If you teach, was your SEN training good enough?

[Whatafustercluck]

Inspired by a post from Bridget Phillipson about Labour investing in almost 3,000 more teachers. Many on that Facebook post highlighting SEN training as inadequate, so I'm curious about views from teachers.

My own experience (as a parent, not a teacher) has been very mixed. A senco who based her understanding of neurodivergence only on the traditional, mostly male presentation of autism and who therefore believed my then 6yo dd was 'fine at school'. A brilliant Y2 teacher (who had a partner with ADHD) who took the time to understand every child and knew how to get the best out of each of them - ND or not. A brilliant Y3 teacher, who has herself got one adult child with ADHD and a younger daughter with autism who just 'gets it'. A secondary school, in which some teachers excel in understanding ADHD and applying appropriate support and management strategies, and some that still appear to question whether it's even real, let alone try to understand/ support (despite a formal diagnosis).

EHCP applications have increased and that this is unsustainable. But my theory is that if SEN training for teachers was prioritised and was comprehensive enough, this may help stem the flow of EHCP applications from parents who currently feel unheard and unsupported. Many SEN children could thrive in mainstream, with very minor adjustments that inconvenience nobody, and attendance would also improve as a result.

I'm not a teacher, but I really value education and appreciate the two or three really excellent teachers who have supported my children to do well in mainstream schools. But it strikes me that those teachers, without exception, have personal lived experience of neurodivergence that only those dealing with it every day, as a parent or family member, really understand. The only thing I can think of that may improve this situation is improved SEN training for all teachers, yet I've heard from several teachers that they've had perhaps one day which has focused solely on autism.

I'm using the different ways in which schools approach those things as being either inclusive or not. Many children find those things triggering, and a teacher's approach to dealing with that anxiety can make the difference between a child engaging or not.

In terms of behaviour management, take the example of a child who fidgets, talks too much, sings or hums (stims) in order to focus. A proactive teacher realises that said child is not being deliberately naughty, and therefore simply telling them to stop doing it is unlikely to work. The teacher instead recognises that perhaps he/ she could enlist their help to hand out equipment, thus giving them a movement break and avoiding disruption to other children. Or provides a piece of blu tac for them to quietly, without disrupting others, move it about in their fingers.

Or a child who becomes frustrated and overwhelmed with heavily theoretical work, is given a small emotions wheel to help with their emotional literacy allowing them to quietly indicate without interrupting others how they're feeling, enabling a TA to step in before they reach overwhelm and a situation escalates.

Reminds me of one student who couldn't write. She could not bring herself to write..... No training from all the SEN specialists in the school could present her with a suitable strategy to overcome it.

So, I had nothing to lose. I asked her what the problem was. Even though she couldn't present an idea to solve it, she told me, 'It never ends...... I just, can't.'

So, It never ends? How about if I fold the paper? Show it can have an end? I folded a piece of paper in half, gave it to her. She smiled at me then immediately started writing.

It was a punt....... To help a ND child. It worked. She had made it all the way to year 11 without someone figuring this out.

This is a massively rare occurrence by the way, this shouldn't be proof that solutions can always be found. It is intended as proof of how infuriating it can be sometimes to find a solution. Perhaps using NT individuals to help those who are ND may in itself be a fools errand.

Nothing earth shatteringly amazing there, happens daily where I teach. Why do you think more training would make that stuff happen? Teachers know those strategies.

The emotion wheel, isn't popular with secondary aged students. Some will use a red and green understanding/feeling card (depending on the their need).

This. It's CAPACITY [funding, ratios, the capacity of one person to meet the needs of 30) that's the issue.

Just realised the emotion wheel relies on a TA stepping in. Good luck with that. So again we're back to not having enough resources, rather than the teachers not being trained properly.

I'm a Primary teacher of 20 years and SENCo for 10. The current curriculum just isn't geared up for different learning styles. It all needs to be stripped back; less pressure, less testing, less sitting, give value to hands on subjects, make learning purposeful again.
Most teachers and TAs I know are giving all their energy to the children who really shouldn't be in Mainstream. They haven't got time to focus on the child who is struggling silently at the back because yhey're too busy trying to stop Tyler biting Maisie, Sarah from running out of the classroom and scaling the fence or Connor from tipping a table over.

That's not true, loads of kids benefit from wearing a blazer because a blazer has loads of pockets.

My DS hates it when it's a non-uniform days because he has to decant all the stuff he carries around in his blazer like locker key, timetable etc into other places where they immediately get lost. So many kids turn up without a pen on non-uniform days because it's in their blazer.

Yes. The phrase 'reasonable adjustments' gets me. To establish whether something is a reasonable adjustment we should be looking at

1. Whether the unadjusted, baseline expectation is reasonable- I.e. 1 adult to 30 children simultaneously across a range of attainments without additional needs
2. Add in all the other 'reasonable adjustments' for the other existing children in the class with additional needs.

Only then can you establish whether further adjustments are reasonable.

But that never, ever happens.

Yes, I agree. That detailed level of awareness and understanding needs to be ingrained at the top first and foremost.

I have direct experience of this, because it was implemented for my daughter. It works for her, and with only minimal TA intervention (literally a check in, then a minute to explain a new concept, step away again). It doesn't take a whole lesson of one to one to remedy.

But where do I get the TA from? There isn't one in my room ever. There's 5 in the whole school, so they're probably in a different building. How do they know they are needed? And who do they leave to do this check in?

I think the point there was “what TA?”

with only minimal TA intervention

When you don't have ANY TAs to do any sort of intervention, we fall back to the same old question. How much can we expect one teacher to do with 30+ children to a class?

Oh I know, the whole thing is shit for everyone involved.

Schools and teachers have huge expectations put on them, and these are then piled onto the children who often cannot cope, and the fallout, which used to be unfairly blamed on teachers, is now blamed on parents.

Maybe the problem is that. Too much on all involved. Academies (I believe around 80% of mainstream secondaries now?) seem too focused on academia, too results focused, too entrenched in rules that suit some but not others. It’s all about academic achievements when we all know that once out of school that’s not what the real world is like for many people. Plenty would benefit from a more practical approach - available in many schools 20+ years ago but only in limited schools now.
Too many targets that put children off learning (do primary aged children still learn about fronted adverbials? That caused an outcry several years ago with many teachers admitting they hadn’t done anything like that until university!). Not all children are going to be academic. Not all children can be helped, but in narrowing what is being done and by being more and more rigid, all we’re doing is ensuring that more children have needs that aren’t being met.

I was at school 30-40 years ago, I can still remember the range of children who, if they were at school now, would be on the SN register - those with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia. They were all there, but somehow they managed better than children are managing now. There was less pressure, fewer targets and tests. We were responsible for our achievements. Somehow my cohort of students made it through, sure some were less successful, some were mega successful, but without the trauma, the school refusals, the huge number of damaged children through the system, the stress on teachers, the heartache and frustration all round.

I know that schools have changed how they teach. I’ve spoken to enough teachers past and present who are very clear that teaching methods have changed, that flexibility has all but gone. I know several teachers who left school to home educate their own child(ren) because they felt so strongly that there was no way they were putting them through school - that speaks volumes to me. I know ex teachers who are now tutoring for a living who are very clear about the changes they saw that made them leave. This isn’t just a now thing, this has been happening for at least the last 20 years and we’re reaching a point where more and more children, teachers, and parents are in crisis. And we still keep doing the same things. What was Einstein’s definition of madness?

More/ better training may mean the application of those strategies is more consistent among teaching staff. You say that teachers know those strategies already, then why is it that parental experiences are so variable, with many saying that they're not actually being implemented? As I said in my original post, my experience of teaching has been mixed, even within the same school - and this reflects the experience of many others. How can a senco - a specialist in SEN coordination - not be aware of the latest developments in understanding different presentations of autism, for example?

I understand that some of these strategies aren't popular with secondary aged children - which is why I asked in another post whether one part of the solution is earlier intervention and targeted support during primary years to enable better outcomes via self sufficiency at secondary level.

Ah, ok. At dd's primary they have at least one TA allocated to every class. I accept that this isn't the case at secondary, though.

I think it is interesting you have talked about SEN but then have narrowed it down to neurodivergence, when SEN is much more than that, is my first observation.

A teacher can appear to be be ‘brilliant’ with meeting the needs of a neurodiverse child but it has to take into account everyone’s needs, not just children without SEN but those with SEN.

It’s one of my bugbears that SEN is now almost exclusively focused on autism and / or ADHD and visual and hearing impairments, learning difficulties, dyslexia, physical difficulties, are the poor relations!

Fair enough, my experience of TAs has predominantly been at primary level where at least one is allocated to every class (although my teenage son is at secondary). I accept that lack of TAs is a big issue particularly at secondary level.

Fair enough, my experience of TAs has predominantly been at primary level where at least one is allocated to every class (although my teenage son is at secondary). I accept that lack of TAs is a big issue particularly at secondary level.

Very few primaries round here have a TA in each class any more. Ours have nearly all been made redundant/not replaced when they left and we only have them now for high need pupils with EHCP funding. If you look at the local school jobs available, they are virtually all roles working as SEN 1:1s with very high need individuals.

There's a disconnect at times between knowing the strategies, and teaching 300 children a week so you forget who needs what. That might explain some of the variance in parental experience.

The SENCO not knowing about different presentations of autism is unusual, however in a small primary not too surprising. Secondary SENCOs literally see more children, so get more experience with different presentations. Girls are notoriously good at masking their way through primary too. I am not knocking primary colleagues, they've got one hell of a job on their hands. Some SEND is hard to identify early on and difficult to pick apart from being outside the "norm" of development as children don't develop linearly. Therefore opportunities for early intervention may be limited, but I agree earlier interventions help. But the sort of early intervention to support learning isn't the low level stuff here of a movement break or emotion wheel. It's specific and intense work with a specialist to improve phonics/numeracy etc.

That's my experience at my son's primary too. He actually has 2:1 TA support, then there's 1 'general' TA and I'm pretty sure another TA too for a child who has 1:1 support.

In my experience, the teachers who are brilliant with neurodivergence tend to be brilliant with all their students.

Physical disabilities are easier to spot and provide practical support for. The reason neurodivergence has such a focus is because it's so misunderstood, and there's still so much stigma attached to it - precisely because it is not visible.

What happens when a child with SEN leaves school? They will no longer have a teacher or TA. Surely one of the aims of the education system is to encourage each pupil to develop their own strategies for life.

In my experience, the teachers who are brilliant with neurodivergence tend to be brilliant with all their students.

I have known some absolutely brilliant teachers in my decades of teaching. Do you know what those teachers are doing now? Not teaching any more in every case.

Being brilliant all day every day, being expected to do it for more and more children, with less and less help, and fewer resources, completely burnt them out. It's like a frog in slowly boiling water, you don't realise what's happening till it's too late.

I would say the essence of what is needed is communication between school and parents, and believing that parents might have done some research.
DS was massively failed by his first school and part of it was them not telling us what was happening. They had an escalating behaviour strategy but he saw it as a goal. Even when we told them he saw it as a goal, they wouldn't change. We told them about research on dyspraxia and they just said "this is our standard practice". The OT said the same - didn't want to read any research or even listen to me (science PhD) explain it.