School Careers Of Children With Special Educational Needs In The Netherlands
Author(s):
Guuske Ledoux (presenting / submitting) Ed Smeets (presenting) Jaap Roeleveld
Conference:
ECER 2013
Network:
04. Inclusive Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

04 SES 04 A, Policy Evaluation

Paper Session

Time:
2013-09-11
09:00-10:30
Room:
D-505
Chair:
Mara Allodi Westling

Contribution

In The Netherlands a major change is ahead in the national policy concerning children with special educational needs (SEN). The change consists in a shift of responsibility  from a national to a regional level, with regard to deciding about the eligibility for additional funding or the admission to special education. On this regional level it will be up to cooperating local school boards to decide on the allocation of budgets for supporting children with SEN and on ways of defining the special arrangements available for those children. One of the policy goals behind this shift is the wish that in the future less children with educational needs will be referred to special schools and that education in mainstream schools will become more inclusive. Another goal, or at least policy expectation, is that this will also improve the educational careers of children with special educational needs.

An evaluation program on this new policy is now being developed by a special Evaluation Committee. The research presented here is part of this program and is meant to provide basic information on the present state of school careers and level of achievement of children that need extra care, both in mainstream and in special education. Repeated measurements in later years will make it possible to see whether the policy expectations will come true.

In the past, a few earlier studies were carried out in the Netherlands on school careers and school achievement of SEN-children. In this studies, comparisons were made to the cognitive and social development of children in special schools and the development of comparable SEN-children in mainstream schools (Peetsma et al, 2001; Jepma, 2003), by use of a
matching technique. In the research presented here, we were able to follow SEN-children in their school career, including moments of referral tot special education, and we used more information on the ‘SEN-types’ of distinguished groups.

 

The research questions to be answered are the following:

1)      What is the development of the school careers of SEN-children in mainstream and special education, as compared to non-SEN-children?

2)      Does the presence of SEN-children in mainstream classes affect the educational performance of non-SEN-children in these classes?

Method

The study is based on secondary analysis of data gathered in a large integrated cohort study in The Netherlands on school careers in primary and secondary education (COOL5-18). In this study, three waves of data collection are conducted among 5 to 18 year old students, consisting of the assessment of mathematics and reading comprehension performance, citizenship competences, and a wide range of social-emotional characteristics. Also, students’ school career data are collected, for example grade repetition, track transitions, drop-out, etc. Moreover, student background data are available, collected by parent questionnaires and school administrations. The instruments we used in this study were (1) A questionnaire filled in by theachers for each pupil with special educational needs in their class. It includes a list of 38 difficulties/disorders and teachers were asked to state whether these applied to the pupil. (2) An additional questionnaire filled in by teachers for all pupils in their class, addressing various variables including behavior, attitude towards schoolwork, popularity, underachievement and the pupil teacher relation. (3) Test scores for mathematics and reading comprehension, at the age of 5, 8, 12 (4) Data on track repetition and referral to special education.

Expected Outcomes

Within mainstream schools the school careers of SEN-pupils are less advantageous than those of non-SEN-pupils. SEN-pupils who have been early identified (at the age of five) also have less advantageous careers as compared to SEN-pupils who have been identified at a later stage (age of eight). SEN-pupils with more severe and complex problems also perform less well. The worst performance has been found for pupils who are entitled to extra funding or help from special experts. Referral to special education proves to be related to the composition of the mainstream schools: schools with a overrepresentation of lower class children tend to have a higher referral rate than other schools. The findings suggest that the presence of SEN-pupils in a mainstream class in itself has no significant effect on the achievement or wellbeing of non-SEN-pupils. However, a small negative effect was found for the number and severity of problems of the SEN-pupils in the class: if problems are more severe, the non-SEN pupils develop slightly less well

References

Cooney, G., Jahoda, A., Gumley, A., & Knott, F. (2006). Young people with intellectual disabilities attending mainstream and segregated schooling: perceived stigma, social comparison and future aspirations. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 50, 432-444. Head, G., & Pirrie, A. (2007). The place of special schools in a policy climate of inclusion. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 7 (2), 90-96. Jepma, IJ. (2003). De schoolloopbaan van risicoleerlingen in het primair onderwijs. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam (dissertation).. Kalambouka, A., Farrell, P., Dyson, A., & Kaplan, I. (2007). The impact of placing pupils with special educational needs in mainstream schools on the achievement of their peers. Educational Research, 49, 365-382. Peetsma, T., Vergeer, M., Roeleveld, J., & Karsten, S. (2001). Inclusion in Education: comparing pupils’ development in special and regular education. Educational Review, 53 (2), 125-135. Pirrie, A., Head, G., & Brna, P. (2006). Mainstreaming pupils with special educational needs. Glasgow: The SCRE Centre, Faculty of Education, University of Glasgow. Rix, J., Hall, K., Nind, M., Sheehy, K., & Wearmouth, J. (2009). What pedagogical approaches can effectively include children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms? A systematic literature review. Support for Learning, 24 (2), 86–94. Ruijs, N., Veen, I. van der & Peetsma, T. (2010). Inclusive education and students without special educational needs. Educational Research, 52(4), 351-390. Smeets, E., Veen, I. van der, Derriks, M. & Roeleveld, J. (2007) Zorgleerlingen en leerlingenzorg op de basisschool. Nijmegen/Amsterdam: ITS/SCO-Kohnstamm Instituut. Veen, I. van der, Smeets, E., & Derriks, M. (2010). Pupils with special educational needs in the Netherlands: number, characteristics, and school career. Educational Research, 52 (1), 15-43.

Author Information

Guuske Ledoux (presenting / submitting)
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, The
Ed Smeets (presenting)
Radboud University, Netherlands, The
Jaap Roeleveld
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, The

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