Dealing With Pupil’s Difficulties at School- Colegio Luso Internacional do Porto – A Study by Artur Victoria
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Pupils may also be laboring under difficulties -intellectual and physical handicaps, emotional and social disturbances -which are so great that they have to attend a special teaching group for all lessons. In certain cases, however, they can also attend leisure activities and school lunches together with the main group. Special day schools or, in isolated cases, school boarding homes can be organized on these lines at the instance of the local educational authorities. Special teaching is arranged in hospitals, orphanages, the homes of individual pupils or other suitable places for pupils who suffer from prolonged illness or who are unable to participate in ordinary school work owing to a disability or illness which entails repeated short-term absence.
Schools are unlikely to succeed entirely in organizing a form of schooling which will provide the best possible development opportunities for all children. For this reason, instruction can be remedial methods and co-operation further adapted to the needs of certain pupils by departing from the time schedule. In isolated cases involving senior level pupils, the question may arise of a certain proportion of their education being completed in working life. Before a school departs from the time schedule by arranging an adjusted course of studies, consideration should always be given to the possibility of providing the pupil with meaningful study assignments by means of extended projects studies.
A pupil taking an adjusted course of studies must always be given instruction in certain basic skills. This instruction can well be increased in relation to the time schedule. The term ‘adjusted course of studies’ indicates that the pupil concerned must follow a course of studies and not merely be referred to a workplace. An adjusted course of studies therefore needs to be properly planned. The pupil must receive extensive assistance from supervisors and teachers. Instruction at senior level is partly provided at an external workplace and must receive support from the school staff. Like other measures on behalf of pupils with difficulties, adjusted courses of studies qualify for funds via the auxiliary resource to finance both teacher inputs and other personnel inputs. Quite considerable inputs of these kinds may be needed in many cases. In order to achieve a reasonable balance between measures of different kinds, inputs in connection with adjusted courses of studies should be arranged with the assistance of the auxiliary resource of the local school.
Decisions concerning adjusted courses of studies are made by the LEA after consulting the pupil welfare conference. It is essential; however, to avoid dramatizing these decisions, especially where they involve no more than adjustments within the time schedule, e.g. increased training in skills for an individual pupils This expedient must not be made to look like the last link in a long chain, as can happen if handling is excessively formalized and protracted. If this happens the decision in favor of an adjusted course of studies may very well come to be seen in a negative light, whereas the aim should be for the pupil to experience it as support from the school. The LEA is therefore empowered to delegate decision-making powers to a headmaster.
In order for the measures taken by a school on behalf of pupils in difficulty to be effective, the school must make the greatest possible use of remedial teaching methods. The work done by qualified remedial teachers, therefore, must not be confined to a special type of organization, e.g. a special teaching group and remedial teaching. Qualified remedial teachers should also participate in the planning by work units of assistance to pupils with difficulties of various kinds, in the compilation of practical programs, in contacts with parents and in the teaching activities of the work team.
Success will also hinge on close contacts with parents, with persons dealing with social problems and leisure questions in this field, with the police and, needless to say, with alI staff categories at the school concerned. It is the duty of the school management and the form master to ensure that consultations take place.
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