SEND - children’s needs to be reassessed from year 6 2029?

I don't know of any local secondary schools that don't have extra help for year 7s who are a bit behind on reading. It saves time and money in the long run, after all.

And this sounds awfully like as long as your kids are getting what benefits them, you don't really care about anyone else?
That's how a lot of parents feel - they start to care when their child falls on the wrong side of the eligibility threshold.
In a few months if someone turns round and says sorry we can't do those interventions for reading with your daughter now, her needs just aren't high enough and she's coping OK, not enough money to do stuff for kids who are coping .... Suddenly you might feel a bit differently.

You are lucky then. In most schools now there is no resource available for interventions with children a little behind because all the resource is going elsewhere

I think this post highlights how SEN is so misunderstood even among some working in education.

You say “TAs are no longer free to do reading interventions and any other mainstream interventions for those children that need them as they are all deployed with SEN children.”

Those DC needing reading interventions and other interventions have SEN. They may not have EHCPs, not all pupils with SEN do, but they meet the legal definition of having SEN.

You say “We have identified what is needed for the mainstream children but I cannot physically fit it all in to the day as the main priority is fulfilling our obligations and more importantly the medical needs of the 2 EHCP children.”

Yet those 2 DC with EHCPs are still ‘mainstream children’ in that they are in a mainstream school. ‘Mainstream children’ can still have SEN and EHCPs.

Every single other politician has told the SNP idiots that this is devastating Scottish education but they just bury their heads in the sand. People that haven’t been personally affected think it’s just not happening. Someone will be killed by a child that everyone warned about. Then there will be an inquest and then questions might be posed. Until then we’re all just waiting, praying its not our kid.

One of my friends has become a teaching assistant in her child’s school purely in the hope that if the child in her child’s class that’s prone to violent outbursts lashes out, she has a chance of protecting her child. It’s truly madness.

TAs are no longer free to do reading interventions and any other mainstream interventions for those children that need them as they are all deployed with SEN children. I have an interventions list that runs to 2 pages long just for the 2 EHCP in my class. I also have another list of children (approx 10 mainstream children) that are looking unlikely to reach age related expectations this year in either maths, reading or both that I am supposed to support and run interventions for. We have identified what is needed for the mainstream children but I cannot physically fit it all in to the day as the main priority is fulfilling our obligations and more importantly the medical needs of the 2 EHCP children. There is no money to employ anyone else. I am leaving and there are currently no plans to replace me. The likelihood is that a TA from another class will have to take on the EHCP interventions and take care of the medical needs but there will be no physical TA in the classroom at all with the children once I am gone.

Teacher training for SENd is (or certainly was) woeful.

I completed a PGCE over a full academic year, and we used 2 of the days to go into SENd schools, in just one class so only one set of needs per day, so someone could basically say “here are some disabled kids.”

I vividly remember being told “if you’ve met a child with autism, you’ve met one child with autism” and that “real authority doesn’t need volume.”

That was it. How that would ever have equipped someone for teaching the range of
needs even a mainstream class has, is absolutely beyond me.

How much training do you think can be delivered in 2 days? It won’t cover much. It won’t cover the range of SEN presentations. DS1&3’s EOTAS/EOTIS packages contain more just for their individual needs.

This is so bad. I’m surprised it’s not causing more backlash. I suppose people feel stuck with what politicians put on their dc.

Listen to yourself. "Two full days of training". Is that what you think it takes to be trained to teach children with SEN?

and in the new scenario do you really believe that TA's will be free to do reading intervention with children when the class has children in it that would otherwise be in a specialist school?

That's not what's happening though. Maybe the good readers aren't getting their special trips to the play but she is getting her reading intervention AND he's in an expensive school.
We don't want him in an expensive school by the way but no other school will take him.

It won't be bought 'per teacher'. A school will pay perhaps 10,000 for trainers to come to their school and maybe do two full days of training with 30 staff in a group. Economies of scale.

How about the scenario that's happening right now for many kids, where there's no money for the TA for the reading intervention for kids like your daughter who needs a bit of catching up with reading.... Because so much is going on your son's 100k a year fees?

Can you tell that to every parent who comes on MN to ask how to get SENd children from their child’s class?

They’re not wrong, btw, but accepting isn’t the norm.

Happy, no. Accepting yes, if that's what our nation can afford

DD1 got very good at football! I remember her going to a soft play with a football area. She asked some mainstream boys if she could join in. They sneered and said no. She obviously had SN and was a bit wobbly. One of them missed the ball and it started to roll away. She booted it over his shoulder. He stared at her and said "you can play...."

This is exactly what’s happening in Scotland. A few years further down the inclusion pathway and violent attacks on
pupils and teachers have risen exponentially, anxiety is soaring and educational standards are plummeting. It’s all coming your way. We are the canary in the coal mine and it isn’t pretty at all.

My DS is in a boy heavy and older teen heavy SEMH school. We want him in a resourced provision in a mainstream school. An EP has said he would be "more vulnerable" in mainstream. We disagree for exactly this reason - the pupil profile. There are many more risky pupils in his current school.

Sorry - I was not expecting humour on a SEN thread in AIBU!

My LA does a consultation with taxpayers every year about priorities for spending. IIRC, they are asked to vote for their top five choices in ranked order. The last consultation, the top priority (as per 55% of respondents) was spending on helping children achieve their potential!

It’s definitely unevenly weighted, and the impact of boys strength and aggression is already much higher. Our son is 9, but in age 13-14 clothes, and even I’d admit that when he “goes,” he really is a force to be reckoned with. He’s already removed from the environment for the wellbeing of the other kids when he’s in meltdown at school, I dread to think what they’d be able to do (or not do!) with him in mainstream.

Our KS4 boys in the PRU were another level. We had 4 girls out of a cohort of 85, and they were more likely to abscond, bring in substances, break things, or need some sort of pastoral/welfare support. The boys used to take bets on how many grown men it would take to restrain them, like it was a game, and bring in weapons.

I’d imagine, the packages of support should look different because their needs present differently, particularly as they have at least included inward presentations.

SEN support, EHCPs and SS placements already has a sex issue.

At a population level, males are far more likely to be at a school SEN Support level. The gap is narrower in some types of settings, such as secondary state schools, than other types, but there is still a gap. Males are far more likely to have an EHCP. Most SS are boy heavy to one extent or another. There are far fewer single sex special/specialist schools for girls than there are single sex special/specialist schools for boys.

Ehcps are already awared to about 70% male. My friend daughter needed an autism specialist school and none took girls until year 3 so she just had to wait (i believe there are a couple that take girls now but parents have to weigh up the boy heavy envonment and risk of sexual assault. Its one of the eotas drivers noone dares say out loud.

The new suggested special provision packages do actually include an inward presentation though.

(I'm not suggesting all boys with sen sexually assault prople btw! Its a risk in mainstream too but there is more balance in numbers)

DD1 started special school in 2009. Special schools had 75% boys then. I looked in to the statistics and she represented 1 in 250 as a 4 year old girl in special school.

71-73% of EHCPs currently go to boys.

So it's already far less likely that you'll find girls in special school.