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.

Is it environmental pollution, the food we eat ?
Like you say, what on earth is causing it ?

There is evidence of the impact of lockdown on early years speech and development. Children learn from adults children, and practice with other children. So isolating little children (esp. only children and oldest) meant a lots of language eg, not being practiced and mastered. And I suppose many things like sharing and turn-taking and other social skills.

You should probably go back and read up some more.

There is not a lower bar for diagnosis ffs.

SEN is not just ASD or ADHD! There is such an emphasis on these things that everyone ignores general SEN - the children who simply find it incredibly difficult to learn new concepts etc.

Just picking up on 2 points in this thread.
1)screens. We are pretty anti screen in this house and always have been, all 3 of my kids were voracious readers before they set foot in a school etc. Yet I still have a neuro divergent child, you can't tell me screens caused it or even exacerbated it in our case! I am also a tutor and the the biggest effect of screens I see is on perfectly 'normal' kids who don't apparently have time to practice and yet somehow find a couple of hours a day for tv....
2) sen just means a special educational need, so for some it may be a named diagnosis, for others it may well be they need some extra help for a while, (perhaps they did get behind during covid etc. ) and will be placed on the school's SEN register. They may not remain there for more than a couple of years if the catch up support helps them.

Ignorant ableism at it's finest, there's plenty of it around not least on MN.

Do enlighten me on whatever I’ve got wrong?

There's some shocking examples of it on this thread alone.

You can’t just cry ‘ableist’ because somebody has a view you don’t agree with. It’s becoming like transgender, any gentle questioning or wondering what’s behind this meteoric rise and suddenly everyone acts like you’re Dr Mengele. I’m disabled - physically disabled that is - but doesn’t mean I just accept and agree with whatever the latest ‘view’ on the world of disability is.

Good luck finding a school where you aren’t going to see this then!

My DT’s have speech delay despite so much work from us (and no tv until 2, lots of reading, still no devices age 5 etc etc). I hate that people probably think I’m to blame.

No they’re not supported ‘out of it’. What an odd way to think. Are you ignorant or just goady? I wonder.

My child is supported with her autism at school. Specific things/adjustments have been put in place to help her cope at school.

I do think there has been a change in parenting. Some parents think schools/local services should raise their kids, so they seek diagnoses for what is just bad behaviour and poor discipline. Then they blame the teachers or local authority for everything their child doesn't have. No accountability for some parents.

I'm a TA in a large secondary school and we have noticed this trend also. Not just in the number of pupils with special needs but in the severity of their issues.

There is also an ethnic element that people don't talk about much (including me but I'm anonymous on here). About 2/3 of the pupils in our Inclusion unit with autism/adhd are Asian. A noticably larger percentage than in the general school population though it is a multicultural school.

Yes. Sadly this is very true.
Some parents seem to have no time for their children, even just to sit and read with them for ten minutes a day.

My eldest has autism, adhd & a moderate learning disability we were told "he'd never talk, never catch up to his peers." Etc but we did so much therapy when he was younger with him (and still do now!) and it made such a difference he attends specialist and is top in his year in maths & talks for England.

Early intervention is key.

2 posts above.

You stated the bar has been lowered for starters.

Care to provide a respected source for that claim?

Increased awareness definitely plays a part. In 25 years, I’ve never had so many parents email me to say they’ve watched a programme or done an online quiz for dyslexia/ADHD/autism etc and now want their child referred. I do the screening and referrals so have seen this first hand. The majority are for children just at or slightly below threshold for referral who may otherwise have slipped through the net.

I think another reason numbers might appear to have risen is that some schools (usually certain MATs) have a reputation for not being inclusive. This means other nearby schools become magnet schools. Where I teach (non MAT school with a reputation for being nurturing) we are likely to have over 10% with EHCPs in Y7 this September and over 35% on SEN register whereas I know the local MAT schools have nearer 2-3%. (We have raised this with the LA). Likewise my own children’s very inclusive school has a class of 24 with six EHCPs whereas neighbouring primaries have fewer than six EHCPs in the whole school.

But the level of support doesn’t change whether there is a diagnosis or not. Do you understand what I mean? Level of support should affect the quality of life of people with SEN, but not the numbers diagnosed.

I don’t need to. This is a discussion thread, people contribute their opinions and this is mine. Otherwise why are we on mumsnet? May as well just hang out on PubMed 🤷🏼‍♀️

This... 100% this.

But a ehcp is a concrete thing, so how am I confused? Loosely you can not get a ehcp until your needs can not be met within school budget which again loosely ( ie not the law),£4k plus 6k) and that is how ehcps work unless you join reception with one. The LA still has to certain school could not meet in that 10k. So if you can agree that schools and LA are on the verge of bankruptcy. Where is the motivation for the LA to dish out ehcps at lower levels? No one can a ehcp except the LA. You can get one via a tribunal but that is decided by a judge. Why would any LA lower its threshold? In my LA as I saw they took a payment from Central government to reduce ehcps and remove existing ones and send less sen kids into specialist schools. It was all a white paper.

I think it's always been a high number. All you have to do is look back at parents friends/family and see their odd behaviour and their massive lack of literacy/numeracy skills and recognise they were a SEN child and were never diagnosed. I can look back at school friends and distinctly see a few would have thrived with proper support and awareness and SEN statement with interventions in place.

Yep!

And for obvious genetic reasons, a disproportionate number of parents of ND/SEN kids will be ND/SEN themselves. I say this as the NT parent of an ND child.

You don’t need a diagnosis to be classed as having SEN.

The definition of SEN is defined in law and has been the same since the CAFA 2014 was introduced. The previous legislation had the same definition. So the bar hasn’t been lower.

I work as a TA in Primary School and from the perspective I see it, there are not necessairily more children with SEN, but there are more children that struggle to meet the expectations set by schools and the gov. The school curriculum has changed dramatically over the 30 years or so that I've worked in schools.

When I first started teaching in Y1 the curriculum was far less formal and demanding than it is now. There was plenty of time for free play- my classroom had sand, water, a craft area, a role play area, the children worked in small groups with an adult in turn while others played and then they rotated. There was time in the day for story time, an hour outside at lunch and two breaks a day. Year one maths involved practising counting to 20, adding, subtracting making patterns, comparing sizes, shapes, etc. with numbers generally within 20 or more for the more able. English involved writing simple sentences, basic stories, reading simple books and phonics.

Now in Y1 there is no room for free play, lessons are whole class based with children expected to watch PowerPoints at the start of each one, there is little differentiation, there is no sand, water or role play area. Any play is directed and has a given outcome or task set. In maths children are expected to to understand partitioning, tens and units, multiplication, division, fractions, read, write and recognise numbers to 100, know odd and even numbers.

Whilst all this might not be difficult for some children- for many 5 year olds it is and if they can't achieve the expectations, sit still for extended periods etc. they end up on the SEN register.

Therefore, whilst I think there are more children coming into school with lower levels of literacy than previously, perhaps because of changes in society and parenting- there are also expectations and pressures within schools that make some perfectly normal children appear to struggle.