Supporting Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Schools

Recommendations

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Introduction • A continuum of educational provision to be in place which is flexible and responsive to the needs of students • One unified system of early years education to be established, to include students with special educational needs • One allocation scheme whereby all additional teaching supports are allocated on the basis of need rather than disability diagnosis • Greater focus on individualised planning and monitoring of outcome data for students with special educational needs • Standards of teaching to be developed in relation to the knowledge, understanding, skills and competence necessary for teaching students with special educational needs • Mandatory levels and frequency of continuing professional development to be drawn up for teachers in special education • Children and young people with special educational needs to be recognised as a key health priority. This paper references some of these recommendations but focuses particularly on specific supports students with ASD require that differ from or are additional to those that all students with special educational needs require. Some of the more important of the 2013 recommendations, and other NCSE policy advice pertaining to educational provision for students with ASD, are summarised in Appendix 1 of this paper. A full set of the NCSE policy advice papers is available on the NCSE website at: http://ncse.ie/policy-advice. 1.4 Evidence informed advice Much is said about the importance of policy being informed by the available evidence. Perhaps more than any other disability, there has been much national and international discussion on the education of students with ASD. Authors in the field have pointed out that parents of children with ASD have, for many years, been faced with numerous interventions and treatments, some of which make striking claims of effectiveness or even ‘cure’. Individual cases of significant improvements have been cited as ‘proof’ that a particular intervention is the best or should be the only approach used in the education of students with ASD. All these claims can add immeasurably to the anxiety of parents, teachers and policy makers seeking to ensure that children are given every chance to achieve their potential. The NCSE is therefore very aware of the need to ensure that our advice is evidence informed. We take great care to review and consider the available evidence. One of our great advantages is that we are independent and we are not seeking to prove the validity of one approach over another or defend a particular viewpoint. We are child-centred rather than approach-centred. Our role is to advise based on the evidence. 18 Supporting Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Schools – NCSE Policy Advice 2015
Introduction We read, and considered, findings from a wide range of studies and international evidence reviews identified through journal and database searches at the NCSE along with two peer-reviewed studies commissioned by the NCSE; a number of international clinical guidance documents; as well as many other papers and studies identified by stakeholders and brought to the attention of the NCSE during the consultation process around developing this policy advice, many of which are included in the accompanying bibliography. Despite limitations in the research identified across these reviews (see Section 2.4.3 for further discussion), their findings have identified a range of interventions from different theoretical perspectives that can be effective in certain ways for some children and young people with ASD. For information, the interventions are listed and described later in Appendix 5. These interventions will, unfortunately, not be equally effective for all students. It is clear that some may respond well with a particular intervention or interventions while others may not. Research evidence is limited on the factors that predict which students will have positive or negative outcomes (although cognitive and verbal ability have been identified in some studies as factors that may be significant in predicting outcomes in certain cases) or what the long-term gains from interventions might be or what interventions might work well with older age groups. Finally it is acknowledged in the literature that while an intervention may have no evidence of effectiveness, this does not necessarily mean it is ineffective (unless of course there is direct evidence of ineffectiveness). It may be the case that some interventions have not yet been sufficiently researched to establish an evidence base. For this reason, some systematic reviews also identify interventions which have ‘emerging’ or ‘insufficient’ evidence of effectiveness. But it is possible that following further research such interventions may be deemed by future reviews to have accumulated evidence of effectiveness. 1.5 Prevalence Increases in ASD prevalence have been well documented in recent decades and may have been linked to changes in diagnostic practices, service availability and greater awareness of autism spectrum disorders. There had been some international agreement that ASD prevalence rates were about 1 per cent, but some recent reports suggest a higher rate, for example, the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention 9 reports that about 1 in 68 or 1.6 per cent of children/young people have been identified with ASD; UK analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study 10 (six- to eight-year-olds in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) showed that 1.7 per cent were reported as having ASD at mean age 7.2 years; figures from the Northern Ireland school census 11 show the estimated prevalence of ASD to be at 2 per cent among children and young people aged 4 to 15 years. Boys are up to five times more likely to be affected by ASD. 9 CDC 2014 Facts about Autism, http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/facts.html, accessed September 23rd 2014. 10 Russell, G. Rogers, L.R. and Ukoumunne O.C. (2014) Prevalence of Parent Reported ASD and ADHD in the UK: findings from the Millenium Cohort Study, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 44 (1) 30-41. 11 Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (2014) The Prevalence of Autism (including Asperger Syndrome) in School Age Children in Northern Ireland 2014, DHSSPS, Information Analysis Directorate. Supporting Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Schools – NCSE Policy Advice 2015 19
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Pre-School Children and School-Aged
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Appendix 1: Summary of Previous Rel
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Appendix 2: Historical Context and
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Appendix 3: List of Special Schools
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Appendix 4: The Consultation Proces
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Appendix 4: The Consultation Proces
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Appendix 5: List of Interventions A
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Appendix 6: List of Recommendations
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Bibliography Bibliography Agency fo
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Bibliography Carr, J.E. and Firth,
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Bibliography Mannion, A., Leader, G
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Bibliography Reed, P., Osborne, L.A
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Bibliography Special Residential Se
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Supporting Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Schools

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