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Consultation on the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004
Draft Code of Practice
Reference: Additional Support Needs - 02
ANNEX F
BENEFITS AND FEATURES OF MEDIATION
The following benefits and features of mediation have been provided by a range of mediation service providers.
Benefits
Mediation has many benefits for parents, educators, authorities and young people:
- Families can start to build or rebuild a positive relationship with the school or authority, into the future, leading to co-operation in making arrangements for the child or young person.
- Conflicts that arise out of misunderstandings or lack of shared information can be resolved by mediators helping parents, educators and authority officials to communicate directly with one another.
- Additional support for learning issues are complex and can best be solved in a workable way by finding solutions together.
- Mediation tends to be faster and less costly than adversarial approaches such as Tribunals hearings and court proceedings.
- Mediation results in agreements that participants find satisfactory and experience shows that people tend to follow the terms of their mediated agreements.
- Parents and young people cannot be forced to participate in mediation.
- Mediation is free for young people and parents.
- Using mediation does not affect parents' or young people's legal rights to other methods of disagreement resolution such as dispute resolution or Tribunals.
- The mediation process can address ways of allow the voice of the child to be heard and understood in the decision making process.
Features
It is voluntary. It is important that the parties come to the table in good faith, with a will to settle the dispute. The dispute will only be resolved in mediation if the parties voluntarily decide on a way forward which is mutually acceptable.
It is confidential. This means that issues and ideas for resolution of the conflict can be discussed during the mediation without fear of them being used against the parties in the future, if no agreement is reached.
Mediations are easily arranged. Usually it only takes a few phone calls for a session to be set up at a neutral venue. It is essential that all the people who have decision making responsibility about the dispute are available.
Mediations tend to be informal. The mediator is trained to make the meetings as accessible as possible for everyone involved.
It is balanced so that everyone gets at fair chance to be heard. Mediation provides an opportunity for all the parties to say what is important to them and to hear the other party's perspectives.
The parties control the agenda and outcomes. The mediation approach is problem-solving rather than adversarial so creative options for settlement are often the result. In mediation, the parties speak for themselves and make their own decisions.
Mediation Case Study - Paul's Story
Mr & Mrs Jacks have a son Paul aged 14 who has been diagnosed with Aspergers. The transition from his local mainstream primary school to secondary proved very difficult, and increasingly frustrated by what they saw as the school's inability to meet Paul's needs, the Jacks withdrew him from school and educated him themselves at home. Although the home education programme was working out very well, the Jacks felt that Paul was socially isolated from his peers and would benefit from returning to school. They identified an independent special school outwith the local authority area which they believed would meet Paul's needs. The local education authority however, took the view that Paul's needs could be met fully at his local school and he should return there. These positions had become increasingly entrenched over time, and a lot of distrust and negative feelings had been expressed. When asked to get involved by the education authority, the independent mediator explored the issues fully with the parties. From the start of the face-to-face mediation meeting it was clear that neither the Jacks nor the education authority were able to agree to each other's suggested outcomes. What was common to all parties, however, was that the home education programme was of a high standard and was meeting Paul's educational needs. Building from this shared positive concept, the parties eventually decided in mediation that the home education programme would continue, and that an additional support needs teacher from Paul's local school with autism specific training would begin some outreach support work. The long-term potential goal would be for Paul to attend his local school on a part-time basis, if and when he and his parents were comfortable with this step. |
Mediation Case Study - Lorna's Story
Lorna Stewart is 8 years old. She has significant physical disabilities and moderate learning difficulties, and attends her local primary school with auxiliary support. Her mother Cathy is generally pleased with the placement, but feels she had to struggle at the beginning (P1) to have her daughter appropriately included and supported at school. She is also becoming anxious about the increasing gap between Lorna's learning abilities and those of her peers. Cathy insists on speaking to the class teacher daily about Lorna's progress. The teacher finds this difficult to manage given that there are 20 other children in the class. In an effort to support her staff, the head teacher has asked Cathy to stop the daily meetings. Cathy has taken offence at this and has complained about the head teacher's attitude to various people in the education authority including the Director of Education. The mediator explored the issues with the parties and then brought them together in a mediation session. Cathy explained that she felt excluded from her daughter's school and needed to have regular communication about Lorna's progress to feel confident that her daughter's needs were being met. She was able to acknowledge however that the teacher found it difficult to spend time with her on a daily basis.After long and rigorous discussions, the parties agreed that daily information would be written in a home school diary and the classroom auxiliary would take responsibility for this, with guidance from the teacher. Cathy and the teacher would meet up once a month for one hour, and if Cathy had any problems she wished to discuss she could telephone the head teacher. Everyone agreed that they would meet again to review these arrangements after 6 months. |
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements
Mediation service managers should be responsible for ensuring that evaluation takes place and that the findings are used to improve services. School personnel, authority officials, parents, young people, and mediators are all both stakeholders and informants. They provide information and, to differing degrees, use evaluation information to make decisions about future courses of action.
A qualitative evaluation process may be more appropriate for mediation. Some performance issues that are critical to the varying purposes of mediation evaluation are listed below:
Performance Areas | Key Performance Issues |
Service Efficiency | Cost to participants
Time from referral to resolution |
Service Effectiveness | Outcomes of mediation
Participant satisfaction with mediated outcomes
Durability of mediated outcomes
Impact on relationship between participants
Impartiality of the service |
Mediation Process | Appropriateness & usefulness
Preparation process and materials
Fairness (opportunity to tell story, feeling understood, respectful treatment, control over outcomes) |
Mediator Performance | Skills of the mediator
Knowledge of the mediator
Impartiality of the mediator |
Further information
The Scottish Mediation Network has developed a generally accepted set of Guidelines for the Practice of mediation. These Guidelines are intended to form a baseline for the conduct of all forms of mediation in Scotland.
The Govan Law Centre Education Law Unit has produced a Code of Additional Support Needs Mediation Practice based on the guidelines and Yorkshire and Humberside SEN Mediation's Code of Practice for Mediators.
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