Today is International Day of Education, a global bid to highlight the importance of education as a fundamental human right. So it’s the perfect day to host a guest blog on the power of good eye care on education of children with learning disabilities! 

Offering her experiences is Tina Harvey OBE, who for over 3 decades, until August 2023, led the outstanding Perseid School in Merton and continues to provide leadership and consultancy for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) in a number of national forums and professional bodies. Over to Tina!

“12 years ago Perseid School became the first school to take part in what was then a small but ambitious project to bring a ‘one stop shop’ of eye care into special schools and make the case to government and the NHS that should be nationwide. 

I’m pleased to say that we achieved this aim at last, with a rollout due to start this year. However, as we all know, the devil is always in the detail, with concerns and cuts starting to emerge. By giving my testimony on what has worked I hope the government will listen.

First, some history. Back in 2013, our London school for pupils aged 3-19 with severe and profound and learning disabilities knew that a number of pupils had spectacles and vision needs, but little more detailed information. 

So when a charity called SeeAbility approached us to offer everything to all the children attending our school – the eye tests, the glasses dispensing, and a detailed report on what our pupils could see – we jumped at the chance. 

In the early days it was a bit of a shock. Although we had a good visiting input from the local authority visual impairment team it was for the smaller band of children already identified with severe visual impairment. 

What we hadn’t appreciated was the scale of pupils who had undiagnosed visual needs. In total, half of children had a sight problem. This huge unmet need was, for the most part, simply a need for glasses. This revelation was replicated by SeeAbility’s findings in other London special schools. 

Perseid and other schools could now showcase how a service could be established around the needs of children and families that was vastly more efficient, equitable and transformative through being available in the school setting. It was a true partnership between health and education.

Tina with Duchess of Edinburgh and pupils, celebrating World Sight Day at Perseid in October 2021

We, the educators, could inform the visiting eye care team on how to adapt their tests with the children we know so well, but also share information on what we’d observed about the way a child was using their vision. For families, they had at last found an eye care service that worked for them. Children were not missing their day in school to go to their local hospital eye clinic appointment. And for most families a visit to an optician was out of the question for their child.

In time, eye care just became part and parcel of the school day. It was not unusual, for example, to find the optometrist busy carrying out the test in corridors or in the playground, rather than the conventional assessment room. 

The dispensing in school and easily obtainable replacements and repairs meant a child was never without their glasses (and so access to education) for long. Hitherto unknown information on vision was featuring in day-to-day teaching plans and education, health and care plans.

This became a service that won awards, received VIP visits, was advocated for in parliament and evaluated by health policymakers as hugely successful. 

Current concerns

There is no question that the service to the school improved our pupils’ access to learning in an absolutely profound way. After all, 80% of a child’s learning is attributable to their eyesight. Perseid is one of the lucky schools in that it had a ‘gold standard’ service for over a decade, where staff and families have seen the benefits build up and up. 

However it looks as if now all of this good work is becoming unstuck, and the lessons we have learnt aren’t being taken on board. 

There are plans to water down what is on offer to schools and families, allowing for a 27% cut in funding, right on the cusp of a national rollout. 

These cuts could mean far fewer visits, huge gaps in provision across the country, children being without the glasses for longer, parents having to pay for specialist glasses, and hospitals still keeping children under their care (at many times the cost of the service). Many benefits of the service could be undermined.

Ultimately it is the children’s education that will suffer. I would strongly urge education policymakers to step in and advocate for the joined up service this could and should be. 

I for one won’t be giving up yet!”

Read more about the Perseid School and SeeAbility partnership.