To say my DS cant keep missing school because the school “cant cope”??

He hated every minute of it and knowing that it was temporary was the only thing that got him through. He had a tutor provided by the LA.

That was for a short period in Year 4, he's in Year 6 now and thriving in mainstream because he has the correct support with his EHCP. He is very social too.

The teacher would be in breach of the Teaching Standards and therefore contract.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a750668ed915d3c7d529cad/Teachers_standard_information.pdf

The teacher can expect Risk Assessment to take place which identifies risk and procedures to keep all children and themselves safe.

What a sad and narrow view.

Here we all are contributing to this depressing discussion on our phones. Technology that will have been contributed to by all those "disruptive" non typical people. The neurodiverse are everywhere, working and contributing and a lot of people need a bit of understanding when they're 9 years old.

Thankfully the law disagrees with you.

If a disabled child can't cope in mainstream, they need to be in a specialist school which unfortunately often takes far too much time. Just like it isn't the fault of schools, it also isn't the fault of parents or a disabled 9 year old that the system is shit and takes too long.

But every single child is entitled to an education and disabled children can't be discriminated against.

It is a complex issue but fortunately schools are no longer allowed to just not bother with children they consider "ineducable" (that is an actual term from the unenlightened past).

If you just write off a chunk of the population the "problem" is invisible in the mainstream schools but the kids still exist. There will have been special schools in your era (my friend's dad, who is of your generation, taught in one).

My mother, who is in her mid 80s, and had a miserable time at school (despite being a success in life generally) said to me apropos of nothing a while back "I'm glad they try to work out how children learn now. I never could learn anything and no-one noticed or cared."

Also as a teacher I have most fun with the "irregular" children.

A lot of teachers were pretty "irregular" themselves.

Autism is classed as a disability so why the quote marks?

I hope that you would be involving the parent at an earlier stage, so that she could work with you to see if there are triggers being missed/aspects of the specific classroom that are an issue. Would it not concern you if a child had attended your school for five years and then suddenly had extreme problems on joining your class? Would you not speak to last year's teacher and reach out to other colleagues who'd worked with the child for tips? I'm sure you would, but I think you and I have both encountered teaching colleagues who are unhelpfully "my way or the highway"...

Oh awesome, so you've found an academy that illegally off rolls any students who they think might damage their results? Or more likely they're discreet and don't tell you things you don't need to know.

They have to deliver the EHCP. It is a legal direction from the LA telling them what they have to do, it isn't a suggestion as to what to do. A school not following the EHCP is acting illegally. Pat of the problem is there seems to be no consequences for Heads that break the law.

If school has no resources, EHCP is a work of fiction. Regardless of what people would want to believe.

I once had a child whose EHCP had more support and interventions listed than hours the school was open for. Their social and emotional interventions alone left only 2 hours a week for academic lessons and that was in a mainstream school. Funding wasn’t enough for a full time 1:1

The situation is so tough.

Teachers want to teach everyone. We don’t just want to teach neurotypical children but the requirements of assessment and learning are so high, the curriculum so packed, and resourcing so low, that it’s difficult to fit everything in with a low needs class. Add in additional needs, which are increasing for sure, and we simply can’t do it all. Of course we want to but it’s impossible.

we need extra people to help with EHCP requirements with very limited and decreasing (in real terms) funding. We need more time to be able to give children like the OPs child real thought and consideration (I agree with pp that I would have asked parents to come in and get our heads together - I don’t like the idea that her child has plummeted in a new class, it could be developmental stage of course but I for one would be naval gazing on this one). We need the curriculum to be less ridiculously packed - literally I move my class from subject to topic to work like a military exercise because that’s the only way to fit it all in.

honestly, I wish all parents could come in and see a classroom at work. As a pp said, imagine dealing with your child (any child, not the op) having a tantrum or a meltdown or being upset or just having a bad day, like children do, and then imagine 29 others, all having their own needs. It’s a bloody brilliant rewarding wonderful job but my god it is like juggling fire for most of the time. It’s no wonder that sometimes, someone gets burned.

we need more money and more help to provide quality first teaching to all children. We cannot do it on the current basis with children who sit at the extremes of need. And it devastates me professionally to admit that.

I missed the comment but I can imagine how it went and I'm not at all surprised.

No. It is the LA who is ultimately responsible for ensuring the provision detailed, specified and quantified in EHCPs is provided. That duty is absolute and non-delegable. It can be enforced, including via JR if necessary. As LAs have been shown repeatedly in the courts, lack of funding, resources and/or staffing are not lawful excuses for breach of their duty.

It's the acceptable face of discrimination. Imagine if I said I'm sending peanut butter in my sandwiches to school because the kids with peanut "allergies" just haven't been well enough parented.

I have a child in my class who struggles to regulate himself. The rest of the class regularly get evacuated, can't have scissors and lose learning time in every single lesson.
School budgets are shot to pieces. This child has a 1:1 TA (which has helped a little) but a huge chunk of her wages come from the school budget. Which means fewer resources for the rest. The impact this 1 child has on the others is unbelievable. I would not want my child in that class. It is not about us not being bothered to help him, we are simply not able to give him what he needs and keep everyone else self.
OP, how will you feel if your child injures another child?

Local authorities closed the specialist provision about 40 years ago - when I was at school in the 60s and 70s I didn't know anyone with any kind of disability or additional needs because they simply weren't in mainstream. I know the numbers have risen enormously too but fact is you didn't have children with significant needs in mainstream school.

So this is partly a political issue. Like someone else said, write to your MPs.

The result is that LAs insist on trying mainstream until it becomes clear that it's non workable, by which time everyone is pretty traumatised, or parents force the LA's hand, often with costly professional advice and support. Then it often leads to a child being transported by taxi up to an hour away, in a different LA, because there is no suitable local provision.

I have known several young people who couldn't cope at mainstream who are now productive adults. The idea that a child who can't cope with the sensory demands of a mainstream classroom should simply be ejected from society - parents give up work, go on benefits to personally educate their child - is appalling, and atm it is not legal.

Every child is entitled to a full time education - that's the law.

We need to support parents like the OP, not demonise her. We all need to put pressure on schools, LAs to properly cater for children who aren't coping.

Yes, I am 53 and my friend's dad taught in a large boarding school for children with disabilities. Some attended my Guide troop (forward thinking for the 80s). Certainly some of them could have attended a mainstream school.

The school still exists but has 100 places for the whole of Kent and some children come from hundreds of miles away. They could fill each place 20 times over.

Yep.

My son has 2:1 TA support in mainstream. He does take up more time than a typical child would and that is always, always going to be the case because well, he is disabled and that is what disabilities do.

Parenting well doesn't make a child any less disabled or of needing extra support.

To be more accurate, local authorities acted on the legislative framework
brought in by the Conservative government. LA’s cannot choose to ignore central decision making.
The Conservative government created the legislative framework that made closure inevitable through key legislative changes.

The 1978 Warnock Report, Central Government passed the Education Act 1981. This established a national policy of "inclusion," legally mandating that children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) should be educated in mainstream ordinary schools wherever possible.
The Education Reform Act 1988 introduced the National Curriculum and local management of schools (LMS), which tied school budgets directly to pupil numbers. This business model, applied to the system, changed how education was funded, making standalone specialist provisions financially precarious.

Since, the Conservative government’s academy programme has meant LA’s cannot open any new schools and require academy trusts to do this. (Explained earlier in the thread). Labour are going to have to either continue systems in place or make bigger system and strategic change, all taking time. So yes, write to your MP to try and influence change.

I know the numbers have risen enormously too

Looking at percentages rather than raw numbers, while the percentage with EHCPs has increased, there hasn’t been such a big increase in the percentage of DC with SEN as some like to suggest. The most recent statistics released this year show 20.8% of pupils have SEN. In 2010, it was 20.9% or 21.1% (depending on which statistics you look at - I think it is a rounding issue adding up SA, SA+ and SSEN). In 2005, it was 18%. Going back several decades to the Warnock report in 1978, “some 20% appeared to need some form of special educational help. This may even be an underestimate…”

Why are some of you so opposed to the idea of properly resourced SEND hubs in mainstream? Surely that is exactly the kind of thing OPs child needs. Specialists on hand to tailor his education so he can access as much of mainstream as possible (which may change from time to time). He is accessing the main stream curriculum, it is just the behaviour and emotional needs/noise that appear to be the issue (asking for help, asking for help on time, managing his own sensory needs). With the right help surely he may well learn all of that in time.

I don't trust that they would be properly resourced and I don't trust that children who actually need greater specialist provision elsewhere wouldn't be just shoved there because it would be the cheaper option.

I'd also be concerned that children like my son who can manage well in mainstream would also end up shoved in there when it wouldn't be appropriate for him with less effort to make mainstream alone work with a good EHCP, again to try and save money.