To think children are being excluded from school too easily?

[RibbyJumper]

Children and their welfare come first in any school - surely?

My DC had an EHCP before DC started reception. The school wanted to refuse DC’s placement. After a fight DC is in the mainstream school with extra funding (9 til 3 daily). DC can do Maths/Reading/Writing, has friends and is no behaviour problem. DC is very quiet and easily overlooked.

I’m so cross that they ever tried to exclude DC before DC had even started school.

DC is now in year 1 and there is no way DC gets his allocated provision. They’ve used it to fund other things.

However I now hear that the school have essentially excluded two other children in Year 1 in the afternoons. They stay for the morning and go home at lunchtime.

This is wrong isn’t it? What the hell is happening in our schools??

I don’t know where you live, but if it’s one of the UK countries whichever one you’re in, it’s not the individual school, it’s the system. It’s fucked. We don’t have enough money to meet the needs of the increasing number of kids who need additional support. Every year we have less money in fact, and more kids who need intensive support. We literally cannot do it. The government spin it to look like they are providing for all, but they’re not. The system is on its knees and worse is to come.

SEN provision in this country has largely collapsed due to chronic underfunding, understaffing and an increase in pupils with additional needs for various reasons. Schools can't cope, is the basic answer.

Yep had this with my DC, they use a part time timetable as basically an illegal exclusion under the pretence of doing it in the child’s best interest to reduce the chance of a fixed term exclusion leading or ultimately a PEX, when they really just want them out of the way.

The money given for a full time ECHP in our LEA covers less 0.5 TA so they’re unlikely to be using funding to cover others things.

Is he getting what is on ECHP?

It's almost unheard of to get a echp before reception these days.
Most kids aren't identified as needing extra support until they enter the school environment. The system doesn't work fast enough - the kids wait years for assessment and help whilst only getting bigger, stronger and more dysregulated. It's true that some can't cope with a full day in class but there is no funding to give them a 1:1. Part time timetable is a symptom not a cause.

Sometimes an exclusion is the kindest route.. yes a child with sen should be supported wherever they go but if a school genuinely cannot meet need. It builds the case for trying to get in more suitable provision. They have the needs of all to consider, not just one. The funding just isn't enough. There is no money

My family member is a 1-1 ta in mainstream for a child with send. She's year 1 and regularly strips off completely naked, cannot follow an instruction, no concept of toileting. Parents send her all day as is their right to, but she clearly needs specialist provision and in the meantime is being babysat.

It's s different set of circumstances in your example, but they'll be many children who desperately need sen schools and mainstream just isn't the right place for them

Schools are facing a steep increase in the number on SEN children each year and the severity of the needs is increasing. Where we live, schools have to fund the first £6k of every EHCP which some simply cannot afford.

Excluding a pupil is very difficult and our local council will fight it with everything they have because they don't want to have to deal with their responsibilities if the pupil is excluded - even when there are verified safeguarding events that put other children at risk of serious harm.

Reduced timetables (which is what you're referring to if the children are in school some of the time, its not an exclusion) are also hard to get approved and we use them as a way of keeping children in school who otherwise wouldn't be able to cope with school at all.

This is not what we've seen... we have more children starting in Reception with EHCPs every year. I agree that 5 years ago we had almost none but we've got a couple in each Reception class this year.

Move to Scotland, there are zero permanent exclusions here! The academic results are worse than in England & if your child's being bullied they get to have a 'restorative' chat with the bully then nothing else changes, and there are no EHCPs so we can't even properly measure the SEN provision.

No school makes a decision to exclude children lightly.

I think go and work a day in a school and try and teach a full curriculum with violent and disregulated children around you. Then see how you feel about it.

A ehcp is unlikely to say 1 to 1 support.
What does it say?

I assumed you were talking about exclusions from school on behavioural grounds (which don't exist here in Scotland so bullies rule the school). But you're actually talking about a reduced timetable? Or have I misinterpreted and your child has been excluded for bad behaviour?

This. You won't know the details of these other children and the reasons... Just focus on your own child.

Your child was ‘excluded’ before they started. The school were asked if they could meet the need identified in the EHCP and said they couldn’t. The LA made them accept your child anyway, and now they can’t meet his needs. Just as they said in the first place.
Try working with the school.

My DS had an EHCP by 7 yrs old that specified 32.5 hours 1:1 every week to include break and lunchtimes.

His EHCP also came with £14k of additional funding attached.

The school employed a full time TA as his 1:1, sent her on numerous training courses including Lego therapy using DS's funding, and then spent 18 months only allowing him to attend for an hour a day while his TA worked with other children the rest of the time.

Mind you the same school once had 2 full time TAs funded for one child with very high needs, except because they failed to do the building work needed to create a suitable accessible toilet, the child in question never even went inside the school! The TAs were employed for a full school year on the back of that child's funding but the child never even met them.

‘Wasn’t’

At my school we have 1 child in reception who arrived with an EHCP.

They require 1:1 support but the EHCP does not have the funding for this for a full day so some has to be covered by the TA and Teacher, detracting from the rest of the class. School are applying for more funding to cover full needs.

However.:. This is not just a question of “more money solves the issues”; there are much wider impacts-

eg part of the classroom is being hived off for this child’s quiet space- so other kids cannot use it.

eg. The lessons plans for maths and reading are restructured for all kids to work around this one child’s needs (ie in different locations, to give the child some downtime and avoid them disrupting crucial learning)

These are not impacts that can be resolved by additional funding being provided. The school does not have the space to avoid a big impact on the other 30 kids in reception.

I think it is fair to say that we should not be excluding kids from mainstream education but let’s make that decision with our eyes open about the full impact on all children at a school.

I am a retired learning disability nurse and during my career had experience of numerous children with a variety of additional learning needs.
I think that whilst the principle of the right to inclusion in mainstream schools is correct the practice is mostly neither practical, useful or sustainable.
Children can often do better in a situation where their classmates have similar needs rather than being a “different” fish in a big pond.
Directing children to specialist schools provides more focused teaching staff who have chosen and studied to work in this area of education and group provision of services is more cost effective than piecemeal extra support staff in mainstream schools.
This would also reduce the enormous taxi bills for local authorities as transport buses could be provided instead.
I am not saying one size fits all but I think the ideology has swung so far with special education vs mainstream education that the baby has been thrown out with the bath water to the detriment of all involved.
The current insistence on mainstream schooling reflects negative perceptions about disability in society when in fact specialist schools can be a much better option.

It's the inclusion lie. If mainstream provision is to meet the needs of an increasingly high number of children with significant needs then it needs funding and staffing. At the moment we just accept children into mainstream provision with neither funding nor staffing and they fail

Specialist provision meanwhile has increasingly more barriers to entry. They want to limit home education (over 70% of EHE children have SEND) and they are concerned about overspending on SEND so want to limit support by yet more 'inclusion' that isn't,

Meanwhile we create a mainstream education system which is increasingly rigid and narrow and so many children with milder needs who previously could have been accommodated within the mainstream easily fall outside it and need additional support and our SEND numbers go up.

The push on attendance fails to acknowledge that spotty attendance has always been part of the picture for kids with additional needs, both myself and my sister with ASD had very patchy attendance in secondary but we remained in school because of that and were able to take GCSEs. Nowadays we would be EBSA and the LA would be having to find alternative provision.

While we talk of inclusion, we increasingly promote a system and policies that exclude.

It's actually quite difficult to do a permanent exclusion and I wouldn't say it's easy. Primary pex are still rare.

But you are actually talking about a slightly different thing. Poor inclusion practice leading to exclusion from a service by default or no service.

Some schools really do try to put off children with sen joining. It's a known issue and it really annoys the head's of schools that aren't like that.

You say your ehcp isn't being delivered. This might be because it's badly written, the funding doesn't match what's needed to deliver it This is a major problem too.

Things like not staying for afternoons may seem in a child's interest because they are disregulated and not coping. But with funding and the right support they could be regulated.

There are 180 chikdren in my LA in year 7 ehobdont have a school place. Just awaiting special school. Again it's not an exclusion, but they are excluded.

I dont think any if this is done with ease. Schools know they aren't meeting need. I dont even think LAs want this either.

It's a total mess.

Well routinely excluding SEN children is totally discriminatory. It’s absolutely disgusting behaviour from a school, especially if the child is absolutely fine in the setting and would even thrive there given half a chance.

I thought you were going to be discussing exclusions for bad behaviour in schools from non-SEN children, which in my opinion isn’t done enough! They do ‘in school exclusions’ now which is utterly pointless.

It's the opposite, they are so desperate to keep children in mainstream primary that other children are being failed by the system due to the extreme disruption. Wasn't much better at secondary either, my dd ended up having to be educated separately because she couldn't deal with the extreme bad behaviour, noise etc.

What I'm still trying to get my head around the s why schools today have so many sen children when there are actually more specialist school places as well. A statistic I saw in the guardian a few months back said there were 5 x as many children with sen in 2019 than in 1989! Some is accounted for by better reporting, but the number of very disruptive children has increased dramatically

What are schools supposed to do if they don't have the resource to meet the increasing SEN burden?

where I live there isn’t enough specialist provision so children essentially can end up out of education for years. That doesn’t sound very ‘kind’ to me.

If your child needs more than say 1/25th of a teachers time or attention then having them attend mainstream schooling is depriving the other children of their right to an education.