried out as soon as possible to enable the support and equipment to be in place at the start of the learner’s programme.

 

Good providers recognise that there is often a link between communication and behaviours which may challenge.

It is important to recognise that behaviour can be an important way of communicating.

Effective provision seeks to analyse the communicative function that behaviours serve.

It is helpful to ask ‘what is the learner trying to tell me? ’It is also important to identify triggers and use this to manipulate the environment to minimise challenging behaviours. Whilst aspects of behaviour may be inappropriate, they are often also very effective.

In order to reduce inappropriate behaviour, it is therefore important to identify the more appropriate communication strategy that the learner needs to acquire, in order to replace inappropriate behaviour.

The effective management of behaviour plays an important role in keeping learners, and those around them, safe. It requires the development of clear strategies, which are consistently applied by all staff, and which are aimed at supporting learners in managing their own behaviour.

The examples below shows how one specialist college has developed both a behaviour and a communication plan for Harry, a learner with autistic spectrum disorder who finds it hard to appropriately express feelings of anger. The two plans are clearly linked.

View a sample communication plan

View a sample behavioural plan

Induction programmes are carefully planned to ensure that learners with poor literacy, numeracy or language skills are not disadvantaged. Learners undertake practical activities to familiarise themselves with the layout of buildings and to help them identify key staff they can go to if they have any difficulties. Staff ensure that learners are given the information they need in order to settle into their programmes quickly. The information must be in a form that the learner can understand. This may require information to be produced in different formats such as Braille enlarged font, audio tapes, pictures or Makaton symbols.

Simon is receiving support from a speech and language therapy assistant.

Good providers set high standards in relation to attendance and punctuality. All staff have high expectations of learners and monitor their attendance and punctuality rigorously. Learners are informed at the start of the programmes of the consequences of frequent absence or lateness to sessions.

Clear procedures are in place to inform staff of the action they should take if learners do not attend regularly or arrive at sessions late, and sanctions are applied where necessary.

Care is taken to help those learners who are unable to tell the time to develop strategies to get themselves to classes on time. For example, they are taught a routine for getting off the transport in the morning and finding their way to their first session.

Support is matched to the needs of the individual and provided in a way that he or she finds acceptable.

Good providers offer learners support for their literacy, numeracy and language needs through a range of options. For example, learners might be offered help in the following ways:

• by attending additional workshop sessions
• through individual tutorials
• by having support from a specialist teacher who works in the classroom alongside the vocational or academic teacher
• by having the opportunity to use specialist equipment or adapted learning materials.

Whatever method is chosen, it is essential that there is effective communication between the staff who provide support, the learner’s vocational or academic teachers and his or her personal tutor. It is particularly important that support staff have the opportunity to comment on the progress the learner is making in literacy, numeracy and language, and that subject staff evaluate the impact that the support is having on the learner’s progress in relation to his or her main programme. Good providers also ensure that support arrangements are reviewed regularly and adjusted to reflect the changing needs of the learner. For example, the support is reduced as the learner gains in confidence and competence or as the learner prepares to leave the provider.