Who’s your SENCO?
Those of you who have the patience to follow my blog will know that for the past little while now I have been tripping around schools. Doing some relieving here and there.
One such school I happened across asked for me to come in and cover some member of staff for a little while. During the course of my time there I have got to know some of the students and one in particular made me wonder. There was something unusual there, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I decided, the only action I could take was to speak to the Special Needs Co-ordinator. Not knowing who I was to speak to I approached the DP and asked the question: “Who is your special needs co-ordinator?”
A fairly easy question, I thought. But perhaps I caught them off guard, their mind on other things, maybe the answer was more complicated- “there used to be one, but…” or “So and so was but now they are….” Or perhaps that’s the English term and Kiwi’s call them something different.
Whatever it was I got this blank, scratching “I don’t know” head and directed to my syndicate leader. Or perhaps my Syndicate leader WAS the SENCO- (but that was not revealed to me)
Hmmmm. It just bothered me. Member of staff needs to be aware of who’s responsible for what, who to go to for what.
I was the SENCO. Only because I had a severely special needs child in my class and when I asked the question had the exact same reply…”oh… ____ used to be ages ago but when they left…”. So figured it was a need in the school (roll of 500 with -at that stage- 5 ORRS students). I put my hand up for the role and did it for about 12 months before I got so fed up with the system that I had to resign the position before I lost my sanity entirely. All the release time I had was 1.5 hrs per week — and I was the 0.1 teacher. Special Needs education is so poorly funded and supported. I think a lot of schools in New Zealand can’t afford to ‘hire’ a SENCO and expect teachers to take on the enormous role of coordinating the many specialists and IEPs for their ORRS and SEG students. The ‘good’ news is that the role has been continued.
Anyway your point was about knowing roles not the huge role of SENCOs! And I agree people absolutely need to know who does what — if they actually do it that is!!