RSTAQ: Profiles

Those of you who have come late to the role of Support Teacher Learning Difficulties as part of Special Education Services may have little idea how special education services came into being, as well as an understanding of the contributions of the personalities who shaped their development. Margaret Outridge is numbered among the few who has left a distinctive lasting mark on Special Education.

When Margaret Outridge retired from her position as Staff Inspector, Guidance and Special Education in December 1979 tributes flowed in from her many admirers. George Berkeley, then Assistant Director-General wrote the following:

Margaret - a ‘special educator’.
Margaret Outridge to me typifies the pioneer. All her life she has been that unusual creature - an innovator who didn’t claim to be one.

She is an original ‘woman’s libber’ - a person who won honours and recognition in her professional field not by demanding equality because of her sex but simply by demonstrating that she had more ability than her male competitors.

Margaret is short in stature but never lacking in the courage of her convictions. Her directness of response when combined with the range and colour of her vocabulary have been known to set anyone from a Director-General to a Messenger’s assistant back on his or her respective heels. Humbug has never been her favourite sweet.

Margaret has long demonstrated the characteristics that best suit the special educator – compassion without sloppiness, concern without over protectiveness and a belief that the handicapped child just as much the normal child needs to be challenged and stretched.

While maintaining her high level of professional and administrative competence over a long period time in a Head Office situation, Margaret Outridge has managed to retain her sense of humour and her down to earth approach to all things no matter how apparently serious the impending crisis or crises. She has been a breath of fresh air to many colleagues who are the saner for having known her.

I attended Brisbane State High from 1932-5 where I majored in hockey, athletics, and Latin. I did not achieve a magnificent Senior result, but I think the fact that I had music qualifications helped in my being awarded a scholarship to the Teachers’ College in Turbot Street. The current Director of Public Instruction was keen to expand music in the schools. After graduation, I served as a primary school teacher at Townsville West, Kin Kin Junction, Strathpine, East Brisbane, Gladstone and Nundah. In November, 1954, I was seconded to the Research and Guidance Branch to participate in a research exercise which compared various reading schemes. In 1955 I was attached to Rupert Cochrane, a guidance officer, who trained me in guidance techniques for primary school children. By that time I had an Arts degree and I was doing a post-graduate B.Ed. with the famous Schonell.

Rupert left the service at the end of 1955 and, for a couple of years, I was the sole primary guidance officer for the whole of Queensland. Various other primary school teachers were seconded in due course. I was responsible for selecting children for what we then called opportunity schools and classes. I visited these establishments regularly.

Mainly be train. I was a very humble officer then; it was only the upper echelons who travelled by plane. A trip to Mount Isa took days.

• Can I get this clear: up to that point, there were special schools, but no guidance officers as such?

There were many guidance officers who worked in the secondary schools largely as careers advisers. In the field of guidance services to primary and special schools, I was gradually joined by other teachers who had suitable qualifications. In effect, we were the school psychological services. We are talking about 1956 and successive years.

Not exclusively. The majority of my time was involved in assessing children from primary schools. Referrals came from School Health, doctors, parents, teachers and principals. These children were given a full psychological and educational assessment and in some cases were found to be suitable for special schools or classes.

A large percentage of those examined were bright little sparks who needed help with reading and spelling or sometimes with maths. Our department had no remedial services at that time. The precursor of the Schonell Centre, known as the Remedial Education Centre, was able to absorb a small number for assistance. So, every Friday afternoon when I was supposed to be writing reports to schools and writing up files, I took a group of six for help with reading and spelling. I really enjoyed teaching. Never mind that it meant I had to take paper work home.

Eventually two senior positions in guidance were created and I was appointed to one of these. My responsibilities included guidance services to primary schools, schools for the intellectually impaired, remedial services and services to those with speech and language disorders. It was quite a responsibility.

I was Senior Guidance Officer in the sixties and early seventies, Principal Guidance Officer for a period and then Staff Inspector in 1977. I had many extra-curricular activities, being involved with the Autistic Association, the Endeavour Foundation and a host of others. My activities in the seventies were dominated by meeting mania.

• Our teachers would be interested in the development of remedial services as such. How were you involved in that?

I have to say that it was my idea.. In the late fifties I assessed so many perceptually handicapped children that the need was obvious. I went to Bill Wood, our Director, and said I would like to start a remedial education service. That was mid 1959. He suggested a trial run, but he was so busy he forgot it was to be a trial and I didn’t remind him. He said I could pick a teacher, so I chose Edna Fury, and together we selected appropriate students from the Wynnum-Manly area. After a term of intervention I wrote a report on the outcomes which were most pleasing. It wasn’t only expert teaching that achieved results; it was the warmth and rapport which pervaded lessons. For the first time I saw joy on some of the small faces. Edna was a sweet-natured, gentle lady who loved every child. She was like Mother Earth.

Conditions were extremely primitive with no funding for materials, accommodation or furniture. With luck. Edna could use a staffroom or perhaps a spare desk or two on a veranda. These were pioneering days. Some materials were bought by parents and some we supplied out of our own pockets. Still, it was a beginning.

When Edna Fury retired, I was the guest speaker; and I still say to this day that if you gave Edna some felt pens and butcher’s paper, she would teach my cat to read!

From 1960 the service expanded slowly. Early remedial teachers were Carmen Smith, Glenda Page (Williams) and Doreen Nicolson. Once again, Bill Wood trusted me to select suitable teachers. It was marvellous. There were a few odd bods who let us down in later years but, by and large, we worked on the philosophy of trust and there was a huge response.

• That brings us to another point. How did you decide whether people would be okay for the job. Was it intuition?

It was largely intuitive, although I did have access to teaching records. I was more interested in willingness to learn new roles and a realistic attitude to exceptionality. ‘No bleeding hearts, please’, I used to say to my colleagues.

• Professionalism of the service, and I guess that was when I came in, about 1974, when we were privileged to do six months at Mt. Gravatt. We had the advantage of belonging to the Division of Special Education. Would you say something about that?

At that time, responsibility was not to the Principal of the school, but to the Division of Special Education. Some principals objected strenuously and some seemed comfortable with the situation. There was some professional jealousy and many thought special ed. was privileged - and we were. We had extremely talented people. I found it very difficult to sell the idea to principals that specialists in schools had multi-faceted responsibilities - to the students, their teachers, parents, principals, and to special ed. Liaison with class teachers is difficult to achieve - some felt threatened by the expertise of the specialist.

Before I retired there were moves afoot to achieve devolution of administrative and professional responsibility to Principals and I think this was inevitable.

That was my brainchild. George Berkeley, then Director of Special Ed., said that the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association were harassing the Minister about provision for remote areas. George said: ‘Margaret could you think of a solution?’ After some thought, I went back to see him and said that, in the light of the low incidence of handicaps in small schools, the generalist or all-rounder in special education was probably the best plan. I said I had this concept of cooperative teaching between specialists and class teachers. I said I was not sure it would work and I didn’t know what to call the teachers. Perhaps we could call them resource teachers, and we could get Federal funding for training courses at Mt Gravatt CAE. ‘Why not," he said. ‘Put it on paper.’ I wrote a role statement for the EOG and I must admit it was a huge ask for the teachers. But we can always hope. There is no problem about having high aspirations.

• How did that relationship then happen between the Department and the Colleges of Advanced Education? How were the courses formulated?

We had joint planning committees. As I was chair of the Academic Board of the Kindergarten College and very much involved with course profiles, I know the system. Most of the Mt Gravatt lecturers in Special Ed. were former guidance officers, so that meetings were most congenial and worthwhile. It was a busy life. I can recall on one occasion attending a Council meeting from 4.00 - 10.00 pm at BKTC, then chairing the Academic Board till 2.00 am when I left to have a brief sleep before catching a plane to Canberra for an all day meeting there. Life was never dull!

• What about the Schonell Centre? Did you / the Department have any connection there?

Before our remedial services began and also throughout the sixties, guidance officers referred children to the Centre. The Centre offered each year a term’s course in remedial teaching and two teachers were selected to attend this course every year. They were teachers like Edna Fury who came from special schools. In the sixties I ran short training courses for selected teachers at the Guidance Branch.

When these courses were superseded by those at Mt Gravatt, we maintained close professional relationships with the Schonell Centre.

I also had a close relationship with the Speech Therapy Department at UQ and facilitated the employment of our first therapists in 1965.

They were speech therapists who did the three-year Diploma in Speech Therapy. This later became a four year Bachelor’s Degree and now they are called speech or language pathologists. What’s in a name?

• In more recent times, there is this problem of separation. Some people say we need to get back to closer collaboration between guidance officers, STLDs and language pathologists.

Some specialist teachers I have met recently say they feel they do not have a sense of belonging. They miss the professional and personal support of others who work with exceptional children. Professional associations no doubt help, but collaborative sessions with regard to problem children can be most beneficial. In effect, multi-disciplinary conferences about the management of problem children.

• I went to a school earlier this year and I could see that one of the priorities was the Support a Reader Program administered by parents. It made me realise that STLDs are to fill a function within the mind of the principal. It seems the role is splintered off.

It certainly appears to be diluted. Parental involvement in reading is to be applauded. But there is no substitute for expert help with the problem readers. I can understand the principal think the STLD is just another useful body. But I cannot approve.

• Just going back to this point of trans / multidisciplinary, it seemed to me that we had a very good relationship between STLDs and GOs and it still works very well sometimes. How do you think that works best?

I come back to the notion of territorial rights. I gave a talk at a seminar once on ‘Who Gives Guidance?’ Everybody does. Some people are even paid to do it. If you are in the helping professions that is a duty. I see overlapping amongst professions. Joint seminars would be a splendid idea. And make sure teachers from the regular schools are there too. A learning experience. Regular case conferences would surely be beneficial.

• There has been a lot of talk about remediation and what it means. The term has actually started to come back into the picture. It was very ‘out’ for a while, but it is starting to come back. Do you have any thoughts about that, or diagnostic teaching or those sorts of terms?

I think they are pretty well synonymous. They all boil down to fitting the program to the needs of the child.

There’s a great deal of talk and written material about reading and spelling today. I would like the self-styled experts who write for newspapers to realise that proficiency in reading will always be difficult to achieve for some, and learning to spell even more so. I could name some professors I know and some high level administrators in Education Qld who cannot spell for nuts. And what’s more, they don’t care. Communication goes on. I am not saying good spelling is not important. I just think perfection is often unattainable.

If students in both primary and secondary schools could be encouraged to become ‘word and language conscious’ through graduated exercises in and knowledge of philology, benefits would accrue.

The terms are extremely broad. By and large I would use them to refer to a range of perceptual problems. I recall that in 1968 I was able to convince the powers that be that there should be special classes of six for severely affected children. The first class opened at Kelvin Grove with Marie Hutchinson as the inspired teacher.

• A lot of people are feeling that kids with learning disabilities are missing out. Do you have any thoughts about balance, and how it would work?

Once again, I think you come back to the idea of cooperation between class teacher and specialist. There is a place for withdrawal from the classroom for those who do not respond to intermittent help. The ‘hard-core’ cases who can ben identified need intensive care for a period. But they should rejoin the mainstream as soon as possible with ongoing help to both class teacher and student.

Those teachers who are prepared to accept help from the ‘experts’ are usually the confident and the capable. To tell the truth, I’ve no idea how you seduce some teachers. It is softly, softly, a very diplomatic and difficult exercise for the STLD.

I have always thought that inclusive education is philosophically delightful but often difficult to achieve. Rarely are there sufficient resources, both human and material, to achieve best results.

I am still one who values knowledge. If you want general practitioners to be deeply interested in special cases, give them knowledge. The courses you undertook at Mt Gravatt extended your horizons and I’m sure gave you confidence. The motto of my former secondary school was ‘scientia est potestas’ - knowledge is power. I still believe it, and, as long as I can, I will extend the frontiers of my knowledge.