Sid Parry

Sid Parry commenced teaching at Grovely State Primary School in 1959 and in 1966 moved to Guidance & Special Education Branch of the Education Department. His work as a primary guidance officer and his studies in the field of psychology developed his interest in language development and a concern for children who experienced great difficulty in learning to read.

He was heavily involved in setting up the first Learning Disability class at Kelvin Grove State School at a time when there were three "remedial teachers" in Queensland. He subsequently became the executive officer on the Van Leer Project where he followed his interest in the acquisition of oral and written language to the study of indigenous children and the development of culturally appropriate material.
Sid saw earlier than most that children with learning difficulties would benefit from the assistance of specially trained teachers to supplement their regular classroom experiences. Through his career as a Regional Guidance Officer and later as Principal Guidance Officer and Staff Inspector, Sid maintained a crusade to increase the number of specialist staff available. His insights into the need for an appropriate organisational structure and his advocacy on behalf of support staff were hallmarks of the leadership he provided. His support for professional associations was always without question.

Throughout his career in the Division of Special Education Sid always seemed to see the needs more clearly, was skilful in turning his dreams into reality, and provided the impetus for a catalogue of innovations that most others would not have attempted because of the potential difficulties.
I had the fortunate experience of working with Sid Parry for twenty-five years, in assisting in the pursuit of dreams and of enjoying the challenges that accompanied a substantial range of initiatives. Like many others I am richer from the experience and appreciative of the genuine concern for others that has always been Sid’s trademark.
Ian Smith
 
 Could you tell us about your early teaching career?
In 1959 after one year of training I commenced teaching at the Grovely Primary School. I subsequently taught at New Farm, Goodna, and Grovely again until 1965 when after several arguments with Sid Cliffe and Margaret Outridge about alternate placements for children who happened to be in my class I transferred into guidance.

What prompted you to go into Guidance? Was it that particular situation that pointed you in that direction or was it a more conscious decision?
It was more a conscious decision to study psychology and education as part of gaining an associate in education at the UQ necessary for progressing from a Class 2 to a Class 1 teacher after eight years of teaching service.

Where did your study take you?
Initially it was where it didn't take me. Being desperately short of secondary teachers during the expansion of the number of perimeter high schools in the mid-sixties, the Department was shanghai-ing primary teachers with university studies into secondary schools. I argued that I had a long-term goal of entering Guidance and by staying in Brisbane I would be able to complete psychology studies not available externally. I actually entered guidance before finishing my degree and was able to complete vocational and clinical psychology subjects available only as day subjects as part of guidance training. As one of the academically qualified psychologists in the Department at that time, I was well placed for a career in guidance. Subsequent post-graduate qualifications in psychology and in education also helped.

What training was involved for guidance?
Applicants for guidance were required to be graduates or near graduates with successful teaching experience. Secondary guidance trainees received a six week induction program and four months supervised practice in schools. Primary guidance officers were based in the George Street clinic, apart from forays into areas being considered for opportunity schools or classes. Margaret Outridge supervised clinical practice.

What was the main orientation of guidance in those days (i.e., the 60s)? Did you do formal assessment?
Standard practice in the clinic-based primary guidance service was administration of an individual intelligence test and achievement tests resulting in a parent interview and a written school report. We saw three children a day and were booked up for months in advance.

Secondary guidance focussed on educational planning and career guidance delivered as a school visitor with little involvement in student welfare programs and counselling. Secondary guidance assessment involved administration of a battery of intelligence and vocationally orientated tests to students in Years 8, 10 and 12, which were then used for educational and vocational guidance. These test results were often misused by school personnel and others and were replaced by a secondary guidance testing handbook of tests designed for specific purposes in school programs.

Could you tell me about positions you held in Special Education?
After entering secondary guidance in 1966,I moved into primary guidance for two years and worked with Margaret and Sadie Foster. During this period , I had administrative "oversight" of the state's three remedial teachers Edna Furey, Carmen Smith and Doreen Nicholson. I became senior research officer for the Van Leer project in 1969. In 1970, my new wife and I moved to Maryborough where I was appointed as regional guidance officer. In 1978, after an eight-month stint as Inspector of Special Schools, I returned to Brisbane as Principal Guidance Officer. Upon Margaret's retirement, I was appointed to a position which was known variously over the next decade as staff inspector, assistant director and associate director. I retired in July, 1991. The position grew from essentially guidance, remedial, distance education and speech responsibilities to encompass also departmental policies in welfare, and student well-being. With increasing regionalisation, day to day staffing moved to regions while central office focussed on resource acquisition through budget processes and innumerable departmental committees. Central office retained prime responsibility for negotiating with tertiary institutions appropriate programs for our specialist groups and for providing teacher numbers to maintain the courses.

Which is rather a big issue. A lot of learning support teachers feel their training or formation is not very good. There doesn't seem to be any agreement about the characteristics, qualities, body of knowledge required to be a good practitioner. Do you have anything to say about the relationship between public education and the universities and perhaps the sort of training teachers require as a preparation?
One of my biggest disappointments with the arrival of the Goss Labor regime was the lack of regard for quality of services. They spoke of standards but they were thinking of standards only as an average. They were not thinking about excellence, so centres of excellence such as the Centre for Learning and Adjustment Difficulties, the Support Services Resource Unit in Edward St., the Isolated Children's Special Education Unit, the LANDA project and others were cannibalised. The resources and systems developed by these centres of excellence were based on best practice and enabled us to provide teachers throughout the state with a consistent and coherent inservice experience. These centres set standards for the universities to achieve. In many instances academic staff were involved in establishing and maintaining programs at these centres.
The standards dissipated to the norm because that could be managed by principals in school based services. The people making these decisions had agendas other than the maintenance of quality support services.

The quality of education services provided by special education teachers was well regarded by tertiary institutions . They were consequently prepared to adapt their programs to meet identified and emerging departmental needs. A good example was the establishment of the communication teacher course which I personally negotiated with a lot of help from my friends.
We were in a strong position to negotiate with tertiary institutions because we controlled the numbers to make their courses viable. We also did our penance on faculty boards, and course advisory ,development and assessment boards. These were, however, mutually beneficial arrangements.

Assessment is always a contentious issues. A lot of people argue there is no longer a place for formal assessment, at least at the coal face. Do you have any thoughts about its place in the GO's or STLD's armoury?
Use of standardised tests is essentially for administrative purposes. Development assessment strategies are usually considered to be more appropriate for teaching-learning situations but I believe they too should be used for management purposes. A test is just a sample of behaviour. The person using the test needs to know how appropriate that sample is of whatever behaviour is under investigation and how appropriate that sample is to advance the subsequent teaching-learning process. Let's take a simple example. Suppose I wanted to gain a quick insight into the mathematics skills of a Year two child. I would hand him a teacup and ask him to tell me all about it in an informal way. Responses such as name, purpose, composition, colour, height, width, thickness, capacity, manufacture and comparisons with other containers would give an indication of concept development or at least be a starting point for further exploration. In the process of conversing about the teacup, I would be observing a range of behaviours and testing limits and relating my observations to those behaviours and skills necessary for successful classroom and personal interaction.

My approach to assessment of cognitive development relating to language and reading was based on insights gained as senior research officer with the Van Leer Project in 1969. This involved recording the oral language of a random sample of Brisbane children in six-monthly groups from one and a half years to five and a half years. The transcribed language passages were processed by a computer concordance program which listed each occurrence of each word alphabetically with the ten words each side of it in the string of language for each age group. We were able to establish the most common word usage and language patterns for use as a basis of teaching Standard English to Aboriginal children. These language patterns were incorporated into the Mt Gravatt reading series in the early seventies. Most importantly, however, this data provided insights into the developmental sequence for expression of thoughts into words in various linguistic contexts. Words used for differing purposes (namely use, description, quantity, comparison etc) emerged at various age levels. Younger children developed intonation sequences in their utterances to convey intention and meaning long before they actually put words in them. Categories of words appeared first in the predicate position in utterances in the sequence mentioned previously and subsequently emerged in the subject position in utterances in the same sequence approximately two years later. Using the half-year benchmarks we were able to place an individuals language development in context. Typically at preschool and Year 1 levels there was a five year spread of ability. The comparable language sample for Aboriginal children was restricted to the 41/2, 5 and 51/2year old age group to reflect the language they brought to the school situation.
We also sampled up to thirty-four aspects of cognitive behaviour of Aboriginal and white children. These included sub-tests of ITPA and WPPSI. Aboriginal children achieved the same level of qualitative cognitive development is white children but not as often.

We were able to relate the emergence of various concepts to parallel structures in language development. The compensatory language program developed for Aboriginal children was structured on Australian English for political reasons not on their own language as we would have preferred. Assimilation not cultural diversity was government policy.
I believe that assessment should be based on understanding the individual child's level of development across a broad number of areas and relating subsequent teaching to identified needs. This is not the same as having a prepared sequential learning program, administering a placement test and working sequentially through a list of activities and measuring achievement on progress through that list.

In structuring a teaching program we need to be aware of individual differences in children's interaction with the environment e.g. individual differences in various rates of perception affecting attention and causing anxiety in classroom situations, environmental influences on learning and the old scapegoat the home and family circumstances. I say this in spite of a distressingly large proportion of children placed at the then Gladstone Road Centre for Learning and Adjustment Difficulties with problems resulting from prolonged physical abuse. In other words, assessment should be based on knowing the population the child is representative of, the school and classroom environment including the alternative learning experience provided by support persons. The misplaced departmental focus on ascertainment linked to resourcing may well have severely restricted the guidance officers' capacity to provide diagnosis pertinent to children's learning experiences.

Returning to the question of professional development for specialist teachers, I am rather old fashioned and believe the administrators should know about the programs they administer. The establishment of the communication teacher course resulted from the need to tackle the language and reading related problems of the five year spread of abilities of children in preschool and entering Year one. After overcoming difficulties resulting from the speech pathologists perceived threat to their domain, we were able to negotiate a graduate diploma course with the now Griffith University which was able to incorporate much of the approach to cognitive development outlined previously.

These days people are thinking a lot about phonological awareness as one of the key factors that assist learners to become effective readers. Do you have some thoughts about this?
Returning to the Van Leer Project briefly, at that time it was believed that Aboriginal language was based on eleven consonants and three vowels which permitted a phonemic rate of eleven phonemes a second as compared with that of Australian English of 8-9 phonemes per second. Differentiation between certain sounds such as b and d was not required as these were permissible substitutes in Aboriginal English. As part of our assessment we administered audiometric tests and found a high incidence of conductive hearing loss which correlated highly with results on certain of our cognitive tests especially sound blending. The National Acoustic Laboratory in the late 1960's found that 12% in summer and 16% in winter of Brisbane preschool children suffered a conductive hearing loss sufficient to affect speech and language acquisition. The NAL was staffed with speech pathologists.

I have little doubt that many children entering the reading process have difficulties in hearing and discriminating amongst various phonemes and would find phoneme-grapheme correspondences confusing. For many children, the hearing problems not resolved during their first year of schooling and they do not consistently benefit from standard class teaching practices. I also have little doubt that teaching strategies stressing phonological awareness will benefit children from various cultural and linguistic backgrounds as well as those with perceptual difficulties.

It seems to be a sensible thing that the courses seem to be based on a variety of philosophies which is not bad in itself, but when you have to translate those to teaching practice then that is quite a big issue. And I suppose in my day there seemed to be some sort of coherency of approach so that people went out to work to apply the craft of being a remedial resource teacher or whatever, there was a basis for doing that, and you often had much in common with other people doing a similar job. Education administrators are responsible to the taxpayer. One million dollars buys the services of about twenty-five teachers and administrators are responsible for ensuring that money is well spent not for just spending it. The various special education courses around the state used to have a negotiated common element plus specialised areas which enabled support teachers to work as members of a school and district team. It also facilitated flexibility in staffing and opened promotional opportunities.

Those responsible, if anybody is, these days for the nature and quality of learning support programs in schools costing us taxpayers many, many millions of dollars should be answerable for the quality of negotiated tertiary preparation programs and the way in which the school based programs are resourced and delivered.

Do you have any thoughts about the qualities teachers need to have for working with students with disabilities?
I think teachers working with any child need to be capable of understanding individual needs. They need to understand how much they are likely to be able to achieve in the teaching of individual children, and they need to be able to understand how they will be able to provide for those needs and their own personal needs over a period of time. This type of understanding comes from experience but can be gained through appropriately structured educational support programs and administrative units.

So in a way you're saying it is an art and a craft at the same time. People have to follow structure but with sensitivity. They have to have a strong empathy and sensitivity towards the needs.
Yes. Furthermore, my concern would be for the well-being of the support teacher and how support systems are structured to maintain their well-being. This responsibility was previously undertaken by our district offices supported by material and professional resources developed by Marie Hutchinson, Jan Swannell, Ian Smith, Col McCowan, Joan Lane and their support systems.

What was your approach to management of special education?
Management of the diverse group of specialists around the state was a matter of orchestrating a number of programs proceeding simultaneously in parallel within the limit of achievable personnel and resources. I can remember wanting to establish a LANDA type project years ago but having to wait for the opportunity to give Margaret Toohey the two years preparation time to clarify the issues and prepare statements of intent which when proposed to the Departmental hierarchies were readily accepted and resourced accordingly. This was an incredible achievement for Margaret which, because of her unique skills, she virtually did by herself.

What about practices? Have there been any practices that you felt were very effective in your time and probably still have application today?
With great difficulty in the early eighties, we dragged primary guidance screaming out of clinics into schools. We went into classrooms and looked at the day to day experiences of children who had been referred for on problem or another. We looked at their day pads, at all the red marks and crosses, the inconsistency and lack of cohesion in the children's educational experience and focussed our efforts on the real sources of the problem. To answer the question, I would simply say to put yourself where the child in need is and see life from that perspective and use that as a starting point for structuring the learning environment.

One of the criticisms of inclusive practice was made by American educationalist Sharon Vaughn who argued that most strategies were just not feasible and sustainable in classrooms. How can this problem be dealt with?
With apologies to Sharon Vaughn because I am not familiar with her work, she sounds like an apologist for teachers and principals who are not capable of doing the jobs they're supposed to do.

In 1995-6, I was fortunate to be the Australian Commonwealth Relations Trust Fellow based at the University of London researching causes of alienation from schooling by children, teachers and administrative staff. Departmental structures placed many unreasonable demands on schools and not entirely as a consequence principals placed unreasonable demands on teachers through their own administrative idiosyncracies and practices which affected teachers capacities to manage their classroom practices efficiently. Teachers can use inclusive practices in classrooms if appropriate support structures are in place.

Do you have a few reflections about the things you feel most proud of during your career?
On several occasions during my time in the Department, we were able to resist overtures to place support personnel on school staffs. Our reasons for a Special Education administrative responsibility were basically to maintain specialist competencies and equity across schools and regions. We demonstrated that through inservice education programs, the development of classroom and professional development resources and the effectiveness of the network of district support services that quality services could be provided to children with special needs in regular classrooms with appropriate support to parents, teachers and school administrators.

The Goss Labor government and its Departmental minders were not susceptible to the same arguments as the previous government and, following Labor practices in other states, not expectedly abolished specialist divisions and associated infrastructures placing specialist teachers on school staffs.

The maintenance of specialist skills became vulnerable under these arrangements so we had adopted a long-term strategy of supporting the formation of professional associations in the special education and guidance areas. We provided opportunities for their emergence as significant forces in pre-service, inservice and professional resources areas and as well as in, to a lesser degree, industrial and administrative concerns. I am proud to have able to support these associations during their formative years although much of this support was indirect and at arms length so that we could be seen to funding activities impartially.

Career-wise I am pleased to have been able to establish close professional relationships with those who worked with me in the Department and especially those within the Division of Special Education. I refer to Joan Lane and the ICSEU people, Ian Smith and Col McCowan in Guidance and Support Services, the Regional and District Special Education personnel, John Holbeck at CLAD, staff at various universities with whom we negotiated various post graduate programs.
I am pleased to have been President of the Institute of Senior Education Officers, to be an honorary member of the Queensland Guidance and Counselling Association and to have received the P.A.C.T. Child Protection Award in 1991.

Post-Department, whilst consulting at the Queensland Tertiary Education Centre, I revised and implemented a Special Consideration of Disadvantage Process and was largely responsible for establishing a system of tertiary entrance based on demonstrated personal competencies for those without formal academic qualifications and which is now used by eleven of the fourteen tertiary institutions associated with Q.T.A.C..

I regret not being around for the completion of some projects such as the natural extension of ICSEU's IMIS to the internet and a Departmental cooperative resource network and ensuring that the LANDA developmental assessment philosophy permeated guidance, learning support and classroom practices.