AIBU to think not every school issue should be labelled SEN?

I agree to a certain extent with some of it. However I am always surprised on mumsnet the amount of times I’ve seen posts about parents with a child who is disruptive who ‘refuse a diagnosis/ehcp/place at a special school’ and leave everyone suffering- its generally the other way round! Many parents are desperate for extra support and Sen school places.

I agree with this.

Absolutely fine to identify different skill sets and provide a more appropriate route through education, though our system isn't well set up for this.

But what we can't do is to chuck all of the lower achieving children into the "not able" basket without checking if there is a barrier to learning.

I have a child with SEN, who is also very bright. If we hadn't identified the SEN needs then she'd be allowed to underacheive and probably eventually misbehave through boredom. But by understanding her needs, adjustments can be put in place to enable her to reach her potential. It is from her SEN assessments that higher expectations have been set.

Written off or put into education that they actually want to do, makes sense to them, that they can thrive in? It doesn't really matter why. And OP is right, some people just are not able. People come with all different skill sets

OP i think nits worse than just everything being put down to SEN , it's also the problem of once a child is SEN, they're sort of seen as unable to do things that they're probably capable of. Another thread is running at that moment, a chil who goes to special school is walking to school, most posts seem to suggest that because he has SEN somehow is less able to walk to school than a child without Sen. ( not through physical disability).

Other posts have rightly highlighted the pathology of normal human behaviour, an example i noticed recently on bus routes around Poole, there are announcements on the bus to keep the noise down be cause loud noises can 'cause anxiety ' in some people!! Erm no, keep the fucking noise down because it's rude and inconsiderate to expose people to your noise. Its almost like the bus company didn't think it's worth making an announcement like that just due to needing people to respect basic manners, but it had to be couched in terms of MH or pathology.

I have two myself with sen needs and I whole heartly agree with this.

There's barely any room in the curriculum to discover whether a child has non-academic abilities. How would you know that a child in year 4 is low achieving beyond academics if that's what they spend, maybe, 80% of classroom time on?

And if that's what they spend their time on, won't it be miserable if they are written off as being "low academically achieving", instead of discovering that they are dyslexic or have ADHD?

Friends who have been diagnosed with AuDHD in the last decade or so presumably had it at school. But it was rare, 20/30 years ago, to have behaviour like you see now. And 99% of parents would never have expected schools to potty train their child/put up with them being violent/think it wasn't their job to make sure they could sit quietly and listen.

You're talking about children who are low achieving academically. Not low achieving overall. But then of course we have cut out any other type of learning and those that in the 60s would have left school atx15 and gone into the world of work, or who would have gone to a technical college or similar now do not have those chances at 15 or so

What SEN training & experience do you have OP?

Low attainment is worth investigating in some way for SEN, whether that's to identify a specific barrier to learning (e.g. dyslexia) or to identify approaches that might work for a child. That investigation doesn't always need to be a formal assessment. Teachers really getting to know a child is an investigation of sorts. They can then follow up with a more formal assessment if there's something that seems worth pursuing. It can be much easier to identify things early when a child has one or two teachers in primary school who really get to know them.

Whilst it isn't the case for all low achieving pupils, being low achieving must be incredibly frustrating at times and for some children. Potentially even moreso for children who are bright in one area, but who have something that doesn't click. Imagine spending every day learning to read, but finding it really hard. So hard that earn everyone else around you can read, you really can't. You might get to secondary school and still be functionally illiterate, but constantly presented with text to read. You would probably get bored because you can't fully engage with lessons. Wouldn't your behaviour suffer?

Agree. I’m amazed that so many people think OP is not being unreasonable.

That's excessive. Children cry. Adults cry. It's normal.

We are pathologising normal childhood behaviours. Across a year group children can be a year apart in age, they aren't all going to behave the same, and fit into a perfect mould.

Completely missing the point but how does toughened safety glass break because the door was slammed?

Lots of children with SEN don’t have behavioural problems, and as a result often take lower priority for their needs to be met, and I strongly suspect eventually results to school refusal.
Lots of well behaved children completely miss out of getting a SEN diagnosis, these kids may really struggle academically and stand no chance of reaching their full potential, because they are written off at a lower baseline early on, and no one is interested in pursuing dyslexia / dyscalculia /processing difficulties /adhd / ASD/ etc because although the child / young person is struggling academically they are not being disruptive or causing any issues, so they fly under the radar until late teenage / early adult years and they end up with crippling anxiety or struggle to get a job that they are quite capable of doing but society has decided they are incapable because of their poor academic attainment.
A few, kids are spoilt to the core, and others just have ‘can’t be arsed to parent, because it’s bloody hard work’ parents, but their parents flatly refuse to accept its piss poor parenting that has caused the behaviour, and are convinced the kid has some type of SEN going on and continue to use SEN as an excuse when the fruit of their loins becomes an antisocial delinquent teenager, causing merry hell, making life unbearable for those unfortunate enough to live near them.
Then there are the amazing other parents who are exhausted by fighting tooth and nail to get their child the help they need, trying their hardest to raise decent people, but being met with increasingly insurmountable obstacles every step of the way. Meanwhile schools are also battling against tighter budgets.
maybe, just maybe the powers that be will realise education can never ever be a ‘one size fits all’. But hey Tony Blair was inclusion, inclusion, inclusion at huge detriment to many children and their families.
Then again the vast majority of our prison population and juvenile detention centres are full of adults and kids with poor education attainment and or have come from very chaotic home lives, which suggests there is still significant under diagnosis of SEN.

A child struggles with something, immediately we’re looking at what additional provision they might need

And that's not wrong. A child struggles with something, we think about what support they may need - that's the job of all teachers etc, to adapt to children's individual needs, within what is practical in a busy classroom.

However, I do think that so many conflicting demands are placed on children, that life can be overwhelming for lots of them and what we are seeing in some cases is a stress response. They are constantly 'doing' - school, homework, wraparound care, clubs, screens, playdates, sports. Parents are super busy juggling work, school runs and all those clubs. Children don't have time to just be children, and don't get as much connection time with parents to help ground them - through no fault of the parents who are trying their best.

I'm not saying that any of this causes ADHD, it can't - its an inherited, likely autoimmune condition. But that it can cause symptoms which parallel it - poor focus, challenges regulating emotions, reduced inhibition. But whether it's the full or parallel symptoms, these children still need adjustment and support.

I'm a primary school teacher and I feel most behaviour issues are down to some type of SEND. Pointing the finger at poor parenting doesn't help as, after many years of observation, I also suspect that many of the parents of children with challenging behaviour or difficulties attending school probably have some kind of undiagnosed SEND themselves.

There are some kids who behave a certain way because of adverse experiences or because they genuinely are just little so and sos but I do believe SEN is at the root of most difficulties and the school environment just doesn't suit a lot of children. Looking back on my own childhood, the boy we named "Naughty Michael" or the one we thought was stupid because he couldn't read or write or the child who cried all the time clearly had some kind of undiagnosed additional need.

Sen hasn't particularly risen over the last few years as much as people try and claim it has.

I'm confused by your post. You complain too many people treat everything as send when it isn't, but then go on to complain a disruptive child who might have adhd isnt getting referred for diagnosis or allowed in the sen hub by parents.

This post is total nonsense. It’s really really hard to get a SEND diagnosis and for your kid’s teacher to take any concerns seriously before diagnosis.

As a parent of a child who is almost certainly autistic but I’m battling with the GP for a referral for an assessment, I would like to echo this. I think most SEN parents’ experience is that of being desperate for a diagnosis and support, rather than the other way round.