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On the class smartboard, teacher Lotte Hjeresen always puts a clock so that the students in 7th grade at Øhavsskolen in Faaborg know exactly how long they have for an assignment. A way to create a clear structure in teaching that benefits all students.
But it is also to meet the students who need extra support. Therefore, she is not alone in the class either, where another teacher and a school pedagogue also help.
Because at Øhavsskolen, a thorough change in the way the school is run is underway right now. A change that is largely about expanding the concept of normal and creating communities that can accommodate more students.
“It is dangerous for children to be outside the community and feel wrong. Everyone wants to feel that they fit in,’ says Lotte Hjeresen.
After the summer holidays, Faaborg-Midtfyn Municipality has introduced so-called intermediate forms at all municipal primary schools – a teaching offer in general education targeted at pupils with special support needs.
The school form is becoming increasingly widespread these years, and it is probably just a matter of time before all municipalities work with a variation of the intermediate forms, says Thyge Tegtmejer, who is a senior researcher at Vive and has written several research articles and reports on the subject.
There is one particular reason for this: the inclusion challenge.
The wide spread must be seen in the light of the fact that schools are broadly facing a challenge, where more and more children have a special need for support, and where an ever-larger proportion is being segregated from mainstream schools into special provision.
“That’s why schools have to find ways to become better at meeting the support needs of more students,” says the senior researcher.
Co-teaching and structure
Intermediate forms are combinations of general and special education and can take different forms and have different names, but there are generally two main types.
In the first model, some of the students who need support can attend a general class, while each week they have a few hours in a different room at the school, where they receive special education and support. This model has been widespread for a number of years already.
The second model is more recent. Here, to a greater extent, special and general education is combined within the general class and uses e.g. co-teaching in teaching, where two teachers prepare and carry out the teaching together.
Faaborg-Midtfyn Municipality calls their version of intermediate forms ‘community-creating learning environments’, but the principles are the same.
The school’s head, Hanne Reynolds Rygaard, believes that the new school form is the right way to go:
“Historically, folk schools have always had some form of exclusionary thinking, where the school is not for everyone. But we believe that it is the pedagogy that must be changed, and not the children, if we are to succeed in creating a school that can accommodate more people’.
At Øhavsskolen, they use co-teaching and school pedagogues in the teaching, and the plan is that the professional staff will soon also be further trained.
For 7th year student Alexander Rasmussen, it is nice to have several adults:
“I actually think it’s very good when there are a couple of adults in the class, because then there is more peace”.
There are 26 students in the class, and 3 of them are support students. The desire to fit in means that it is not always made clear who needs extra support, as it can be vulnerable for students to feel different, says school educator Lene Kjær.
Therefore, the school educator also has different pedagogical strategies, where she can either be more discreet or clear in her approach:
“Some students will not have it implied that I am there for their sake, and therefore the children in the class are not necessarily aware that I am there to support some special students”.
There are also special classes at the school, but the ambition is that the students from here should alternate between teaching in the special and general classes to a greater extent.
Financial incentive
For the municipalities, there can also be a financial carrot by introducing the new school form.
Politiken has previously described that a student in a general public school class costs DKK 75,000 on average annually, while a student in a special class costs DKK 285,000 and a student in a special school DKK 514,000. This puts pressure on the municipalities, as the money for the general schools and special schools comes from the same box.
“Over many years, we have built up a very bipolar school system, where as a student you either sit in a general class with little or no support, or you are transferred full-time to a highly specialized offer, often on a different register in the municipality”, says Thyge Tegtmejer and adds:
“The financial challenge, combined with the fact that more students need support, has led to many schools thinking that a third solution must be found if you construct something that lies between these two types of organisation. Which is also why it is called an intermediate form – that is, something in between mainstream school and special provision’.
The changes in Faaborg-Midtfyn Municipality occur as a result of the fact that over several years the municipality has had a larger proportion of pupils who are allocated to special services than other municipalities, writes School monitor.
In the 2022/23 school year, 7.7 percent of students in the municipality were allocated to special services, while nationally it was 5.1 percent.
Not for everyone
Research from Vive shows that for a broad group of students with less extensive or more temporary support needs, an intermediate form will often be the right educational offer, where at the same time the student’s contact with the general school and their peers is maintained.
But intermediate forms are not for everyone.
“There will always be some students who have such a specialized and comprehensive need for support that a decidedly special offer is the only right solution for them”, says Tegtmejer, who emphasizes that it is not an easy or quickly completed task to develop intermediate forms.
“Intermediate forms have great potential if they are done properly. But it requires a high degree of structure, proper framework and that the professional staff is trained for the task”, says Rasmus Alenkær, educational psychologist and PhD. in inclusion.
The goal is that 75 percent of the children who are currently segregated in Faaborg-Midtfyn Municipality can eventually be included in the public schools via intermediate forms.
However, students with the greatest need for special educational support and special education must still be able to be referred to the existing special services, and those who already attend special schools are also not covered by the new model for the same reason.
For the school head, the ambition to include more students in a larger class community is not only about the organization of staff and premises:
“It requires a major cultural change to expand the understanding of the concept of normal. It’s not just at school, but in general, that we need to get better at accommodating each other’.
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Source: politiken.dk
