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The Next Big Thing in Special Education Needs 2021

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What is the future of technology in the special education sector?

Technology education could be the key to helping create equal opportunities for all students in the classroom, and level the playing field for those with special needs and disabilities. The future is ripe with all manner of technological possibilities which will support the academic, social and physical learning of students with SEN. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is the umbrella term for today's emerging classroom technologies, and along with helping students learn and reflect on their learning in ways that specifically meet their needs, UDL can be adjusted to meet new needs and create the best learning environment.

One element of UDL is Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is used to improve the experience we have with our devices, and is a system which learns how a device is used to help personalize our interactions with it, based on our individual preferences. This technology will therefore be used to customize and personalize the content, resources and curriculum our pupils use to meet their unique learning requirements. AI can aggregate the strengths and weaknesses of a SEN child's learning, and then offer an in-depth overview of their needs to help generate strategies to improve their chances of making progress.

Already, AI has been installed in robots to help teach communication and social skills to students with autism spectrum disorders, and can be found within hearing aids to target specific sounds whilst blocking out background noise. On top of this, translator apps are converting speech into captions, and other apps can convert text back into speech!

The future of special education could also see Augmented Reality (AR) creating a real-world environment in the classroom without students having to travel, or feel the anxiety of being somewhere new. AR glasses superimpose images or objects into the world around us and even allow students to manipulate or move them, providing opportunities for realistic and real-time learning which pupils can return to again and again, increasing their confidence and understanding.

Currently, AR supports the learning of anatomy, artefacts, artworks, shape, geography and space, to name just a few. SignGlasses also exist where a teacher's speech is picked up by the glasses and then live sign language interpretation appears on the surface of the lenses, allowing students to watch a lesson without interruption or confusion. Meanwhile, for teachers, AR allows for the opportunity to create personalised content and images, ensuring that the technology meets the particular topic for the day, or the specific skill that must be taught.

By contrast to AR, Virtual Reality (VR) is a completely immersive experience, generating a 3D space that presents a real-world environment where pupils can move about and interact with items in the virtual world. Already, in order to aid special education, VR is used for virtual simulations, virtual tours, virtual training, and experiential activities. In the future, VR will be used more widely to support children with a diverse range of learning needs as it creates a safe learning environment, and can prepare them for real-world experiences at their own speed.

Additionally, the virtual world can be controlled and so provide few distractions from the main learning outcome. This prospect is particularly helpful when VR is used to support students with autism, helping them to learn about social interactions, emotions and nonverbal cues. Equally, for students who have physical disabilities, they can be navigated through the VR world much more easily than the real world, and access places that are normally difficult for them to engage with. For example, VR allows for underwater exploration, field trips around the world and the chance to come up close and personal with wild animals.

These technologies will act as fantastic alternative strategies in every teacher's pedagogical toolkit in the future, and as the processes behind them are being developed all the time, the price and availability of UDL will hopefully become much more realistic to the funding behind our schools in the UK.

Current technological aids for children with SEN and disabilities

Many teachers around the country have been exploring which technologies and apps will suit the needs and interests of their children best, and have started integrating them into their lessons. Here are some particularly successful apps that can help children with autism spectrum disorder, and those with dyslexia and dyspraxia:

  • Start The Clock – this app acts as a timer you can set to remind children how long they have until a particular event occurs. For example, counting down to when a piece of work needs to be finished by, or revealing how much free time a child has until lesson starts. This app may be useful to share with parents to help transition times at home.
  • SmartyPants – this app for Apple and Android supports children to talk about, and explore, their feelings.
  • Smile at Me – designed to help children with autism understand and interpret social cues, and to understand when smiling is a good response.
  • Book Creator – a great app to help create social stories for home and school.
  • Shadow Puppet – a good app for children who like being creative but don't like getting their hands dirty. Children can create photo stories with audio tracks and commentary.
  • Music Box Free or GarageBand – these apps provide a variety of digital instruments that can be played and experimented with in an easy and accessible way.
  • Proloquo2go – an Assistive and Augmentative Communication (AAC) app which can be used by children, teaching staff and families to communicate with the most useful and relevant PECS. This app can help students to communicate independently.
  • Brain in Hand – this app allows users to plan their week, plan coping strategies and pinpoint high stress moments they are yet to face. The app features a red button which can be pressed to call for help in times of crisis, and encourages strategy discussion between children and their families.
  • Teach Your Monster to Read – this app lets children create their own monster and then teach it to sound out letters, blend sounds and find meaning from different texts.
  • Chimp Fu or Reading Eggs – these apps helps students to chunk words and covers different levels of reading ability.
  • ClaroSpeak – highlights the text you are reading and can convert the file from visual to audio, which is extremely helpful for revision and correct pronunciation. The app offers Capture Text from Photo which then allows children to photograph a piece of text, like exam questions, and then the app will read it out loud to them.
  • iReadWrite or Clicker Documents – these apps support children with their writing, with word prediction, text to speech, different text colours, background colours and font combinations. These apps are slightly pricier, starting at £20, but may be essential when helping specific learners in the classroom.
  • Sonocent recorder – students can record themselves reading aloud and edit out the bits they don't like until they become fewer and fewer over time. This app can also record their ideas for brainstorming, helping the student to more easily focus on the writing aspect of their work.

Current Special Education developments in the UK

Over the last 10 years, children with SEN have been offered support and protection under the Equality Act 2010, and this means that all schools and settings should be following the SEND Code of Practice to ensure that all expected requirements of support are fed into the SEN and disability provision. As a result, each child's needs must be identified as early as possible, and along with this, they should receive appropriate support and referral to other external agencies if their progress and development remains concerning. Here are some useful resources which can be read in conjunction with the Equality Act:

Another current development is how most mainstream schools across the UK are following the inclusion model as best as they can. Through this model, children of varying abilities and needs are being catered for and appropriately integrated into mainstream classrooms. Over the past few years, the UK Government has also tried to reform the funding system for SEN and disabled students in mainstream schools. A national funding formula has been introduced to allocate ‘high needs' funding to LA's, and from 2018-19, Local Authorities could not transfer more than 0.5% of their wider ‘schools block' funding into their high needs budget, although requests to transfer more could be made to the Secretary of State. A call for evidence on high needs funding ran from May to July 2019, although the government has not yet responded with regards to how this system might be changed or improved.

Whilst LA services are following the funding formula, in recent years special schools have been increasingly supporting mainstream settings with developing their specialist knowledge and SEN provision. Indeed, one of the key aspirations of the government's SEND reforms is increased collaboration, not just between education settings, but also with health and social care. Reports suggest that although some issues still need to be resolved, like the complexities of data sharing, the education sector too often paying for the health and social care interventions put in place, and the problematic availability of professional supervision, collaboration is improving and making a positive difference to the lives of those with special needs.

Where is special education heading towards in 2021

In September 2019, five years after the introduction of the current system of SEN support, the Government announced a review of the system's effectiveness and purpose as we move into the new decade. The Government has now decided that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on those with SEN and disabilities will now form part of the review, which along with a Green Paper, is due to be published in summer 2021.

We hope that this review will help to get some momentum going in how provision and collaboration between agencies can develop further over the next few years, as recently, concerns have been raised about how children and young people with SEN were supported during the pandemic. Indeed, the Coronavirus Act 2020 gave the Secretary of State powers to temporarily freeze particular statutory requirements relating to education, including the requirements on LA's to organize education and health care provision under an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP).

As a result, as 2021 goes on, parents and teachers are hoping that arrangements will be made to make up for this lack of support, and that the government will consider a plan of action to reverse the suffering that some students have faced academically, and personally, during this long-running pandemic.

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