See this article:
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/120767/pdf/
It says 1.7 million children have difficulties with talking and understanding language. 7.6% of children have a long term developmental language disorder - that is nearly 1 million children or nearly 2 in every classroom. These children should form the SLCN group, but statistics indicate 400,000 are unidentified.
Some children, probably mainly boys externalise the difficulties, they have in the classroom in challenging behaviour. Girls tend to internalise their difficulties in depression and anxiety. See Melanie Cross’ book “Children with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, with Communication Problems. There is always a Reason.”
Speech and language therapists know, the more severe the language problems, the worse the behaviour is likely to be. As the article above says, 60% of young offenders have language difficulties. Incidence of mental health problems in adulthood is double.
DD1 was in a language unit from age 4 - 10, and specialist speech and language schools from 10 - 16 for a profound language disorder. Children had to have a statement then, even to be considered for special provision - so as a minimum an assessment by an educational psychologist and speech and language therapist. To be offered a place at a specialist school, children had to undergo the school’s own rigorous assessments by a speech and language therapist, OT, possibly a physio and a specialist language teacher. I met hundreds of parents, and many were articulate, intelligent, no nonsense people, because they had to be to get their child there by tribunal - and they had to have the means to pay upto £45,000 for that tribunal. Other children were placed there by the LA, because even they recognised how severe the child’s problems were.
Speech and language therapists used to tell me, there would be children struggling in mainstream like DD1, because they hadn’t been identified - yet DD1 couldn’t understand a teacher, read the material or understand what she should be doing in a mainstream primary, never mind secondary where she’d have been even more lost, as the complex abstract language increased, which she has never been able to understand. Children with a receptive (comprehension) language disorder have impaired concept formation.
The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists say in this publication, 1.5 million people have learning disabilities in the UK
https://www.rcslt.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RCSLT-Learning-Disabilities-position-paper-2023.pdf
While some people with learning disabilities may have parents themselves with learning disabilities themselves, many parents of normal intelligence have children with learning disabilities - look at Down’s syndrome, which can be a spontaneous occurrence, as can other genetic conditions like Fragile X, Angelman’s syndrome, etc.
DD1 has a degenerative condition and went from age 16 to specialist schools, which had the majority of children with learning disabilities. I have never met parents there either, who I thought were below average intelligence. In fact, many of them knew as much about their children’s conditions, as their consultants.
The fact is, some inborn conditions are just as likely to occur in children of graduate professional parents, as parents of “below average intelligence.” Most lay people who met DD1 up to age 16, didn’t realise there was anything wrong with her, because she came across as intelligent, warm, kind and very funny. I wonder how teachers, never mind other parents can confidently say, what children have SEN due to poor parenting, as opposed say to an inborn severe language disorder, including impaired concept formation - given 400,000 speech and language children are unidentified?