Professionals Under Pressure: the administration of special education in a changing context

Abstract

This paper explores the role of professionals employed in the special education section of local education authorities (LEAs). Its examination of the political, cultural and financial contexts in which decision-making occurs is illustrated by data collected in interviews with LEA personnel in five local authorities. The first section of the paper examines the nature and effects of professional control in special education. Depoliticisation, individualisation and a concentration on technical solutions are seen as the main outcomes of professional control. The second section of the paper analyses the discourses which underpin professional notions of special education. The paper argues that it is the nature of these discourses which renders special education vulnerable to incursions by recent public sector reforms; namely managerialism and the concomitant shift towards rule-based decision-making. It concludes that the dominant discourses in special education are ill-equipped to penetrate beyond procedural issues and consider more fundamental questions about the future nature of education for all children.

'They did not figure': policy exclusion of disabled people in India

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The SEN Code of Practice: Is it User‐Friendly?

“…Such mechanisms highlight the tension between the Code's progress-centred model for movement between Stages 1 and 3, and the need to distribute resources equitably within LEAs. It also reflects the shift towards rule-based forms of decision-making (Vincent, Evans, Lunt & Young, 1996). They remark on the growing curtailment of LEA education officers' discretion brought about by the Code and associated regulations.…”

System leadership as depoliticisation: Reconceptualising educational leadership in a new multi-academy trust

“…Over the last 25 years, depoliticisation has provided a useful lens through which researchers have explored the relationship between education and neoliberalism (e.g. Jayasuriya, 2015; Vincent et al, 1996). For Clarke (2012),contemporary neo-liberalism in education disavows its political nature…by reframing political issues in economic terms through processes of commodification and by assuming and promoting a broad consensus in relation to this economising agenda – in each case, backgrounding the struggle over values central to both policy and politics…[and] undermin[ing] the democratic potential of education….…”

“…Over the last 25 years, depoliticisation has provided a useful lens through which researchers have explored the relationship between education and neoliberalism (e.g. Jayasuriya, 2015;Vincent et al, 1996). For Clarke (2012), contemporary neo-liberalism in education disavows its political nature .…”