Educational Support and Inclusion

Increasingly, key issues in urban education cut across the traditional support structures in local educational authorities. The needs of pupils in a particular school may be addressed more effectively where learning support staff are able to access the expertise of staff whose focus is on dealing with behaviour issues. Furthermore, it is increasingly important for school and LEA staff to link with the work of agencies from disciplines outside education, such as health, housing, and family workers. Addressing such issues entails a process of learning to work with different people, developing new fields of knowledge, understanding unfamiliar assumptions and addressing problems together. This paper draws on the experience of working collaboratively with a particular LEA that was engaging with these changes. The data derives from a series of meetings and interviews with LEA and school staff, and from observations in primary and secondary schools. The research highlighted the wide range of needs and expectations of support, within and between schools. LEA structures in various geographical areas differed considerably from each other in terms of the amount and type of connection between educational services. Multi-agency working aimed to link areas of expertise to form a more effective system, but more often led to the loss of professional identity and risked the marginalisation of particular agencies. Building capacity to deal with these new challenges in this context involved working less narrowly, and more expansively – aiming, for instance to make connections between disconnected initiatives in schools, and to build trusting relationships with staff and pupils. Many of these issues are illuminated through the analysis of a multi-agency meeting within a school, which was led by the special needs coordinator and which involved LEA and school support staff, educational psychologist and family workers from a neighbouring non-governmental organisation