As a teacher to be surprised at how many in my class have SEN?

[Floatingcactus]

I teach a reception class of 26. 4 of them have an EHCP plan, 6 are waiting assessment and at least another 4 are showing possible signs of SEN including speech delay.

I’ve been teaching for 10 years and I personally believe there is an increase.
I don’t know if lockdown plays a part or whether it’s down to other factors.

It's down to increased awareness.

Level of need has skyrocketed since COVID so yes, lockdown playing a huge part. Health visitors haven’t had the capacity to carry out the usual developments checks so children with additional needs aren’t being picked up until they start nursery or school and are missing out on early intervention. Speech, language and communication needs and SEMH have surged where I am.

The bar has massively lowered as to what SEN is.

Yes it's increasing, yet school budgets continue to be decimated.
So teachers' hands are fuller year on year.

Why would that be?

It really hasn’t. Local authorities don’t have the kind of budgets to accommodate redefining the threshold of need. In most cases the bar for an EHCP has never been higher.

Are you a teacher? It's absolutely not just that.

Same. Nursery class of 26. 2 diagnosed ASD and 3 more waiting for IND clinic referral. We have at least 6 needing input from SALT.
Behaviour is also generally in the 18 month to 2yrs old range when they’re all 3 and 4 years old.

I think lockdown had a lot to do with the increase, I wouldn't say every child has SEN but it has delayed a lot of children's social, emotional & educational skills.

Says the poster who’s never had to fight tooth and nail for her child’s EHCP.

When I first started teaching, I would only have a few children with SEN. This year, before I went on maternity, 1/3 of my class had SEN with little or no support for them. Mainly speech and language so I don't think there are more children with SEN but there was no early intervention due to covid. In the past, by the time children got to my year group, they had been discharged from speech and language.

I guess it depends partly whether more and more still get diagnosed as they go through the school, or whether they're all getting diagnosed earlier. Those numbers as they stand would be very normal for a year 9 class for example.

But if say the numbers double from reception to year 9 (which historically has probably been about average?) then that would be a big increase. I guess time will tell...... 😬

Not in terms of the help you then receive. I mean in terms of earmarking children as SEN to start with, or what triggers a diagnosis process. Things like ASD and ADHD seem to have widened their symptom net so much that virtually any personality trait now falls into it in some form.

No it hasn't. It's near on impossible to get a ECHP, can't see the councils lowering the bar to have to fork out more money if anything it's harder now than what it was ten years ago.

It's not just increased awareness. If you ignore the actual paper diagnosis and just look at the number of children with behaviour and or learning needs, it has increased exponentially in recent years.

It used to be normal to have 2 or 3 children per class of 30 needing extra support. In my current class, 24 need extra support in some form or another. Not all have a diagnosis but their need is very visible through their behaviour and learning.

It is not simply down to increased awareness.

Increased awareness alone is not enough to explain why so many children are starting reception with little to no language.

Birth to 5 services are atrocious. Support isn't out in place early enough, especially for speech and language.

Medicine is better than ever, and special schools are taking on children who simply wouldn't have survived in the past. Mainstream schools have children with extremely high needs.

It's not just lockdown though. About 4 years ago around 3 or 4 children went from my daughters class alone went to a secondary school base unit, another 3 or 4 I think had an asd diagnosis but were ok in standard main stream.

I remember being astounded it was so many.

24!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had a similar class in reception last year, I think a lot of children missed their 2 year check so diagnosis was sometimes delayed and some children who would have otherwise not been in mainstream or would've had 1-1 support didn't have it before starting. It was tough but now in year 1 support is in place snd a lot of those children are thriving.

This year my reception class hardly have any additional needs.

I do think there is an increased awareness which is a positive thing as strategies can be put in place much earlier.

Lockdown is a factor.

However, the absolute decimation of intervention services is one of the major factors.

In my last year in schools (I worked in learning support) in my 5 schools there were at least a dozen children who previously would have been in specialist schools and who absolutely should still have been. There were also more who would previously have been in a specialist setting, but it was a bit more of a debate if mainstream was benefiting them in other ways.

Just taking ASD there’s a generational difference in awareness. I’m sure DS1 (classic Asperger’s profile) would have just been left without a diagnosis in my generation but he has one and school have been brilliant (they were already putting in some minor adjustments) with the result that he adores school. Win-win. And, aged 10, we can explain to DS1 when he utterly misses social cues. Interesting to me is that he’s my DDad all over again…who became a Cambridge fellow and to whom we just explained how we were feeling when necessary. Different times, different approach.

But surely ‘support services’ don’t change whether a person has a condition like ASD or ADHD? Either they have it or they don’t, they can’t be ‘supported’ out of it? Language delay yes, I can see how early intervention would improve that.

Classes are overcrowded and TAs have been cut. Maybe historically those children who are now being diagnosed would have flown under the radar with the occasional help of a TA but they're not getting that help now with one teacher alone in charge of 30+ students and these children are struggling, which causes the teacher to notice, leading to them being diagnosed.

I was one of those children who flew under the radar with occasional help from the TA. I've recently been diagnosed with ADHD. I am very pleased to hear children who are struggling are getting help while in primary school. I could have achieved so much more if my disability had been diagnosed as a child.

The don’t just go along with everything you say as a parent, diagnose ASD or ADHD on your basis of your concerns and then say no to the funding. It starts with complete denial that your child has any any special needs, then years till an assessment and even longer to get an EHCP in place. For the four children in OP’s class with EHCPs, they weren’t just given on a whim.