Scotland and the 1981 Education Act

George Thomson, Alexander Budge, Marianna Buultjens, Margaret Lee

Bureaucratic, over-forma1 and time consuming, but strengthening parents’ rights and sharpening up the accountability of professionals - these are among the main reactions to the recording procedures of the Education (Scotland) Act 1981 which a Scottish team discovered recently. Dr George Thomson and Alexander Budge, of the Department of Education, Edinburgh University, and Marianna Buultjens and Margaret Lee, Moray House College of Education, Edinburgh, report on aspects of their study of the reactions of professionals and parents concerned with the education of visually impaired children.

Elsewhere we have reported on the demographic characteristics of this population (Buultjens et al., 1985); parents’ perceptions of educational provision (Budge et al., 1985a) and education authority and parental attitudes to the integration of visually impaired children in mainstream settings (Budge et al., 1985b). Here we should like to discuss the difficulties and benefits of the recording procedures set out in the Education (Scotland) Act, 1981 as perceived by education officers, educational psychologists and headteachers in mainland Scotland. In the main study we conducted interviews with 17 education officers, 19 psychologists and four headteachers chosen because they had responsibility for visually impaired pupils.

The Education (Scotland) Act, 1981, like the Education Act, 1981, in England and Wales, attempts to apply some of the ideas of the Warnock Report (HMSO, 1978) to education authorities’ practice in maintaining a record of all children considered in need of special educational provision not usually available in a n ordinary school. The concept of special educational needs referred to in Warnock and taken over by the legislation has been the focus of much debate and critical comment (see Wedell, 1981; Tomlinson, 1982; Gavine, 1985).

The study reported by Thomson et al. (1985) was concerned with the process of decision making in meeting the special educational needs of visually impaired pupils. Under present legislation this process is influencd by the ‘recording’ procedures (known in England and Wales as the ‘statementing’ procedures) and the so called Parents’ Charter. To illuminate this process, quantitative data were derived from parents and education authorities, and qualitative data were sought from parents, education officers, headteachers, educational psychologists and counsellors for the visually impaired.

This article looks, firstly, a t those areas of the procedure which attracted criticism and then goes on to examine those areas in which the procedures are thought to be beneficial. The data reported came entirely from structured interviews. Although the interviews were confined to those concerned with visually impaired children, overall perceptions of the Act often went much wider.

1 Perceived disadvantages of the procedures Among the three groups of professionals, criticisms of the Act all seem to originate from what is seen as the over-formality of the new procedures. Typical of the range of responses offered were such comments as:

I think the amount of administrative and paperwork is too much . . . I think, in trying to ensure the rights of parents completely, it is far too detached in its prescription and it gives rise to far too many points not where the parents have arguments with you, but where other people in your own

department, the psychologists or the Health Board can argue with you for hours as to whether we’ve absolutely complied with the Act. I think it is just a wee bit too bureaucratic.

Education officers and heads saw the demand on administrative time as a major criticism. Representative of this recurring theme was such a comment as:

I think the major disadvantage is, and I think this is a general comment, that the spirit of Warnock is lost under a lot of paperwork. Now that we have been a t it for two or three years it is building u p into quite a massive exercise of keeping all the documentation correct even in our small area.

Psychologists also criticised what they regarded as the formality and bureaucracy of the procedures which they saw as obstructing good clinical practice. Two aspects of the procedures particularly criticised by all three professional groups were the ‘named person’ and the formal letters.

In summary, the problems arising from the appointment of the named person (to offer information and advice to parents after the record of needs has been issued) are the confusions of role and timing of the nomination resulting from misinterpretations of the Act, the potential conflict of loyalties for an officer of an education authority also acting as a named person, and the mandatory nature of the appointment. These issues are dealt with more fully in Lee et al. (1985).

The initial letter sent out by authorities to inform parents that a record of needs is being considered for their children also drew much criticism. Primarily this was because the letter embodied many of the concerns which professionals had about how the procedures might appear to parents and also theability of parents to comprehend them. On the latter point, one education officer reported:

The formality is difficult to certain parents especially from lower educational backgrounds. They tend to be frightened by some of the letters we send out. Our letter is a bit formal simply to see we don’t fall down on any of the legal requirements of the Act.

More criticism of the ‘letters’ came from educational psychologists. Typical of such comments were:

I have to apologise to parents about the official wording of the letter and tell them not to worry about it. We either have to take it by hand and explain it o r else warn them in advance, otherwise they get an awful shock and ring us up in panic and think their child can’t stay in the school they’re in.

Yet, in respect of the letters, a comment from one educational psychologist illuminated a n interesting issue:

The bit that we have found that parents have difficulty with is the statutory letter. There is a wide variation of those across the regions. Ours, we shuddered at until we saw what other regions were putting out. It’s a bit long but it doesn’t threaten them with fines and goodness knows what else which some regions have taken very legalistically, which is very intimidating.

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Clearly there is some variability among education authorities in how threatening their letters may appear to parents. Some authorities seem to need to clarify what the initial letters should contain.

placement does turn out to be inappropriate, the continuing review of the child should highlight this and so safeguard the child’s interests.

The extended time scale is another difficulty arising from the procedures and their perceived over-formalisation and bureaucracy. An educational psychologist saw it in these terms and in so doing represented a fundamental misperception of the procedures as they exist in Scotland in respect of getting access to provision early in the proceedings:

There is also a big disadvantage in the long delay in the various stages you go through. . . there’s the gap between waiting for reports; sending out the draft copy to parents; waiting for a fortnight for them to reply and sending them a final one and waiting for 28 days to go past before a child is finally recorded. In some cases this is harmful. Everyone knows the child ought to be in a special class but you can’t really do anything about it until the procedure has been completed.

An education officer alao saw this extended time-scale as being the major difficulty, again displaying the same misunderstanding concerning access to provision:

If you’ve got a child who is in serious difficulties with his current placement and that has got to the point where you want to consider special needs’ assessment, to wait the two maybe three months between the first letter going out and the record being opened, that time is more than enough for the child to fail in his current placement. The time-scale I see as the biggest single disadvantage.

Educational psychologists in the same authority saw the problem of securing early access to provision as pre-empting later recommendations:

. . . Under the ascertainment procedures there was early uncommitted access to provision. Now it is hedged about by bureaucracy - there is no early access to early provision by parents because we cannot pre-empt recommendations . . . Sticking to the procedures requires parents to hang on a long time. . .

This concern that access to early provision is likely to pre-empt later recommendations is perhaps understandable when innovative legislation is still largely unfamiliar and authorities are in the process of establishing precise procedures but it is a concern which is ill-founded on two counts. Most importantly there is nothing in the legislation which determines such a lengthy time-scale or prevents early access to provision; indeed the regulations permit otherwise. Paragraph 18(6) of the relevant Statutory Instruments (1982) refers specifically to special school placements and states explicitly:

. . . but nothing in this paragraph shall prevent such commencement or transfer taking place at such earlier date as may be agreed between the authority and the parent.

The second point is that, notwithstanding the argument that an agreed, early placement might pre-empt later recommendations in some way, the point of the legislation is that children with ‘pronounced, specific or complex needs’ should be subject to ‘continuing review’. Thus when an early

The important point to be stressed is that the widely held view that early access to provision, particularly special school placement, is somehow prevented by the procedures is a false perception. Despite this, it joins the high degree of administration, bureaucracy and formality as major areas of the procedures criticised by educational psychologists and education officers alike.

Parental criticism of the procedures was minimal. There is a seeming paradox between the perceptions of education authority personnel and the view held by parents concerning the recording procedures. Parents displayed a paradoxical low level of awareness of the procedures and their impact on themselves. This does not necessarily imply that parents did not fully comprehend the procedures; it can only be said that they did not appear to be salient in parents’ minds. This may be partly because the majority of children whose parents were interviewed had previous, long standing involvement with special educational provision, pre-dating the legislation.

The new procedures could therefore have been seen by parents to do no more than ratify a status quo. The only criticism which was reported by more than one parent was the suitability of the description ‘record of needs’. %pica1 of such a criticism was the view:

There’s not enough explanation of ‘record of needs’. The word is the wrong association, you think of children in Ethiopia or imagine a poor home environment. The title is a bit frightening, like saying ‘leper’.

Despite the fears expressed by the professional personnel concerning parents’ anxieties no criticism was directed towards the formality of the procedures, although this may be best interpreted as testimony to the skill of the educational psychologist in guiding the parents through the process.

Complaints about the administrative load Among educational psychologists and education officers, it is the administrative load of the recording process with which the largest criticisms lie. As reported above, education officers were negative about the amount of administrative work involved at directorate level. Educational psychologists feel similarly about the amount of administrative work and in addition see their more administrative role as obstructing or preventing them from delivering the services of an educational psychologist.

Those psychologists who were critical of the procedures, overall, generally felt they were trapped by the fog of fine detail which the procedures required. They saw this restriction on their operation as outweighing any of the advantages which the Act had to offer. In contrast the other half of the educational psychologists interviewed were supportive of the Act overall and, although recognising the difficulties in administration, felt those did not outweigh the advantages it had brought.

As regards the criticisms of the procedures it is significant that only two respondents see the concept behind the process as having prominence in their views. Two educational psychologists questioned the use of a system in which they saw

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the problems of educational management being isolated within the child. As one said:

Despite Warnock the Act still talks about disabilities and the Scottish Education Department still think about it as disabilities - the deficit must be in the child. You can see that in (he Parents’ Guide. Throughout it talks about ‘What’s wrong with your child’ which is all right if you are talking about a child that is multiply impaired. If you are talking about pupils who are all right apart from having something wrong with their eyes, and that means differences to how they’re taught, then to talk in terms of a disability doesn’t please parents who have been struggling to normalise their child.

Another educational psychologist alluded to the possible misuse of a system which is seen to identify problems within a child:

You are under a lot more pressure from a headteacher to start recording a pupil who has fallen behind and the only reason for falling behind is they’ve been neglected on the part of the school; not getting the proper help at the right time. Similarly children who have behavioural problems and are not coping at school; you don’t know how much of the behavioural problem is due to the school and rather than record the child it may in some cases be better to allow the child to transfer to another school.

However such reported criticisms and misapplications of the Act were rare. Somewhat ironically a more common theme, among the critics of the procedure, was that the process which the Act detailed was something which, in essence, they had always carried out, yet now they are forced to do so in a stiff, rigid and time consuming manner. The view that the Act enshrined good practice was mentioned by several respondents with varying degrees of enthusiasm:

What we have had to do in many ways is to soften the legalistic terminology of the Act and make it acceptable to parents while at the same time preserving the high aims and objectives of the legislation which was to get parents’ involvement and to get their understanding . . . but . . . we always did that and we didn’t need the 1981 Act to do that. It has been an administrative imposition.

It is the sentiments expressed in this quote which appear best to represent those of the respondents who felt negatively about the procedures. For education officers and heads it is the added administrative work involved in the procedures which attracts the greatest criticism. For the educational psychologists it is this same problem, compounded by the fact that their view of themselves as clinicians stands in opposition to an administrative role, which represents their feelings. This criticism is further heightened by a perceived lack of resources with which to deal with the increased time spent on administration.

The Act itself doesn’t create any problems. It’s just good practice, a formalisation of practice which existed before. The biggest problem is the lack of resources to back the Act.

2 Perceived advantages of the procedures What do educational psychologists, education officers, heads and parents see as the major advantages of the procedures?

The professional groups saw the advantages of the procedures as tending to focus on parents; giving them formal rights, parental possession of a document containing the professional assessment of their child and consequently a greater professional accountability to parents. Whilst most respondents felt that parental consultation had always been a part of their authority’s policy, the statutory requirement to do so was seen as an advantage. A headteacher expressed the view:

I like the record in that . . . it involves the parents more and I think the parents should be involved. Their opinions should be respected more than they have been in the past. It should also keep us all on our toes and make us think, ‘What are we doing for this child?’

Educational psychologists were also inclined to see the parental possession of the record of needs as an advantage:

. . . the one [advantage] I emphasise . . . is that it does give them [the parents] a record of what professionals say about their children.

Parents unanimously welcomed the possession of the record of needs.

For myself I’ve gained a lot. Before I did not have anything for - - and if there were records before I should have seen them.

A further advantage of the procedures as reported by the three groups of professionals was the greater accountability to parents. If parents were to receive a copy of the professional assessment then there was a greater need to be able to substantiate claims as they might be challenged. This view was well represented by one respondent who stated:

[There is] a degree more precision and accountability in every profession. More precision in statements about children and what they require; an awareness that they are open to parental inspection has raised questions on ‘terminology’.

Whilst accountability is seen most clearly in terms of parents there are other dimensions of accountability to which some respondents drew attention, in particular, inter-professional accountability. This awareness of inter-agency accountability is an issue which has been raised by Welton et af. (1982). Writing of the relevant English legislation, the Education Act, 1981, Welton suggests that greater accountability would be the main contribution of the procedures of the Act - accountability not just to the child and parents, but of one service to another. In the present study, echoes of dissatisfzction with the state of such inter-professional accountability were voiced.

For instance, one headteacher did not always feel part of the team which decided her school was an appropriate placement for certain children:

I don’t have a role to play with the new kids coming in, apart from showing parents around the school. Once it’s decided the child is coming, depending on the psychologist you may be given information about the child but that’s an ad hoc arrangement and it doesn’t affect whether the child comes or not. I think in some cases the consultation is not enough.

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Limited though this evidence is, it nevertheless highlights the issue of the level of practice between professionals. It would be quite wrong, however, to create the impression that, overall, inter-professional cooperation is poor. Scrutiny of the transcripts reveals that an impressive consensus was apparent in respect of the quality of inter-professional cooperation.

On an issue related to accountability, some respondents felt that the recording procedures were beneficial in that they caused education authorities to examine the type, suitability and delivery of the provision they offer:

. . . if it [the procedure] is used properly it is highlighting gaps in provision, imposing on the authority an obligation to fill those gaps . . . to me it seems an advantage.

One of the headteachers added:

Recording allows me to put pressure on the authority in that if the record of needs indicates that, say, mobility training or a typewriter or low vision aids etc are required, I put as a footnote to my requisition that I have evidence on the record of needs. There is less delay now!

The advantages mentioned to some degree by all respondents lay in the new pattern of parental involvement in procedures and the positive consequences of this. When asked to compare the advantages of the procedures against the disadvantages a differing picture emerged from the groups of professionals.

The psychologists displayed a fairly even split. A small number felt it was too early to make such an evaluation. The remainder were divided equally between feeling the advantages outweigh the disadvantages and vice versa. The education officers gave a much more decisive division of opinion, in a ratio of five to one, that the advantages outweighed the disadvantages. Educational psychologists have been prominent among the critics of the procedures (e.g. Gavine, 1985) and furthermore a popular folklore seems to have established itself that the procedures are to be widely condemned. The data from the present study would not support such a view although clearly there is widespread criticism of some aspects of the procedures not only by educational psychologists but also by education officers and headteachers.

Conclusions Some of the criticisms of the Act reported here probably cannot be avoided. Any nationally uniform system which gives parents a formal opportunity to contribute their views to decisions concerning their child’s special educational needs must inevitably dictate a degree of formality and bureaucratic stiffness.

However the chances that all parents would ever possess the degree of competence fully to utilise this opportunity are unlikely. In some respects the novelty of the procedures may be responsible for the criticisms which they have attracted. Their unfamiliarity has enhanced their awkwardness and resulted in their being more time consuming. However the widespread criticism which the procedures received in respect of these points suggests that novelty alone cannot account for the difficulties which have arisen. There is a strong feeling that the procedures could be streamlined while a similar quality of parental involvement is preserved.

The variability of attitudes towards the Act is striking. It seems likely that at least some of the variation in these attitudes is due to the manner in which education authorities have chosen to implement the Act as against the manner in which the Act has dictated to authorities how the procedures should be implemented. When asked whether or not any part of the Act was particularly difficult for parents to accept or understand a psychologist stated:

Not the Act so much as the region’s interpretation on how to implement it. The legal department had a say because it was a new Act and at the end of the day the information which goes to parents is unnecessarily cumbersome.

In concIusion we can say that challenges do exist to some of the basic premises of the Act and that these in turn are a challenge to policy makers to examine if the procedures can be streamlined in any way. Yet challenges also exist to education authorities. The differing forms of the initial letter sent out by education authorities to parents prior to the recording process have already been noted. It is arguable that other beneficial changes may result from education authorities’ examination of their own procedures to see if these are the only ones possible within the confines of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1981.

The function of legislation is to improve practice; it cannot rectify deficiencies in its own operation. As education authorities grapple with the new procedures, one consequence is a degree of tension, confusion, perhaps even muddle. The Education (Scotland) Act, 1981 has brought about a fundamental change in the relationships among parents, professionals and administrators. It is sharpening up the accountability of special educational provision.

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Budge, A., Thomson, G.O.B., Buultjens, M., and Lee, M. (1985b) Integration - Segregation: Education Authority and Parental Attitudes. Mimeograph. Edinburgh University.

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