» Education

Sam’s learning takes a classy double route

As part of our ongoing look at education and the options available, PHILLIPA BARR met up with a young man who has had the best of both worlds – mainstream school and special school. This is Sam’s story.

For young Sam Tyler, a special needs school means stage performances, sleepovers, riding and abseiling. But his education began in a mainstream school and is a positive example of how CdLS children can benefit from both environments.

Sam, 12, lives in the Rhondda Valley, South Wales, with his mother Kay, his builder father Jeff, and his eight-year-old sister, Kate. A teacher of physical education in a local comprehensive Kay is also head of the 6th form and is involved with the school’s ‘new skills’ policy.

Schooling starts early for children in ‘the valleys’ so, aged only two, Sam attended a mainstream nursery school five mornings a week for a year. He then joined the Blaenclydach Primary School nursery and continued his education in that school until he was eight.

Says Kate: “Sam had already gained enormously from socialising with other children in the nursery classes and we have had wonderful support from a local educational psychologist and a speech therapist who guided us during his early years. For instance, they suggested games we could play with him to help bring him on. He speaks well and has good communication skills in general.”

During Sam’s years in mainstream education at Blaenclydach his path was smoothed by a support teacher sitting with him in class during the mornings, helping him with his work.

“It would have been better if the support teacher could have stayed all day as everything was more problematic in the afternoons when he became tired and frustrated,” says Kay. “But Blaenclydach is only a small, local school and they were so good to Sam. Everyone loved him and they
spoilt him to bits.

“There were annual reviews when I met with the teacher and the educational psychologist and Sam achieved Level 1 in the National Curriculum. I am very glad he spent those years in an ordinary school.”

But then came the crunch time, when Sam’s future educational options had to be weighed up. There was a local mainstream junior school, which took children up to the age of 11, but Sam would have been in a class of 33, with a support teacher in the mornings only. At 11 he would have had to transfer to a nearby comprehensive without a special needs programme yet to find him a special needs school instead would have been difficult at that age.

“I wanted him to have the advantage of a special needs programme – we have one in my school,” says Kay. “I knew that, without one, Sam would not survive in a mainstream comprehensive.”

An educational psychologist advised Kay that when she stepped into a school and it ‘felt’ right then it probably was the best choice for Sam. Maesgwyn, a special needs school for children with mild to moderate learning difficulties, fitted the bill..

Classes, each with a support teacher, have a maximum of 12 pupils. The children don’t stay in the same classroom all day, but move around and are taught by different teachers.

“Sam has appeared on stage, having been taught singing and dancing, and he goes horse riding and swimming and on outdoor pursuits trips, when he does gorge-walking and abseiling. An old caretaker’s house is used for ‘sleepovers’ for the pupils during which they also learn about shopping and cooking.

Says Kay: “I would have liked Sam to stay in the mainstream system but he is getting more out of his education this way and learning skills which will make him more independent in the future.

“I would advise parents of CdLS children to look around at educational options and not to be swayed by the stigma which is sometimes attached to special schools.”

Reaching Out newsletter
April 2001