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??

The problem, in the nicest possible way, is that parents think only of their child and the teacher has to think about a whole class full. Most classes now have kids with additional needs (I have a class of 26 where 6 do) and there is a list of things I must do with every one of these every lesson (check in, explain tasks again, hover over, go back and check they OK etc) but with the best will in the world, if I spend 5 minutes with 1 child, they have proportionally too much in a 1 hour lesson. I just can't do it, no matter what the paperwork says. I'm not saying this is your case, but it is the case generally.

@Genevieva that is a thought provoking list. My dc2 was born when I was 40+.
in my day he would have been called a “late developer” or a “slow learner” - very late to talk, speech impediments, problems with basic grammar, slow to grasp concepts, but once he gets going he is does okay.

He definitely has too much screen time, which is dh and my own fault.

I had advice from nursery and Reception that he does not have any SEN, I believe that advice.

I think back to my fairly chaotic primary schooling in the 80s and it strikes me that a big difference is that the school was thronged with volunteer mums and grandma who would go in and listen to kids reading, and volunteer in the “special needs” room. All the 1:1 was offered free by volunteers. We were not a middle class community - mostly council housing estates and blue collar workers - and most mums didn’t have to work full time.

My mum eventually did get a paid job-share , initially looking after a child with Downs and then other kids as the years passed. She became an untrained SEN specialist, she was brilliant. I feel sad that informal caring/1:1 routes don’t exist any more - often the skills needed to help children with SEN can be learned on the job. I think we have made the whole system too complex and expensive and it has therefore imploded.

It’s absolutely shit but it’s the state that schools are in now. They likely tried to refuse your DC because they were aware they didn’t have the resources needed to support your DC’s EHCP, and that hasn’t changed now that your DC has started school. What are your DC’s SEN needs? Would they qualify for a specialist school? Or even a school with a good SEN department.

The big problem is that there aren't nearly enough specialist school places or nearly enough mainstream schools with an attached unit for children with ASD.

There is also not enough money in schools to properly support the large number of children with SEN. It does all come down to money IMO.

Councils problem. Not the problem
of the other kids who are just trying to learn

YABU. There needs to be more and better Sen provision in non mainstream schools for children with additional needs that can’t be met in mainstream with reasonable funding.
There are children struggling who would do much better in different settings and it affects the children who are able to cope in mainstream accessing the best education as well. Some children need excluded because they are in the wrong setting and it’s unfair for everyone.

I've noticed at my dc's school that every morning we will walk past at least one child who is in floods of tears, refusing to enter the classroom. When I was at primary school, I can't remember anyone being like that. Is school just harder now and kids who could have coped 30 years ago can't in the current system? Or is it the pressure of fines etc that mean parents are forcing children into school when they would have let them skive off in the 80s and 90s?

We are just at the final stage before PX with a Y8 girl.
For her Y6 at Primary the school was just so overwhelmed with her that they let he spend all day in the library with the school support dog, she recieved no schooling for that year and didn't even do SATS.
Our Secondary said very clearly that they couldn't meet her needs and was forced to take her. She cannot cope with school and has had many many interventions to try and help so they have limped on with her for 18 months, they have never been able to give her anything other than a very very basic education. Now she just wanders the school corridors and gets violent when teachers try to direct her anywhere else.
Its very sad, she loves animals and wants to work with them but she just cannot cope with being in a large busy school in an area with a lot of social challenges.
PXing her might actually be the best thing for her as the LEA will have to use the alternative provision, which is very good.
To give you an idea of the challenges faced the last time we had a Pre X panel we had 6 children under consideration and 1 parent turned up,only 3 of the children were even in school that day.
Its heartbreaking and the majority of teachers will do anything, even to the detriment of other pupils at times to try and help kids before moving to PX.

School are there to teach students who are there to learn if any child is creating a situation where others can't learn schools can only do so much

And yes if my child was one of these I would expect them to be removed

I doubt they exclude children sat there quietly working

It’s just much more violent. I would flatly refuse too.

As a school governor, we are pushed by the LEA to take children who require provisions way beyond what they pay; in reality, we have to take TAs out of other classes to meet the needs of some high-needs kids. There was a child recently who needed two full-time TAs to be available for toileting, etc, and one the whole day, including breaks/lunch. So that's about £32k, I think, from memory. The LEA were offering £7k to take them. We pushed back on taking this child as we have several hundred other children to consider. We were very clear with the LEA guarantee of £32k or whatever it was each year until he leaves primary, and he can join tomorrow.
Another school I was a governor at had a phenomenally high needs reception cohort a couple of years back and through the autumn term 5 of them went home at lunch time, it was felt more than that was overload for them, there is a hope in the medium term to build them up to full days, but it's hard for some children to be in school and it may not be purely financial.

I think the issues will get worse as Labour have pinned a lot on inclusion but the funding seems to be focussed on capital works.

I still believe inclusion can work well for most pupils, but it is expensive and needs proper resources, proper professional services backing it up, and properly trained support staff to support it. Many if these disruptive children wouldn't be disruptive with the right support. What happens now isn't really inclusion and it isn't fair on anyone.

I also really feel special school is right for some children and is still part of inclusion. They are still being included in the education system and society. But I think the road to special school should be much smoother. More schools, more local, more opportunities to switch between the two systems.

I actually think it should be much easier for mainstream schools to exclude disruptive pupils, and also to select and stream on the basis of behaviour.

Just to clarify, the school gets extra funding from the Local Authority for my DC. On his EHCP it states £16 000 a year. It then details how that support is allocated - which DC is not getting from what i can see. It’s a legal document.

Also my DC is not disruptive at all. However I believe the other two children who have been excluded in the afternoons are.
I was teaching in a classroom 30 years ago, and I had no TA, no computers, a blackboard, no worksheets. There were very, very clear boundaries and immediate support from the head if anyone was misbehaving. I can’t remember anyone being excluded in the time I was teaching there. Throughout the whole school.

we need to be more realistic about schooling for some children with SEN. I have a sister, adult now, who went to special school (in fact it was a hospital school, long defunct). She could be very violent and terrified me when I was little. I was never allowed to verbalise this to anyone because ‘she can’t help it, just be grateful you aren’t like her’. If I had been in a classroom with someone like her in my primary school as a child I would have been terrified of being hurt. Its awful to think that children are put at risk by violent children every day at school.

we need more special schools and specialist units urgently. Inclusion is an experiment that does not work

There are 4 adults in DC’s classroom, head and deputy with no class. Yet the class teacher didn’t even know my DC had a provision map when I spoke to her last week.

This is true and where children are incorrectly placed in mainstream; their behaviour can become challenging/more challenging and very disruptive. Sometimes the class has to move because the child with the challenging behaviour cannot be removed without physical intervention but needs safe space to regulate.
I worked in a specialist setting where classes were of 6-8 children with 6 staff. We were much more able to manage behaviour.
Some children with SEN can be very disruptive and actually scare, intimidate or even hurt other children and staff (I had the bruises and bite marks).
A lot of this comes down to lack of funding. At my provision I was buying pencils and glue sticks. The classroom windows were painted shut but no money to sort them. We could not have doors propped open for safety reasons and freestanding fans were distracting for the children.

Yes, a lot of mums and Grandmas used to volunteer. Now they either work full time or want the gym and me time. A close friend Volunteered for a long time. 3 DD very close in age. School realised her value and put her through her teacher training (already had a degree) and she is the head SENCO for an academy trust.

This is a direct result of the overhaul of the SEN code of conduct by the Conservatives. Statements were replaced with EHCPs which in practice are only given to diagnosed conditions and then a minute amount of funding is given. The days of children with 'mild SEN (no specific diagnosis) or mild Cognition and Language need' resulting in money are gone and so more and more children are unsupported in schools because they aren't given funding.

Basically funded EHCPs don't actually provide the equivalent money for what they expect to be provided. And more children are given no money for support at all so schools are stretched to the max. Add that to the time taken to get an EHCP (2 years) and that the majority are granted on appeal (90% ish) and what is actually happening is that council delay granting the EHCP for as long as humanly possible because there is no money.

Direct result of the Conservatives.

@Runninginthenight
@caramac04

Because my DC has an EHCP, the school is given £16000 a year extra funding to support DC.

DC is also completely not disruptive.

This pays for a TA who is supposed to give 1:1 support.

Schools are allowed to refuse children for 3 reasons

• they are full
• they feel they cannot meet the child needs
• the admission of the child wouod be detrimental to the other children in that class.

In my experience, 2 and 3 are applied much less than they should be, rather than schools over rejecting.
The current reception class at my daughters school has 5 children still in nappies for various reasons. Even if they are funded 1 to 1, this still causes an issue, as to change a child needs 2 adults for safety reasons. So the child's TA and another child's TA go to change them, leaving a child without a TA, teacher has to stop teaching and support that child, rest of class miss out.

I know it’s not the main thrust of your point, but £16k does not cover a full time TA, so the school will need to fund some of this out of their general provision

Yeah I suppose that's true too. My dcs primary school sounds absolutely terrifying! Yesterday, one of my children made a nice Christmas hat at school and another child said it was stupid and ripped it up. My other child was punched and kicked to the ground by a dysregulated child with sen who should NOT be in mainstream. Just a standard Tuesday 😬.