Physical Senses

Sample Solution

Physical Senses The sensation of sound occurs when the vibrations from sounds enter our ear and cause little hair like structures, called hair cells, within our inner ear to move back and forth. The hair cells transform this movement into an electrical signal that the brain can use. How well a person can hear largely depend on how intact these hair cells are. Once lost, they don’t grow back, and this is no different for blind people. So blind people can’t physically hear well than others. Yet blind people often outperform sighted people in hearing tasks such as locating the source of sounds. The reason for this emerges when we look beyond the sensory organs, at what is happening with the brain, and how the sensory information is processed by it. In blind people, the visual cortex gets a bit “bored” without visual inputs and starts to “rewire” itself, becoming more responsive to information from the other remaining senses.

The EA (2010) clearly insists that a school must take action to enable or encourage a student with a disability to overcome a disadvantage. Schools must take effective action to help disabled students including SEN to meet their needs. Schools must also identify areas where activity by disabled students is disproportionately low compared to non-disabled students and take action to encourage them to participate in this activity. Hills (2012), states that it is never unlawful discrimination to treat a pupil with a disability more favourably than a non-disabled student pupil because of their disability.

‘A non-disabled student cannot bring a claim of discrimination against the school in this case. This is called ‘positive action’. It means a school can lawfully provide additional education, benefits, facilities or services, separate facilities, targeted resources or opportunities to benefit pupils with disabilities only, and your school can offer them on more favourable terms’. Hills (2012 p 27)

Reasonable Adjustments for SEN students schools

An important effect of the EA with regards to SEN students and provision is the requirement for schools to ‘advance equality of opportunity’ between pupils with disabilities and their non-disabled peers. Reasonable adjustments can be a good way of addressing this issue. Under the EA schools and education authorities have a duty to provide reasonable adjustments for all disabled students since 2002, originally under the DDA (1995) and from October 2010 under the EA. From September 2012 the reasonable adjustments duty for schools includes a duty to provide auxiliary aids and services for disabled pupils. The EA (2010) states that schools have a duty, which is now legal, to take positive steps to make sure that pupils with disabilities are able to participate in all aspects of school life. If schools fail to make reas