A VERY special "special needs policy" Warning: May enrage

[nlondondad]

I recently came across a posting on the "Local Schools Network" discussion board. (The Local Schools Network was set up by a small group of people, the best known of whom is Fiona Miller. Although it carries postings from a number of different points of view it is fair to say the group are not keen on "Free Schools")

The posting concerns the SEN policy for a proposed Free School. Personally I thought it awful, but I would be interested in finding out what others thought. So here is the url:

tinyurl.com/LocalSchoolsNetwork

By all means have a look at the posting, and if you feel moved, comment on that discussion board, but if you do that could you leave a one line posting here as well so as to bump the thread, and let me see if posting here was worth doing.

[ouryve]

This will be a relief to you
schoolsimprovement.net/oldhams-phoenix-free-school-approval-is-withdrawn/

[nlondondad]

Thanks ouryve.

Did you have a look at the policy? What did you think of it?

[nennypops]

I like this bit:

Most special needs pupils have poor literacy skills. When they catch up in reading and writing, most of them will no longer have special needs.

Who knew that just teaching children to read and write cures autism?

This bid was always ludicrous and any fool but Gove and the promoters could see it was doomed to failure. I see that the process wasted at least 180,000. Think how much SEN support that could have provided in community schools.

[youarewinning]

Yeah fixing my DS writing will cure his SN. Of course his poor writing etc has nothing to so with lack of social imagination and social communication difficulties, compounded by poor fine motor skills and sensory difficulties

I knew I should have sent him to a free school to cure him

[ouryve]

What did I think? I think it would be lovely if wishful thinking could make my boys no longer disabled. People who believe that bollocks have no business being in education.

[moondog]

I'm not enrages.
They are absolutely right.
To0o many children are lazily labelled as having 'special needs' when what they really lack is proper teaching.
I have seen scores and scores of children who have been given up on before their 7th birthday because people haven't a clue how to teach them properly and frankly, can't be arsed to find out.

This does no favours whatsoever to the many children who really do have special needs, as people become weary and distrusting.

The statistics are extremely worrying. The % of kids with supposed SN climbs every year., More and more money is pumped into the system and still it grows.

I applaud the bravery and honesty of those who want to distinguish between poor teaching (which is rife) and real SN.

I would also automatically discount anything Fiona Millar says. She is an unspeakably loathsome woman who rides the bandwagon of right on egalitarianism whist ensuring she rides well above the wave of the proletariat.