what the feck are we to do about he lack of specialist schools?

[mercurymaze]

in the news this week so many kids without places and mainstream school can't cope.

any suggestions apart from the bleeding obvious?

Inclusion is an idealist pipe dream for many of the kids who don't even get specialist or LA special school places. And you can't expect parent partnership / SENDIASS the any use as I attended a organised by ours pushing places in units at the local, usually crap, secondaries.

And from recent experience, the LA itself isn't necessarily the obstructive party.

Even when there are special schools they’re severely underfunded. My youngest brother has severe CP and wouldn’t cope in mainstream school. He’s at the only special school in our county and their hydrotherapy pool has been broken for a year but they don’t have the funds to fix it, which is a shame because he benefits massively from hydrotherapy.

inclusion = exclusion in most cases

.

The very few schools there are seem to have a hard time with Ofsted, I wonder if there's a push to close as many as possible?

Specialist units within mainstream would help. And extra training for ALL staff in mainstream schools.

My hours are split between 3 children. All 3 are on waiting lists for specialist schools. I am doing everything I can, school are very good at trying to find the money if I need something but realistically there are resources these children would benefit from that we can't afford and the level of needs we are having to deal with could really do with a lot more training. Without blowing my own trumpet too much, I am bloody good, I am more trained than a lot of 1:1s are and get a lot more support than most do but I am far from a specialist (you wouldn't get one for what I'm paid) and I still have to work with teachers who don't get it and work with the resources I have.

There needs to be training for all staff btw not just the 1:1s. Because every adult in school needs to know the basics. For example some children really need space and no interaction when they are feeling overloaded, I have to explain this at least twice a week to staff who are trying to be nice by saying hello to a child when they pass them (of course if we could afford to build an actual room for them to cool down in not a little bit on the side of a corridor that would help)

I tell you what they do send them to mainstream school pretending all is ok. Sadly yeah, this happens a lot. The amount of work to get any support is ridiculous.

It's ridiculous. I have dc in mainstream who would have been in sn schools if they'd been born 30 years earlier. Although at least 2 of them would have died at birth or as babies if they had been born 30 years earlier. It's great that these children are surviving when they wouldn't have before but we need to help them thrive at school as well.

So many mainstream schools do not have the facilities to cope with kids with sn it's a terrible situation.
My son has sn and we have had to jump through hoops to get an ehcp, we are however very lucky that we have managed to get him into a private specialist provision, he doesn't start until September so will be off until then because he just cannot cope in primary and the school cannot Coe either, even on a reduced timetable.
So many kids are being let down by a rubbish system!

I have a 4 year old starts school September everyone has decided even tribunal judge that because he does ok doing 3 hours a day at nursery which he has additional support with and a specialist teacher that he should be fine at school with no support and school will just have to deal with the fact he's doubly incontinent and everything else.

Samcro has bit the nail on the head. In most settings, inclusion units are actually little more than onsite exclusion units. There’s a trend toward pods staffed by a couple of TAs and filled with those children who are either struggling to cope, or the teachers are struggling to cope with. There’s often no money for adequate equipment and training. It’s a poor way to treat children and staff.

All schools need more funding and smaller class sizes. Many children with SN can't cope in a class of 30 children but some might cope in a smaller class of 20-25. Plus teacher and TAs could give more attention with a smaller class size. But there also needs to be more special schools or specialist units inside schools.

In the USA, I worked in a school that had 4 classes per year. At maths/English/science time all the children were streamed by ability level to maths/English/science 1,2,3,4 and there was a special needs group. So at these lessons all children went to their assigned room, but back to their original class for other lessons (music, pe, art). It meant that the SN kids didn't stand out as everyone changed lessons, and were still included the rest of the time. Worked well for lots of SN kids to keep them in ms.

*Make neonatal and paediatric healthcare less good, so fewer kids with who are very premature and / or have substantial health problems survive to school age but need special schools.

Clearly not a serious suggestion on my part, but the increase in the numbers requiring special school places is a natural consequence of advances in healthcare that save children who would have died only a few years before.*

Avocado your comment made my blood run cold - but yes you're broadly correct (and phrased it very well).

My son is one of these children - he was born 16 weeks early and had no hope of survival without the very best neonatal care. He attends a specialist independent school paid for by our LA - but my God we had a long and nasty fight with them to get it. Before that he was in a very naice village primary where he was bullied horrifically and the school just didn't care and accused me of paranoia and making it all up. We are so grateful that he's in suitable provision now, but we and many others have to fight constantly for everything our children need.

Proper funding for SEN support in mainstream schools would be a good start. And proper specialist inclusion units with trained staff who would then train other staff and provide support. Our local secondary had an excellent autism unit. All gone now.

And yes, more special schools for children who cannot be catered for in mainstream schools.

My friends child was excluded from class last year and spend every day in a special room where they had no access to reading writing or maths work. He's made no progress. But that's down to 'SEN' rather than lack of teaching

It's not fair on the children and it's not doing them any good

They need additional suppprt not exclusion

Unfortunately my son just couldn’t manage in mainstream schooling, with the best will in the world and brilliant 1:1 support. What he needs is a curriculum and social and emotional support that’s impossible to provide in mainstream. I am enormously grateful that this was eventually recognised by our LA. Mainstream education is the best option for many pupils with SEN but not for many others.

I've just left working in Special School after 14 years as a Specialist TA. Over that time I watched the funding cut, the needs of the pupils grow and grow. Where we once were able to cater for children with moderate LDS , now the school is bursting with children who have profound learning disabilities , complex needs... (non verbal, non mobile, gastro fed etc etc) and/or severe autism and those 'moderate' children are left to flounder in mainstream.
There are fewer and fewer TAs...our school was excellent but just couldn't recruit enough people willing and able to deal with very challenging behaviour, administer meds, give tube feeds, oxygen, suction, be hit, bitten and kicked every day for the grand total of 13k a year.
Mainstreams can't cope... quite understandably, and it is not fair on the pupils or staff, both the 'typical' ones and the ones with SN.

I loved my job but had had enough. I'm now a traffic warden... and frankly the abuse I get is nothing like I did in school...and I'mpaid a lot better!
I predict a reluctant U turn from government eventually, but it is too late.. no one gives a damn anymore about the kids' needs...or when they become adults. (I have an adult son with autism and trying to get supported living is a joke)
Ir's just sad.

DS is a lucky one. The school have managed to hire an extra TA, well, a uni student on placement studying specialist teaching (not too sure what it's called) to help his teacher. Otherwise she would have sunk, and sunk badly, which she even admitted during the care plan meeting.
We currently have two specialist schools in the area, but 3 have shut down who provide care for children with SEN in the local council area. That council area covers villages, towns and a city. How on earth are just two schools meant to cope with that many kids?!

Ask yourself if you’d really like your child at a school an hour away from home?

We did ask ourselves this. We asked through our son's horrific and unresolved bullying, his lack of friendships, his being "the oddball with the constant 1:1 support", his inability to learn a thing in an inappropriate, noisy environment and amongst the almighty meltdowns he had constantly at home as a result of being so terrified of going to school.

As a result he attends a specialist SEN school an hour away from home. Although it's only 59 minutes in good traffic.

We need to build more specialist provision, both as units attached to mainstream and as specialist Schools. Where I am in particular we need to make sure that some of that provision takes into account that just because a child has special needs doesn’t mean they can’t achieve academically.

Ds is in mainstream primary at the moment but that is unlikely to last and won’t be a possibility for secondary school. However only one specialist School locally offers the chance of a wide range of GCSEs and that is a private one so of course impossible to get into with a battle with the LEA.

The few facilities which are currently available don’t take into account what a wide range of things (academic and non academic) is required from specialist provision. Nor does it consider that having to travel a couple of hours a day to school probably isn’t the best idea for some of the most vulnerable young people in society

Our son is another who, had he been born twenty years ago, would not have survived to need appropriate education. Fortunately we live in a big city where there is specialist provision close by - his school is only 3 miles away (although his school bus journey takes almost an hour each way due to the various pickups en route!) We fought to get him into this school, and every year it's a battle to keep him there - not because he could go to mainstream with support, that's never going to be an option given his disabilities - but because his combination of disabilities means he can be adequately supported in any of three schools but not well supported in any of them.

StillMedusa

I agree with everything you said, except you fail to mention that a lot of this 'care' is more about babysitting than teaching

These children aren't accessing the curriculum as they should be, they are also destroying the education of those willing to learn

This smacks of cruelty to those children who struggle everyday in the wrong environment.

Mainstream works for those with moderate needs to access their education. It doesn't meet the needs of violent, or secretly disabled children who will never receive an education.

They would be better off learning how to care for themselves, have access to gardening horserideing cooking life skills. If able then yes to GCSEs - but mainstream of failing these kids and they know it. They know they can't keep up and it destroys their self esteem.