The survey of 1,000 UK teenagers also found that 27% would “probably not” make the effort to talk to a deaf young person of their own age. But against this 66% said that making new friends was important to them.

49% said they would be unlikely to talk to a deaf person because they feared they would not be properly understood.

Lucy Read, head of children and youth participation at NDCS, warned that deaf teenagers are missing out on conversations, activities and opportunities to make new friends.

The charity is launching a campaign to combat deaf teenagers’ isolation, called Look, Smile, Chat to educate hearing teenagers about the simple steps they can take to better communicate with deaf people their age.

“For most young people, making friends is a really important part of their school lives and it shouldn’t be any different for deaf teenagers,” Lucy Reed commented.

“If more teenagers know how easy it is to make sure their deaf classmates are part of the conversation, it will make a huge different to deaf young people all over the UK.”

She added: “We need professionals working with deaf children or schools to help us spread the word about the simple things teenagers can do – like turning to face their deaf classmates when they chat – to make sure deaf young people are never left out.

“We have produced lots of new resources to make this easy for schools to take part, all of which are available for free on our website.”

So… I have written before about the test my colleagues and I launched earlier this year for pupils and students who are potentially suffering from dyscalculia.

Obviously, before we launched the test we did quite a bit of experimenting and validating, but now having had a significant number of people take the test we are starting to see patterns emerge among the results which we had not expected.

One of these findings – and the one that I suspect might be generalisable beyond dyscalculia – is that a significant number of people taking our test have a much lower self-esteem in terms of their own maths ability than their academic ability in maths warrants.

In short, they can do more maths than they proclaim that they can do.

One of the many things we measure is how long it takes people to do our test – and what we find is that almost everyone who falls into this “not as bad as they think” category, takes quite a bit longer than the average person, to do the test.

This is interesting, because we know that some dyscalulic people, as well as some dyslexic people, actually rush at activities involving maths or English. They need training in slowing down.

These people that we are seeing have learned the art of slowing down, and can actually get their maths right if they slow down – but they retain a very low self-esteem.

Sadly I am not in a position to postulate a theory as to what we do to help these people – but it is an issue worth considering, I believe. What these people have is not an inability to do maths at all, but an inability to do maths AT THE SAME SPEED as others in their group. Those two findings are not the same thing at all.

——————————————————————-

A complete list of all the nation’s schools with links to their websites now appears in the Schools Directory at www.schools.co.uk If your school’s website link is missing or is faulty, please let us know the correct entry and we’ll get it changed. Tens of thousands of parents use this site every year to check potential schools for their children. All listings are completely free.

Tony Attwood
Hamilton House Mailings Ltd

To help overcome this challenge the details of 43 of the most common and equally most often misunderstood special needs are given in 2 books:

A Guide to Syndromes and Conditions
A Guide to More Syndromes and Conditions.
In each case the condition is defined in terms of the characteristics and symptoms. Guidance is given on strategies and treatments followed by details of other useful resources.

These books are available from www.behaviourmatters.com/syndromesoffer

Cost of these resources:

£25 plus £2 postage and packaging (if one book purchased)
£40 plus £4 postage and packaging (if two books purchased)
To order please contact us at:

Behaviour Solutions Limited
15 St. Mary’s Close
Abbotskerswell
Newton Abbot
Devon
TQ12 5QF

Phone / Fax: 01626 366161
Email: dave@behaviourmatters.com

The annual SEN support scholarship programme will provide up to £2,000 each to boost the skills of talented teaching assistants and school staff who work with children with SEND. The scholarship cash will fund staff through rigorous, specialist courses and qualifications.

Support and aspiration, the SEN green paper published in March last year, set out major reforms to develop the expertise and expert knowledge of the wider school workforce – so the most vulnerable children have their needs identified early and get the specialist help they need.

The green paper pointed to evidence that in many schools pupils with SEN were left to be supported ‘almost exclusively’ by teaching assistants – risking children becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of the class and classroom teachers.

It said the best schools proved that highly-skilled support staff could be crucial in raising standards – if they were trained, supported, deployed and managed effectively – and it proposed a national scholarship scheme to send a clear message that high-level professional development should the norm throughout a support staff career.

The scholarship programme will fund 50 per cent of the total course costs – up to a ceiling of £2,000 each.

There will be a competitive application process, open to support staff who hold A level or equivalent qualifications or hold higher level teaching assistant (HLTA) status. It will fund staff to take a wider range of degree-level equivalent qualifications and specialist diplomas in specific impairments such as in dyslexia or autism.

Applications will open on 30 April and close on 17 May, with the first scholarships awarded later this year.

This new fund for support staff scholarships is in addition to the national scholarship fund for teachers which opens its second round this month.

The minister also today confirmed funding in 2012/13 to train 1000 new special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) through the master’s-level National Award for SEN Coordination – on top of almost 9000 training places funded to date since September 2009.

This year the scheme has also been extended to include qualified teachers working in pupil referral units, to support improved SEN provision, following the Government’s behaviour expert Charlie Taylor’s recent review into the quality of alternative provision.

SENCOs are teachers with specialist qualifications who play a lead role in a particular school on planning and delivering provision for pupils with additional needs.

SENCOs work with senior leaders and other teachers to:

identify pupils in need of more help;
advise on the most effective provision;
liaise with outside specialist agencies; and
oversee the delivery of targeted help for pupils with SEN.
More information about applying to the SEN support scholarship programme and national scholarship fund for teachers can be found in full in the funding for training section of the Department’s website.

The SEN green paper Support and aspiration: A new approach to special educational needs and disability was published last year. The Government will publish its response to the public consultation and next steps shortly.

——————————————————————-

All today’s educational news stories appear on www.ukeducationnews.co.uk – the free news service for UK schools.

Tony Attwood
Hamilton House Mailings Ltd

And yet at the same time it is obvious that they are not totally lacking in the field of mathematical concepts.

A typical case might involve someone who understands the concept of number, addition and subtraction, but is utterly lost when it comes to multiplication. Another student may have grasped most of the fundamentals but needs to go back over some points of detail.

It is to help such pupils and students that we have produced Dyscalculia Practice Activities– a copiable volume that brings together elements of our earlier three Dyscalculia Activities volumes.

While some pupils and students clearly need the in-depth help of a volume in the Dyscalculia Activities series, Dyscalculia Practice Activities is intended for those pupils and students who show dyscalculic tendencies but who are able to grasp some of the fundamental elements of basic maths.

Dyscalculia Practice Activities includes a huge range of projects for pupils and students who can benefit by working through the fundamentals for maths (the four functions, shapes, fractions, percentages and time) step-by-step in a multi-sensory manner.

The aim of the book is to encourage activity that puts the whole of the basic maths curriculum into a context that can then be used as the student progresses to more advanced work.

The volume consists of sessions in which a teacher or assistant teacher works with an individual or small group of individuals on the projects in a multi-sensory manner using coloured counters, cut-out shapes, memory cards and the like.

Please note that the coloured counters and memory cards are not provided with the copiable book, but can be ordered separately. Details are at http://shop.firstandbest.co.uk/index.php?cPath=29

Sample pages can be viewed at http://www.pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/dyscalculia/T1782.pdf

ISBN: 978 1 86083 820 0; Order code: T1782emn

The volume is available as…

Photocopiable book, £24.95 plus £3.95 delivery
CD with school-wide rights: £24.95 plus £3.95 delivery
Both the Book and the CD: £31.94 plus £3.95 delivery
Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the book or CD…

By post to First and Best, Hamilton House, Earlstrees Ct., Earlstrees Way, Corby, NN17 4HH
On the phone with a school order number at 01536 399 011
By fax to 01536 399 012
On line with a credit card at http://shop.firstandbest.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=757

So all articles on autism in daily life are of interest to me, and I thought I would pass one short piece on – it is not specifically about the education of autistic people, but I found it of interest nonetheless…

The Metropolitan Police must be trained to recognise autism:

http://www.cypnow.co.uk/cn/andys-analysis-blog/1072649/the-metropolitan-police-trained-recognise-autism?utm_content=Andy%20Lusk%20on%20why%20it%27s%20crucial%20the%20police%20are%20trained%20to%20recognise%20autism&utm_campaign=CYP%20Now%20Daily%20Bulletin&utm_source=Children%20%26%20Young%20People%20Now&utm_medium=adestra_email&utm_term=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cypnow.co.uk%2Fcn%2Fandys-analysis-blog%2F1072649%2Fthe-metropolitan-police-trained-recognise-autism

——————————————————————-

All today’s educational news stories appear on www.ukeducationnews.co.uk – the free news service for UK schools.

Tony Attwood
Hamilton House Mailings Ltd

Sometimes there is a book that simply offers what it says it offers – and this is one case in point. It is a book of lesson plans for teachers who wish to work using drama with children with special needs.

It is comprehensive (180 A4 pages) in which the lessons can be used as one-off sessions but can also build into schemes of work.

There are lessons intended for students with moderate learning difficulties as well as those with disabilities who might participate in sessions with a support worker.

The book has been written with basic KS3 skills in mind, in particular through the development of literacy skills, as well as basic drama skills. However it can be equally be used towards other aims: for example, to build group trust or self confidence, to teach self awareness, body awareness and self-expression.

Drama for Students with Special Needs by Louise Tondeur is available as a photocopiable ringbinder or on CD Rom which can itself be copied or loaded onto the school’s learning platform or intranet.

Cat No: 978 1 86083 790 6 Order code: T1689emn – please quote with order.

Sample pages can be viewed at http://www.pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/spneeds/T1689.pdf

Photocopiable report in a ring binder, £29.95 plus £3.95 delivery
CD with school-wide rights: £29.95 plus £3.95 delivery
Both the Ring Binder and the CD £36.94 plus £3.95 delivery
Prices include VAT.
You can purchase the report…

By post to First and Best, Hamilton House, Earlstrees Ct., Earlstrees Way, Corby, NN17 4HH
On the phone with a school order number at 01536 399 011
By fax to 01536 399 012
On line with a credit card at http://shop.firstandbest.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=501

To help overcome this challenge the details of 43 of the most common and equally most often misunderstood special needs are given in 2 books:

A Guide to Syndromes and Conditions
A Guide to More Syndromes and Conditions.
In each case the condition is defined in terms of the characteristics and symptoms. Guidance is given on strategies and treatments followed by details of other useful resources.

These books are available from www.behaviourmatters.com/syndromesoffer

Cost of these resources:

£25 plus £2 postage and packaging (if one book purchased)
£40 plus £4 postage and packaging (if two books purchased)
To order please contact us at:

Behaviour Solutions Limited
15 St. Mary’s Close
Abbotskerswell
Newton Abbot
Devon
TQ12 5QF

Phone / Fax: 01626 366161
Email: dave@behaviourmatters.com

This assessment can be done through an educational psychologist, of course, although this can be rather expensive – and of itself it doesn’t actually provide any resources that can be used to help the pupil or student after the assessment.

The Dyscalculia Centre has been looking into this problem for some time, and we have now come up with an on-line test which is much lower cost than a visit to an educational psychologist.

What is more, having marked the test we then provide a comprehensive set of copiable materials relevant to that student. These resources can then be used in school by an assistant teacher or SENCO working with the student.

The on-line Dyscalculia Test covers the individual’s attitude towards mathematical concepts and issues, plus specific questions on addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, shapes, percentages and time. It is intended for anyone aged over seven years, but obviously does imply that the individual would be expected to be able to answer some basic questions in each of these subject areas.

Testing costs £49.95 per pupil. This price includes taking the test, receiving a specific report in relation to the individual taking the test, and being provided with resources relevant to that individual which can be used to help them progress in maths.

To read more about the test please visit http://www.dyscalculia.me.uk/testing.html

The test itself is set up for payment by credit card on-line, but if you wish to use a school order number you can do this by phoning 01536 399 011, or by fax to 01536 399 012. In each case we will need your email address so that we can email you a link to the on-line test. There are more details about payment for schools on http://www.dyscalculia.me.uk/teacher.html

A resource is now available for staff which would make an excellent addition to your Learning Resource area. These two books, A Guide to Syndromes and Conditions and A Guide to More Syndromes and Conditions will enable staff to update their knowledge and give them the skills to manage 43 of the most common and equally most often misunderstood special needs. In each case the condition is defined in terms of the characteristics and symptoms and then details of strategies and treatments followed by details of other useful resources.

These books are available from www.behaviourmatters.com/syndromesoffer

THese photocopiable books are priced at:

£25 plus £2 postage and packaging (if one book purchased)
£40 plus £4 postage and packaging (if both books purchased)
Behaviour Solutions Limited
15 St. Mary’s Close
Abbotskerswell
Newton Abbot
Devon
TQ12 5QF
Phone / Fax: 01626 366161
Email: dave@behaviourmatters.com