Attachment training for teachers
Hugh Thornbery
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Adoption UK is leading a campaign to boost schools' awareness of the attachment needs of adopted children.
Adoption UK is speaking to hundreds of schools over the coming weeks to find out what they need to make their teaching staff attachment-aware.
This drive is part of our campaign to provide all teachers with knowledge, practical strategies, access to training and a network of support through our schools' membership programme on attachment.
All adopted children will have experienced attachment disruption, often as the result of maternal deprivation, neglect, illness, multiple carers, abuse and frequent moves through the care system.
These early experiences can often lead to behavioural, physical and emotional difficulties that play out in a school environment, which is not always attuned to their needs.
We know that children with attachment issues are capable of causing significant disruption, and do not often respond to the traditional methods of sanction and reward.
This is why Adoption UK has joined forces with the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), the Association of School and College Leaders, and the National Association of Virtual School Heads to make every school attachment-aware.
With the support of the teaching profession and the minister for vulnerable children and families, Edward Timpson MP, we will petition the government to consider making attachment awareness a mandatory part of initial teacher training.
We have also produced joint guidance with NAHT that will be sent to most head teachers.
It is not only adopted children who will be experiencing attachment difficulties. Many children in foster care, living with kinship carers or even some of those living with birth parents will have experienced very difficult starts to their lives that will often manifest in withdrawn or disruptive behaviour in the classroom.
Lack of understanding
Our members regularly tell us how schools and teachers lack understanding about their adopted child's complex needs. For example, one parent told us how his adopted son was pinned down by three teachers at primary school.
Adoption UK is committed to producing a charter that will outline a fundamental set of principles to guide all education professionals.
We will be working with virtual school heads and others to test the efficacy of intervention and training in a bid to establish what works best in schools.
We want to put developmental learning at the heart of education for all children and we hope to make attachment training an important element of a teacher's continuing professional development.
Attachment affects a broad range of children in schools, but adopted children's ability to keep pace with their classmates, academically, is being compromised, despite the government's best efforts. Latest research shows adopted children falling behind as early as Key Stage 2 - with less than half reaching their expected targets - compared to three-quarters of their classmates.
This follows them through school to GSCEs where fewer than one in four adopted children secure five or more A*-C grades at GCSE. The overall figure in state-funded secondary schools is 57.1 per cent.
A survey of Adoption UK members found 80 per cent believe their children need more support in schools because of their early childhood experiences.
Department for Education data shows the percentage of pupils with a statement of special education need (SEN) or an education, health and care plan that are persistent absentees is twice as high as the percentage for pupils with no identified SEN.
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines state that schools and other education providers "should ensure that all staff who may come into contact with children and young people with attachment difficulties receive appropriate training on it".
We recognise the difficult job teachers do and acknowledge that disruptive pupils can wreck carefully planned lessons and curtail classmates' learning.
But our members tell us their adopted children are regularly penalised at school because of a lack of understanding about their complex needs.
So we are hoping to work with all teaching staff so they are aware, and better equipped, to meet these vulnerable children's needs.
Extension of support
We have been asking for virtual heads and the provision of a personal education plan, subject to parental agreement, to be extended to every adopted child - as opposed to just those children in care - for some time. So we are delighted that the government has listened to our pleas and we look forward to those proposals coming into being once the Children and Social Work Bill receives royal assent next year.
The government's social work white paper, Putting Children First, also includes proposals to continue pupil premium plus funding and increase targeted support for looked-after children, those who have been adopted from care or placed under a special guardianship or child arrangements order.
- Hugh Thornbery is chief executive of Adoption UK
For more details on joining Adoption UK's national network of support, visit www.adoptionuk.org/schoolscampaign