primary school reception class and SEND support

[user1468863258]

I appologies in advance if I offend anyone as this is not my intent. I merely am trying to educate myself on childens rights and parents expectations in the primary school.
To summarise my question: my dc started primary school and it looks like we have 2 kids with special needs in the class. Of course, I don't have much information about their diagnosis but gathering from what my dc and other kids in the class are saying the 2 kids are getting continuous support throughout the day from TAs while the teacher is left to tend to the rest of the class. I am not familiar with UK primary school system and not entire sure if this is expected/acceptable arrangement. I would expect to have a designated person to help provide any additional support a child needs? Am I being too naive to expect that?
From the little research I have done on this topic it seems that there is a law that requires schools to provide support and physical adjustments as necessary so that your (SEND) child can participate fully in the school. It looks like in the case of my school this support is given at the cost of the rest of the class loosing their two TAs.
Is this soemething we should bring up with the school? Is it common to have no additiona support in the beginning of reception while the kids get adjusted/settled? Any other advise i could get on this topic I would really appreciate.

This is sadly not unusual nowadays in primary schools across the UK, you can thank the chronic underfunding of schools by the conservatives for that. They are lucky to have a TA for a whole day in many classes. They have also been given no extra funding for the cleaning or equipment etc needed for covid so many TA's are now having to take on these tasks, meaning they spend less time with the children. The whole situation is just rubbish, the disrespect for state education is an outrage.

our class is really unusual....3 SEN children, 3 TAs who provide 1:1 support....1 teacher who look after the rest of the class - this is infant school btw.
my children take up 2 TA's....most parents have now realised this and i'm sure have realised the benefit for the children who sit on my childrens table! one of my children has extreme medical needs but educationally need no suport - if your kid sits next next to mine then they are really lucky!!!

Exactly @IndecentFeminist. To be expected to pay a TA’s salary plus school fees sounds outrageous to me. But I’m not sure what that poster meant by “that’s why we went private”.

We went private to minimise contact with SEN children, or
We went private because SEN children have parent-funded support

Either way it’s... pretty ableist.

Yes that’s what I said @IndecentFeminist the state system is absolutely underfunded and shit. At our daughter’s private school she has all the support she needs (that we pay for) whereas in the state system it was an uphill battle to get anything like the level she needed.

It’s not fair on the NT children to have the class TA’s time hogged by one child. It’s not fair on the SEN child to have their support used to support the whole class. Both these situations regularly happen.

We are lucky in this country to have the option of going private. If I were the OP I’d be disappointed that so much time was taken up on a few children when all the children should be getting the benefit of the TA if she is there for the whole class.

@Haworthia of course we aren’t EXPECTED to do that. We could have stayed in the state system we opted to do it. As I said in my post we CHOSE to go private. We weren’t “expected to”

What's your problem Op? Do you feel you dc's needs aren't being met? Do they have EAL needs?

There are so many children with SEN who don't get the support or funding for support they genuinely need to function in mainstream school. Why are you angry that children who need extra support are getting it, whether the TA is employed specifically for them or not? If it had been identified (by you or school) that your child needed extra support it would have been discussed surely? If you haven't mentioned to the school that you think your child needs extra support, why not and why post here if you haven't actually asked?!

It's highly unlikely that any public school would have 2 teaching assistants in one class alone
so one of them is likely appointed for those SEN children's and possibly through an educational health care plan that they would have had to apply for.
What would be the alternative that would make you more comfortable with this ?

As quite a few posters have said, it doesn't work like that. It's unlikely that your dc's class would normally have 2 TA's and at least one of them will be funded by a child's ehcp.

My dc's school website explains who each member of staff is in each class, which days they are in school if part time and if they are someone's 1-1 helper. This helps prevent assumptions like yours and also parents moaning that ds's class have an "extra" TA who is actually a retired TA volunteering etc.

YABVU what business is it of yours? Like PP have said do you know if these children have EHCP's where funding is provided for these TAs?
My DD has 1-2-1 help from a TA for a couple of hours every afternoon. This is written in her EHCP.
A teacher should be more than capable of teaching the class and I very much doubt that it's a case that the other children in the class are having to go without in order that these two children have 1-2-1 support.
If you don't like it where do you suggest these children go considering that getting a place at a special school is like gold dust?

Here's an idea, OP, instead of being 'it's not fair on my child who doesn't have SEN' just be grateful it isn't your 5yo child with an EHCP describing them as very vulnerable, requiring 1:1 support and that even with this it's unlikely they'll ever reach their potential.

When DS was in reception and year 1 he will have used more than his fair share of the class TA time, because due to the limited resources they know that’s where it needed to be diverted and actually that was the best use for the whole class with the limited resources because it meant DS wasn’t distracting others or falling ill in class due to lack of supervision.

Thankfully in year 2 school where able to provide some 1-1 even with the local authority a nightmare about naming it in his EHCp to avoid funding it.

In year 4 we finally got full time 1-1 named (and funded) and it’s no coincidence that In all ways at school he has thrived since because he has the support he needs. Now it looks like he will be able to go to a mainstream secondary next year (with support) which a few years back was taken completely off the table as an option.

We still have parents complaining it’s not fair that DS gets more time with a TA than their child does. I doubt any would want to swap for the daily issues we face though

When I say 1:1 “helps the other class when needed” I do mean, like, helps a child tie their laces or get changed for PE if their 1:1 child is happily engaged in something else. Like, they’re not going to let other children struggle unless they absolutely cannot help.

I think the answer is that it really does depend on the school and where the funding for the TAs has come from. If the funding if from the 2 children's education health and care plan (EHCP) then the TAs will be for the 2 children. If the funding is from general school budget then the TAs can be helped to support the whole class.

I work in an SEND school and all of our students have EHCPs, we very rarely have 1:1 TAs, only for our most challenging / high needs students. However we always have at least 1 teacher and 3 teaching assistants with a maximum class size of 12.

I have two children in my class with EHCPs I also have a full time TA.
The two children with EHCPs have their 1-1 with them all the time. Both need someone for the entirety of the day. The two 1-1s will help another child in the sense of doing up laces or passing them a pencil but the rest of the time the 1-1 requires their full attention.

I don’t really see what business it is of yours op.

As lots of others have mentioned there are growing numbers of children with significant SEN in mainstream schools and the funding to support them in no way matches the costs to the schools so schools are having to prioritise staffing to meet those needs. It could be that those children are waiting for a special school place, but again there is a national shortage of places. The system is falling apart.

Stop telling OP it’s not her business. Her child is in that class so of course it’s her business. She just asked a question, and acknowledged that this was an area she wasn’t familiar with.
If the TAs are there as the designated 1-to-1s then that provides an explanation for the situation.
If only one of them is an official 1-to-1, and the other is meant to be there for the whole class, then things are not being done correctly in OP’s child’s class.
OP, how many kids are there in the class? Because surely that would determine whether or not the whole class was assigned a TA as well as a teacher.

If those kids have EHCP’s with 1:1 support then those TA’s are probably employed for those children.

@Mintychoc1

Stop telling OP it’s not her business. Her child is in that class so of course it’s her business. She just asked a question, and acknowledged that this was an area she wasn’t familiar with. If the TAs are there as the designated 1-to-1s then that provides an explanation for the situation. If only one of them is an official 1-to-1, and the other is meant to be there for the whole class, then things are not being done correctly in OP’s child’s class. OP, how many kids are there in the class? Because surely that would determine whether or not the whole class was assigned a TA as well as a teacher.

If if one of the teaching assistants is allocated to the class then it is up to the teacher (with advice from the senior management team) how best to use that resource in the class. It’s not something that needs to be shared out equally amongst all the children.

Teachers will allocate support and other resources as they see best to support the class with what’s available. If that means a TA spending more time with one child who needs extra support so the teacher can then focus on the other children then great.

There is a TA for a child with SEN in my child’s class. She knows the other children in class really well as she has been with them since nursery. Although her primary focus is one child, she always helps the children around her out. I imagine it’s the same with most TAs in that position.

If it’s any consolation, I think my oldest DC (8) is at an age where the class wouldn’t automatically have a TA, but because of the need of the SEN child, they have the extra adult present in class, which personally I think is a plus.

I think it’s reasonable for the OP to want to understand a system with which she is not familiar. I hope that it’s clearer now that so many posters have explained, although it clearly varies from school to school.

If a child has 1-1 support, their needs will probably be quite complex and having someone with that child enables the teacher to do what he or she has trained for. Teachers train to work with the whole class and it’s a bonus, but not a given, if there is a TA who can work with a group or groups.

As the funding is restricted more and more, the capacity to have additional adults in the classroom is too.

As others have said if the TA is provided through a child's EHCP they are there solely for the child with the EHCP ,they are not taking anything away from the other children in the classroom because they wouldn't be there if the child didn't have an EHCP,schools get extra funding for children with EHCP,s to fund the extra staff ,an EHCP is a legal document and if schools don't adhere to the EHCP they are breaking the law.

My DCs are at a prep. There are no significant SEN in either of their class. They have a teacher and TA. The class room is usually arranged so that the children who need more support with a topic (often the same children) sit closes to the TA and get most of her time. I don't see a problem with this. If my kids are able to do their work independently they don't need the extra support and wouldn't particularly benefit from it. It would be different if they had needs which weren't being met but it seems a bit petty to resent people who need more support getting more support.

Wow lots of useful information! Thanks a lot for all the comments. We have 30 children in our Reception class and the two TA’s were introduced as class TA In the beginning of the term. I now realise that their primary responsibility might be helping specific child and not entire class. Did not think having 2 TAs is unusual for a state primary school.