Inadequate and inappropriate?: The assessment of young disabled people and pupils with special educational needs in National Curriculum Physical Education

Abstract

Based upon focus groups with 12 secondary school physical education (PE) teachers working in north-west England, this paper examines: (i) how young disabled people and pupils with special educational needs (SEN) were assessed in National Curriculum Physical Education (NCPE) 2000; and (ii) how teachers managed the constraints on them to assess these pupils in the same manner as other young people. The findings indicate that the NCPE assessment criteria were often perceived as inappropriate, inadequate and attainable by only a few pupils. Although teachers were constrained to use these criteria because of their statutory nature, the assessment of pupils was very much a matter of personal judgement and guess work that resulted in pupils being awarded grades that were not necessarily accurate or sufficiently indicative of their abilities. It is concluded that the competing pressures on teachers to include young disabled people and those with SEN in mainstream lessons resulted in a series of unplanned outcomes that were not intended nor desired by government, and which came to limit the extent to which pupils' abilities could be assessed, in any meaningful way, within the NCPE 2000 statutory assessment arrangements.

Including students with special educational needs in physical education: An analysis of the current Finnish national core curriculum

“…Compared to the curricular documents from other countries, however, normative performance expectations and body ideals are not in the focus of the analysed curricula in Finland. Although standardized competencies exist in the Finnish curricular approaches, these performance expectations have a less normative character than in other countries (Giese & Ruin, 2018; Haycock & Smith, 2010; Ruin & Meier, 2017). As the Finnish national core curriculum in PE is rather short on content, it leaves decisions on content and teaching methods to individual teachers and schools.…”

“…Numerous studies have shown that PE curricula are often dominated by competitive activities that stem from traditional sport culture (Meier et al, 2021; Hakala & Kujala, 2021; Haycock & Smith, 2010; Giese & Ruin, 2018; Smith & Green, 2004). The curriculum content therefore reduces the opportunities for students with disabilities to participate in PE (Tant & Watelein, 2016).…”

Disability in Physical Education Textbooks: An Analysis of Image Content

“…This makes it more difficult for children and adolescents without disabilities to consider the presence of peers with special educational needs as something habitual and normal. The physical education curriculum must encourage and foster the inclusion of all students, with and without disabilities (Haycock & Smith, 2010). School textbooks could be a channel for transmitting positive and constructive attitudes but at present, they do not reflect classroom diversity.…”

Assessing the learning of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream school physical education

“…Penney (2019) suggests that for assessment in PE to be inclusive for all pupils, teachers need to be given choice and flexibility to adapt the task, environment and approaches that they use. In the same manner, the issue with using standardised approaches to assessing learning in PE is that it could disadvantage some pupils with SEND as their needs and capabilities-that is what they are good at-are typically not considered nor valued (Haycock & Smith, 2010), especially when viewed through an ableist lens (Lynch et al, 2020). In this respect, though, modifying PE activities has not been well received by some pupils with SEND because this can do more to highlight differences, resulting in some of these pupils being marginalised by their peers (Haegele et al, 2020).…”