Ofsted plans to make curriculum construction and implementation a much more prominent focus in inspections from September 2019. Thus far, special schools largely seem to have been an afterthought in the research underpinning this shift. Simon Knight, joint headteacher of a special school, and Mark Enser, geography teacher and research lead at a mainstream secondary, discuss why this is a huge oversight.

Mark Enser: When I read the Ofsted research, I didn’t even notice the lack of special schools being visited. Do you think it is common for them to be overlooked in this way? What do you think they would have learned about approaches to curriculum from visiting a school such as yours?

Simon Knight: Sadly, yes, it is all too common. In my experience, special schools are rarely considered fully when policy is formulated. Frustratingly, the requirements of the sector, or indeed the consideration of what the sector may have to offer the broader education community, is often an afterthought at best. In the case of Ofsted’s work on curriculum, special schools were not mentioned in phase one and were omitted from phase two of the research entirely. While there were two special schools included in phase three, this is not an appropriate data set on which to base conclusions that affect the entire sector.

In this instance, the reasons why this is problematic are twofold. First, it means that the requirements of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who are educated outside the mainstream are not built into the early thinking on curriculum. Second, it means that the curricular expertise within the specialist sector is not being drawn upon.

One of the defining characteristics of the specialist sector is that we have always been required to interpret the national curriculum in order to meet the educational needs of our pupils. We have a huge amount of institutional knowledge regarding the development, implementation, evaluation and refinement of curricular structures and content - something that may have value across the education community, but is currently being ignored.

ME: That freedom to create - be it as a result of political neglect rather than design - contrasts sharply with the mainstream.

In my experience, a mainstream school curriculum, and in particular a subject’s own curriculum in school, tends to evolve over time, with things added on a whim or removed as they fall out of favour. Quite quickly, any sense of a coherent and purposeful curriculum can be lost.

Things can be even worse at key stage 4, where the exam specification can become the curriculum model in the classroom and the demands of chasing the best possible exam outcomes become the curriculum structure for the school. If we aren’t careful, our curriculum thinking becomes little more than working out how we can cram the specification into the time allotted to us.

Do you think freedom from exam demands - as well as the political neglect - gives special schools the ability to think more carefully about their curriculum? How do you decide what each pupils’ curriculum should look like without necessarily having this to aim for? It sounds like a huge amount of responsibility.

SK: The freedom from externally mandated requirements regarding what is taught is one of the key differences between the sectors, and you are right that this freedom does come with significant responsibility. The most important aspect is ensuring that there are universally high expectations within the school. In my experience, this is driven by the assessments used to identify developmental need and the creation of an objective evidence base.

The fact that we offer a developmentally determined provision, rather than a chronologically determined provision, means that we can provide an education that is essentially bespoke, enabled through very carefully planned differentiation. I often wonder how mainstream schools work to reconcile the tension between reaching a prescribed end point by a certain age and ensuring the individual pupils are taught things that build on their own secure prior knowledge. Perhaps this is an area where discussions between the sectors would yield the most interest.

How do you differentiate to achieve without lowering expectations and is this a consistent whole-school approach or is it down to subject teams to decide? Does your curriculum offer the freedom necessary to ensure that every child can succeed?

ME: That is a very tricky question. The main way we attempt to achieve this is through differentiating the level of support to achieve the same outcome. As in most non-core subjects, I have always taught mixed-ability classes and I am always aware that, within one class, I will have pupils with a wide array of different abilities and prior knowledge.

At a whole-school level, there is generally a view that all pupils should be entitled to the same curriculum and that if we start differentiating this curriculum provision too far, then we run the risk of some pupils being left with a second-rate education. We are always trying to close the gap between the highest and lowest prior attainers and giving them a different curriculum could just entrench the difference.

There are also practical considerations. To use a rather unpleasant metaphor, mainstream schools are dealing with mass production. We are funnelling a couple of hundred pupils through the education system in each school each year and trying to give them the best possible experience we can.

Inevitably though, we can’t make this provision very bespoke. There just isn’t the funding for this. And so, the curriculum tends to be a best fit for the majority, with individual teachers doing what they can to tailor it for each pupil.

It sounds as though special schools may be the artisanal producer to our mainstream mass production. Do you think there are things that you are doing that could be scaled up to mainstream schools?

SK: There is some truth in that observation, although, from an educational point of view, I’d be nervous about drawing the conclusion that something less mass-produced is inherently better. It’s just different. There are also clearly limitations to what we do, although these aren’t always within our control.

For example, while 92 per cent of special schools are rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted, only about 6 per cent of people with a learning disability are in paid employment. So, although employability is only one measure, we need to investigate carefully and honestly why, as a high-performing sector educationally, what we offer fails to translate into a good quality of life beyond school. That has to be a curriculum consideration.

In terms of scaling things up to mainstream, what I would look at is professional knowledge rather than any particular approach. As a result of the magnified uniqueness of the pupils we teach, we cannot easily apply commercial interventions or approaches and expect consistent success. The differences our pupils present with drive investigative professional enquiry. We don’t just deliver a curriculum but instead take a forensic approach to understanding what our pupils know and what they need to know next.

As such, the depth of understanding of developmental patterns that prerequisite skills are essential to success, and the way concepts interlink to provide the foundation for later learning is something that we devote a lot of time to developing. It is these areas that we consistently find helpful in providing support to mainstream colleagues who can find it challenging to know where to look in order to identify why progress may be delayed.

Too often, we find schools looking to remediate a predetermined outcome, rather than addressing the cognitive gaps that have led to the delay. Our curricular structure and the way that we approach learning helps us to do the latter, and sharing these with mainstream colleagues may help them to meet the needs of children with delayed progress, too.

We could learn a lot from mainstream colleagues, as well, clearly.

So, given the often limited collaboration between mainstream and special schools, what do you think are the barriers to us sharing what we know with one another? How could we develop practice collaboratively in order that we both improve what we do?

ME: I think the barrier is the same as always: time. And time comes down to money. We need time to meet with people from other schools, visit them and to work meaningfully with them or it tends to be tokenistic at best.

However, there are established networks that could lead to collaboration. Many parts of the country have subject hubs where heads of department meet to discuss changes to their curriculum. And, in my experience, special schools are sadly under-represented at these meetings.

In addition, we have active subject associations where people collaborate, but again, I have rarely come across links to special schools through them. We also have connections with other schools through local Teaching School Alliances and less official school hubs. I don’t know how often special schools join these groups.

It sounds as though special schools have been isolated from their mainstream counterparts because of their perceived differences, rather than being linked into the same networks. This must be a loss to both as we are treading the same ground and asking ourselves the same questions.

SK: I think that is a fair point and the key word for me is “perceived”. I’m not convinced that the differences are such that our settings wouldn’t both benefit from collaboration. Curriculum is a fantastic topic to build that connection from as there is so much to share.

Furthermore, given the capacity challenges in the specialist sector, the likelihood is that mainstream classrooms will see greater complexity in the years to come. As such, I suspect that it will be in the broad interests of all children if we look to build our collective ability to meet need and find additional ways to work in partnership.

A community of schools working together to serve the entire community of children: that requires schools to want it to happen, but also Ofsted and the government to help make it happen.

Simon Knight is joint headteacher at Frank Wise School in Oxfordshire, and Mark Enser is head of geography and research lead at Heathfield Community College in East Sussex

This article originally appeared in the 1 February 2019 issue under the headline “It’s vital to work in tandem with special schools”