David

Surely the point is that diagnostic evidence should be quantifiable
and sound. I am quite in agreement with your point that EP reports
are as a variable as those of teachers.m As a DO I will not accept a
screening assessment as sufficient evidence to warrant university
recognition, I will always support students to obtain a full diagnosis.
and do the same if medical evidence is poor. If it is uninformative.I
will ask the student to get a further report and have frequently written
to and spoken with GPs and Consultants for clarification. I would
expect an LEA awards officer to use that much common sense as
well.

As a needs assessor I have on a number of occasions in the last
year had cause to state in a report that a screening test is
insufficient to inform learning needs and recommended that students
seek further investigation of their difficulties. Mainly I've found this
to be the case with nurses who up to now haven't had necessarily
the luxury of hardship fund money to pay for a full diagnostic
assessment. This is not the students fault and its worth noting SpLD
is still the only disability where the student has to go through with
what is effectively a private consultation at a price, they rarely have
the luxury of being referred via the NHS.

Surely this whole area is about training rather than ring fencing a
good business opportunity to one group of professionals.

Mechanisms need to be developed to ensure that qualifications
awarding bodies update their curriculum criteria to reflect the
changing climate. And, as with nurses, etc , all diagnosticians
should be required to have periodic refresher training in order to
retain practitioner status - I include both EPs and educationalists
by the way.

It would also be worth creating a new accessible register of
practitioners (similar to the BPS and PATOSS directories) which
could be used by DOs and awards officers so we'd all be singing
from the same hymn sheet when it comes to standards. As a knock
on this might also generate more equity in the fees that are being
charged - which are almost out of control - in southern England at
any rate.

I'm sure this will be a burning issue at NADO in a couple of weeks.
See you there!


Gillian



On 20 Jun 2003, at 15:34, David Laycock wrote:

Priority: normal
Date sent: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 15:34:21 +0100
Send reply to: "Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff." <[log in to unmask]>
From: David Laycock <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: University of Westminster
Subject: Re: Educational Psychologists reports for prospective students
To: [log in to unmask]

Having received a welter of complaints from LEA awards officers
regarding non-EP reports, the DfES decided to set up a new working
party (on dyslexia in HE but concentrating on diagnosis). However,
considering how long the first one took, it decided to call a
preliminary meeting to discuss the issues and the evidence it had
already received. It's true there was only one EP, (more had been
invited but couldn't make it) but all the specialists present were
unanimous.

One of the concerns was that while the best of teachers' reports are
very good, as a group they show little consistency of either content
or format and some of the tests used are obscure if not irrelevant.
Most alarming was that when awards officers were asked to submit the
non- EP reports they were least happy with 90% of what came in from
several sources were simply copies of the DAST- a screening tool.

In the end it was agreed that

a. every student should be able to present a full WAIS (or WISC)
profile taken some time in their lives. Most significant was the fact
that this could be ten years old and still be valid. Many EPs will
testify to the stability of these test scores throughout childhood
into maturity. This makes the new criteria more flexible than some
HEIs are currently operating.

b. a recent set of performance scores should also be available. These
refer to reading writing, etc which are maturational and based on age
training, practice etc. These can be done perfectly well by teachers.

Having confirmed these with the specialists who attended, the DfES
then sent them to LEAs. Looking back it might have helped if a date
had been set for their implementation giving the HE system some weeks
or a few months to adapt. However, I suspect some LEAs will choose to
do this for themselves, though some won't.

Obviously no-one knows what the new working party will come up with,
but it's reasonable to suppose the above will be confirmed as at least
one strategy. However, if tests and report formats can be agreed,
there may be teacher alternatives as well.

And don't suppose EPs get off lightly. There are several well known
EPs who are highly critical of some of their colleague's work, so we
may get some firm guidelines from the WP to them on what is expected.
(I had an EP report recently that merely quoted a score on the BDA
checklist as evidence. When I told the checklist author, Michael
Vinegrad, he was not amused.)

As regards the impact this has on early assessments, before students
have access to the hardship fund, this cannot be denied but was not
really the problem the DfES was trying to deal with. Related to the
this is that different criteria are now operating in FE and HE. I
doubt the new WP will be able to do much about this unless it does
agree standards for teacher diagnoses and these are adopted throughout
the post-16 sector.



Dave Laycock

Head of CCPD
Chair of NADO
Computer Centre for People with Disabilities
University of Westminster
72 Great Portland Street
London W1N 5AL

tel. 020 7911-5161
fax. 020 7911-5162
WWW home page: http://www.wmin.ac.uk/ccpd/
Disabilities Adviser
University of Luton
Park Square
Luton
LU1 3JU