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There has been a policy for including pupils with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties in mainstream schools in England since the 1980s. However, effective inclusive education has proved to be very difficult to achieve in practice. Currently, there is a mixed economy of special and mainstream schools offering inclusive education, and we argue that the place of education is less important than the quality of that education. Ideally, pupils with S/PMLD would be educated in their own local communities, alongside their non-disabled peers, but this situation is not yet established in English schools.

The aim of this study is to explore equality and inclusion as an aspect of remote teaching in rural areas. Moreover, the aim is to explore teachers' pedagogical digital competence (PDC) and school organizational support as conditions for developing remote teaching.

A mixed method approach with both qualitative and quantitative data was used.

According to this study, remote teaching can solve many problems for school organizations and offer pupils new opportunities to learn in rural areas. Remote teaching expands the learning environment and provides pupils with equal access to qualified teachers and a wider range of learning solutions for different needs. However, the learning context needs to be redesigned with flexibility to meet the needs of individual pupils, whereas the remote teaching format itself can contribute to difficulties in teachers' flexibility. In meeting these challenges teachers' PDC and digital relational competencies are becoming increasingly important. Moreover, teachers' access to communities and school contexts where remote teaching is collaboratively discussed and elaborated on.

The study is limited to a region in Sweden, with ten participants.

The practical implications are that equal and inclusive remote teaching is dependent on technological as well as pedagogical competence from teachers as well as from organizations.

If sufficient professional development for teachers is provided as well as organizational structure are in place, remote teaching is an option for equal access to education in sparsely populated areas. This means inclusive education can be provided to areas otherwise lacking in teacher competence.

The study is one of few that investigates how remote teaching teachers perceive the teaching form and the competencies and support required to develop and use it in rural areas.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of a sample of Hong Kong principals and teachers of the extent to which quality management (QM) has been effectively implemented in primary schools. The features of QM improvement implemented in Hong Kong primary schools include: values and duties, systems and teams(ST) resources and changes(RC) and meeting pupil needs and empowering staff.

A quantitative, survey questionnaire was adopted in this study. A total of 322 respondents (83 principals and 239 teachers) out of 83 primary schools responded to the questionnaire.

The finding shows that all four features of QM are perceived as being implemented in Hong Kong primary schools. There are significant differences between the perceptions of principals and teachers towards “value and duties”, “ST”, “RC” of QM. However, there is no significant difference between the perceptions of principles and teachers towards “meeting pupil needs and empowering staff” of QM.

This paper is a first step towards extending the theory and practice of QM to principals and teachers in Hong Kong primary schools.

In England and Wales, the Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs now places emphasis on the role of the special educational needs co‐ordinator, or SENCO. Analyses the results of a study of 63 SENCOs, in primary and secondary schools in one urban local education authority in England. Examines status in school, levels of salary and time devoted to the role as well as the extent to which SENCOs managed other personnel, together with their reports on ways in which the use of resources was monitored within their schools. It appears that SENCOs’ status is being recognized in many schools, not just by their salary levels but by the time which they have available to devote to their jobs. Administrative burdens brought by the Code of Practice are a continuing concern. Concludes that most SENCOs continue to view resource monitoring as an accounting exercise rather than one in which pupil involvement can be linked to expenditure on inputs.

Evidence-based practice (EBP) can have a powerful impact on school-aged children. Yet this impact may not be realized if classroom teachers do not use empirically supported interventions and/or fail to include the best research available when they make important educational decisions about children. Whether classroom teachers use EBP may be influenced, in part, by what they learned or failed to learn in their preservice preparation programs. This chapter describes recent efforts to assess preservice teachers’ understanding and use of empirically supported interventions and provides four examples of how such practices were taught to preservice general educators in a small, regional teacher preparation program. We discuss four contemporary educational reform movements (i.e., federal policies mandating EBP, state-level policies linking growth in pupil learning to teacher evaluation, clinically rich teacher preparation, and the emergence of a practice-based evidence approach) that should increase interest and use of EBP in teacher education and offer recommendations for how teacher educators might infuse EBP into their traditional teaching, research, and service functions in higher education.

There is currently a lack of research describing the best way to design learning environments for increasing numbers of children with autism. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of classroom design on the learning and behaviour of pupils with severe autism. The research variables of interest were classroom layout; furniture, fittings and equipment (FFE); materials; colour scheme; wayfinding; lighting; acoustics; and security.

This study conducted a post-occupancy evaluation of classrooms for pupils with severe autism aged 3–19 in a school ten years after its completion. Data collection included a visual assessment of the building and an online survey to educators and administrators asking how satisfied they were that the research variables benefited pupils with severe autism.

Key findings were that zoned areas for different activities met students’ needs. Withdrawal rooms off the classroom, access to shared hygiene facilities and a secure outdoor area received high ratings. The main criticisms were the lack of robustness of FFE and the inability to control temperature. Results were collated into a table of recommendations for classroom design for severely autistic pupils.

The findings demonstrate classroom features that support the needs of pupils with severe autism, an area with limited prior research. Some findings support previous research and some adds new knowledge to our understanding of design for this population. The results provide empirical evidence for professionals involved in designing classrooms for pupils with severe autism.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is little used in research when analysing pupils’ needs, wants, and motivations related to food. To fill that gap, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the pupils’ suggestions for developing school meals in Finland from the viewpoint of Maslow's hierarchy.

Previous research on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, as well as pupils’ needs for school meals are briefly illustrated. The empirical qualitative data are collected from four comprehensive schools by using a sentence completion method.

The findings introduce pupils’ suggestions for developing school meals from the viewpoint of a plate model and its items linked with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Most of the suggestions are related to physiological needs; i.e. main course, salad, milk and bread. Also other needs, such as safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, and self‐actualization needs receive suggestions.

The practical implications are that the pupils have all the five levels of needs related to school meals which have to be taken into consideration when developing school meals within the curriculum.

The paper is useful for all those whose concern it is to develop school meals.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the notion of collaborative practice from theoretical and empirical bases.

The research analysed the concepts of collaboration, reflective practice and the primary task. It also examined the ways of working of 18 primary schools in Wales where the level of student attainment in national test scores was high, despite the pupils experiencing considerable social and economic disadvantage.

From the conceptual analysis, we contend that established models of joint working accord insufficient significance to the work task and that reflective practice is essentially a social process, which requires a task focus to be successful. In the schools we studied, there was a particular way of working which we have called “collaborative practice”. It contributed substantively to their success. Collaborative practice is highly developed and inclusive joint working on a clearly defined main task, or primary task, in a reflective way. There are thus three elements to collaborative practice: collaboration, reflective practice and focus on the primary task. All three elements must be present for collaborative practice to be successful.

The collaborative practice model provides a straightforward framework for analysing work in schools. It also gives a secure foundation on which to base successful practice in educational institutions. The collaborative practice model therefore has implications for research and practice in educational settings, for the practice of educational leaders and managers, and for the professional development of those who work in schools.

Recent alterations to the Key Stage 1 and 2 National Curriculum in England have located health education as a strand within a non‐statutory framework of Personal, Social, Health education and Citizenship. Starting from the premise that health education should adopt a health‐oriented approach, this paper finds the aforementioned health component lacking as a basis on which to operationalise primary school health education. Using medicines education as an example, a disease/risk factor‐oriented programme is critiqued and an alternative, health‐oriented perspective proposed. This alternative demonstrates how basing health education around every component of the personal, social and health education and citizenship framework can engender a health‐oriented approach to health education at Key Stages 1 and 2. Finally, two cautionary notes are made concerning the adoption of this approach.