C+ groups at SBO de Bonte Vlinder

Appropriate Education for doubly special students¹

The combination plus groups (C+) have been a part of the appropriate educational offer within SPPOH since the 2019-2020 school year. The C+ groups are specialized educational-youth support groups at SBO de Bonte Vlinder of school board De Haagse Scholen. The students who come to these groups are children with gifted abilities and specific educational and support needs.

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Referral C+ spot

It is a provision at the partnership level, which means that any school in the partnership can refer.

Since the re-new TLV route effective Jan. 1, 2024, the Bonte Vlinder no longer works with a sign-in list. This creates false expectations in terms of reserving a teaching spot within the C+ groups. The actual waiting list consists of children for whom a TLV SBO C+ has been granted by the partnership.

Placement in the C+ group requires a TLV SBO with an executed guidance procedure C+, which may look as follows:

1. The current elementary school identifies according to the regular internal care pathway that learning and or personality traits are appropriate for gifted students that exceed the capabilities of basic support.
2. The elementary school engages the SPPOH educational advisor and, where appropriate, other expertise to think along. Consider the Giftedness Support Center (begaafdheid@bontevlinder.nl).
3. It is clear to the elementary school and parents after deployment of support that the student’s educational and support needs exceed the capabilities of the current school. The elementary school organizes an MDO.
4. In this MDO, the advisor appropriate education of SPPOH is advised to involve the ambulatory service of SBO De Bonte Vlinder for:

• Arrangement: The primary school contacts the AB service Bonte Vlinder (ab@bontevlinder.nl). Appropriate implementation of the arrangement will be considered.
• TLV SBO- C+: The primary school contacts the AB service Bonte Vlinder (ab@bontevlinder.nl). When the MDO discusses guiding a student to the SBO C+ groups, the Ambulatory Supervisor of SBO De Bonte must Butterfly already involved in Phase 1: The Signaling Phase.
  In this way, the substantive advice of the Ambulatory Supervisor can be taken into account in Phase 2 when assessing the application. This prevents situations in which a Standard TLV SBO is issued instead of the desired TLV for this specific target group (SBO-C+). These students require a TLV SBO with additional group funding.
  The itinerant supervisor observes the child in the current group, interacts with the child and reads the file. The data obtained are described in an analysis that highlights the strengths and weaknesses in the student’s functioning and the student’s educational and support needs. The current school then organizes an MDO in which the ambulatory counselor shares the analysis. In this MDO it is decided whether the C+ group of the Bonte Vlinder can be the appropriate place for the student. A TLV SBO C+ is requested.

Pupils are only placed when there is a TLV SBO C+ and there is room in one of the two C+ groups. When involved in Phase 1, the Ambulatory Counselor can make a valuable contribution in managing expectations for parents and the student. The duty of care remains with the referring elementary school in the event that a SBO-C+ teaching place is not available.

Inclusion and dual special students

The evaluation of project giftedness revealed a valuable yield in a preventive sense. With the support of the itinerant service of SBO de Bonte Vlinder, several pupils who were on the application list for the C+ groups remained at their own school and a transfer was no longer necessary. This means that these students can be helped with the use of extra support at their own regular elementary school. Engage timely expertise regarding giftedness, incorporating teachers and school for promising intervention as early as possible. In this way, we can avoid a move to specialty groups.

¹“Dual exceptional (….) pupils have (characteristics of) very high intellectual capacities on the one hand and (characteristics of) learning or developmental problems on the other hand; this becomes visible in a developmental profile with intra-individual discrepancies between strengths and (relative) weaknesses, which may entail special psycho-educational needs; these profiles vary widely between individuals” (Burger-Veltmeijer, Kroesbergen, Minnaert & Hoogeveen (2018) The diagnostic criteria considered here are the students’ intellectual abilities, learning difficulties, developmental difficulties and neuropsychological functions (Burger-Veltmeijer et al., 2018).