Page 74 - SEN116 January-February 2022

Sensory
What does it mean for therapies
to be part of the curriculum?
Konstantinos Rizos considers the role of therapies in enriching, strengthening and promoting the curriculum, not as an additional provision, but as a fully integrated and essential part of a setting’s curriculum as a whole.
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As a starting point, we need to define what it means for therapies to be part of the curriculum. Many may argue that this might not need clarification as therapies are always included in the pupil’s timetable, therefore, are part of the curriculum. We will touch on that argument a bit more later, but what needs to be made clear is that this inclusion on a timetable is only the first action towards meaningful and practical integration.
Therapies are not complementary to a pupil’s individualised curriculum; they are part of the curriculum. When included in a child’s Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP), they are as much a part of the curriculum as academic or non-academic (e.g. social and community teaching skills, enrichment, behaviour management) subjects. One cannot have one without the other. How good is a teacher identifying and setting writing targets if a pupil cannot properly hold a pencil? What good is setting reading targets if a pupil experiences profound
“Therapies are not complementary to a pupil’s individualised curriculum”
communication difficulties? How helpful is it to have behaviour systems that adjust the environment to foster positive behaviour change if the pupil’s understanding and thoughts have not been considered? Who can better assist with gaining information on those thoughts (or private events, as we sometimes call them in Applied Behaviour Analysis) than a psychotherapist? We can only talk about successful curricular integration if all decisions on goals and systems were made with close staff and therapist liaison before, during and after.
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