SEND - children’s needs to be reassessed from year 6 2029?

[missbish]

Are they taking the piss? After the struggles parents have trying to secure support for their child, they’re then going to threaten to take it away once they’re due to go to secondary? Ds goes to secondary this year so I don’t think it will effect him but I am so angry for those it does effect.

I totally understand, we need more sen schools and that is not going to go away because the government think that inclusion is going to magic away some children's needs.

in terms of “ online school “ my daughters attendance in every year has been between 16 and 37 percent never above. They still pay the fees to keep her an independent private Sen school because that’s what’s best for her even if she can not always access the classroom.
they also on top pay for a 1-1 to come home to do her work if she is not in school and to be in school when she is present.

The other elephant in the room here is that some mainstream schools don’t actually want any more inclusion.

It’s all well and good saying teachers will need specific training, not everyone goes into education actually wanting to specialise, and all the training in the world won’t make some educators more inclined or able to meet need.

I actually think that should that be enforced, we’ll have an even bigger teaching retention crisis than we have now.

Teachers who went into their career justifiably wanting to educate mainstream kids, are not going to suddenly cope with an increase in SENd demand in their classrooms. Many of them already don’t like the volume they have now.

No it's not. It isn't unfair. It's only unfair if the provision children are given is beyond that which levels the playing field, which it never is.

It's awful that people would be jealous of disabled children getting provision to give them a chance of a productive future.

Perhaps
I noticed the focus on finances

Given the majority of my post was about how two other countries with a similar setup have been successful I’m surprised that wasn’t the focus of your tag

Haven't read updates since yesterday evening but that post seems to have been ignored
If my child was still in school I’d be looking at how that works and why,
not focusing on the negatives.

Only one poster has even acknowledged it

The problem seems to be that if you start basing EHCP provision on anything other than evidenced need, (as things stand now, with assessment by a range of health and education professionals) then you have to categorise disabled children another way. Some posters here want able bodied and average IQ to automatically fall into the not disabled category. Ok so how do we then assess able bodied?

For example, neurodiverse people can have profound sensory processing impairments, including interoception disorders. Children with this disorder don’t recognise hunger, thirst, pain, temperature, toileting needs because their brain doesn’t receive and respond to physical body signals properly. If a child is physically able to drink by herself, but often doesn’t, and needs careful supervision to keep her from dehydrating and hospitalisation, are we in the able bodied category or not then?

You really are talking absolute nonsense.

This is exactly why it's not that helpful categorising Autism as a 'spectrum' and avoiding categories of severity. Sometimes you actually do need some sort of system of categorisation to give a sense of the severity of a person's needs, overall. Quite clearly a profoundly affected autistic individual who is non-verbal and has global developmental delays and limited understanding of the world around them probably needs more support than a child who is intellectually normal with no learning difficulties but has challenges with Semh.

I think it’s also that mainstream teachers are also still being expected to do all of the other things as well, but now they will also have to be highly trained in all types of SEN and how to manage them (on your own in a class of 30).

They will still have to get their children through the phonics screener/times table test/SATs, make sure every child makes expected progress, every child’s paperwork is written, achieved and logged, their subject is planned for and monitored (with no time or money), their lesson’s are all perfectly planned, marked and assessed and they will meet all of Ofsted's hugely pressurised and ever changing expectations.

This is one more huge piece of workload for just a person-another spinning plate to be kept in the air and be constantly judged on.

It’s the boiling frog analogy-people can tolerate additional workload and stress as it gradually builds up but there comes a tipping point where you can do it all (and shouldn’t be expected to) alone.

Precisely. I came out of teaching approximately 12 years ago, and even then the workload was crippling, and funds were scarce. I work with and employ teachers now, day in day out, and that if anything has gotten worse.

This won’t level their playing field and make them feel better equipped, it will overload them with a huge addition to an already overloaded plate.

This is pure speculation, but I’d imagine that within the first few academic years of these potential changes, teachers will be under immense pressure or will have left, and mainstream parents will be noticing the difference in their child’s education.

Absolutely. I have resigned after 25+ years in the job and just couldn’t do it any more. None of the kids are getting what they need and I am burnt out. I see these changes as making things worse for everyone.

@ExistingonCoffee Just had a phone call from the LA to say my child has been given a full time place at the provision they originally ignored.
I hadn't even gotten a tribunal date through, so I wonder what made them change there minds?

Either way I am so please for my child (not so much the large deposit for EP though) but one less thing we have to worry about!

Yep. That's pretty much why I left teaching

It feels like it’s going to be a huge increase in pupils with SEN in the classroom (with perhaps a sprinkling of money as a sweetener) but with the expectation that, ‘well, we gave everyone training so why can’t you cope with your class? What are you doing wrong?’

I think some people forget that teaching in a special school you aren’t following the NC, you have a class size of 8/10 and you probably have 4 other adults to help you so they are in a much calmer and quieter environment and you are following their individual needs.

This will be classes of 30+, the same massive expectations on you and the children as before but with increasing numbers of really high need children thrown into the mix.

If only autism was so amenable to being categorised, life would indeed be much more straightforward.

My DS was diagnosed with autism at age 3. We went to the Lorna Wing centre privately - practically on his third birthday - because the NHS was not willing to consider any tests until he was older. By the age of 3, DS was wearing a protective helmet nearly 24/7 to prevent self-harm and I'd already been sewing him into a onesie every night (to prevent smearing) for 2 years. He did not sleep, so DH and I took 2 hours at a time to rest from babyhood to about age 7.

He was segregated in nursery because he'd shove and hit the other kids if they got too close or made too much noise. DS had no clue socially and would help himself to toys etc. He also refused - and continues to refuse - to eat more than 5 things. He was not given a place in pre-school so we were asked to leave.

He was then thrown out of his first mainstream school after his Reception year (during which he escaped several times and urinated on a teacher). We already had EHCP by this point so we sent him to the smallest, quietest school in the area, where the poor interactions with peers, and occasional violence, continued and he was educated alone in a windowless cupboard for almost two academic years while I begged the LA for help, and they ignored me.

At age 6 he was diagnosed with ADHD, but has refused to take medication (and there is no option to do it without his knowledge, because liquids/patches are not licensed in the UK). He has also been diagnosed with dyspraxia and SPD - his proprioception is turbo-fucked and at age 9 he cannot even organise himself to cross the road safely.

However, he is able-bodied and - with an IQ of >160 - is not going to meet the totally arbitrary new definition of "disabled" that has been decreed on this thread. He is also ace-ing all his SATS, working at greater depth in all topics and can out-math his father, who is a physics graduate.

I would like to understand, first, how I managed to be such an appalling parent that I buggered up my longer-for DS before his first birthday. (Seriously, if that's what happened, someone needs to harvest my DNA and use it in chemical weapons or something because I must be demonic). Second, if my DS is apparently "not disabled", where would you like him to attend school, since Bridget says he can't remain in the specialist indie that the LA eventually agreed was the only gig in town?

There is no backstory of abuse here btw. DH and are affluent professionals working FT with family help.

Agreed.

We see this all the time with mainstream schools who have rolled out things like Team Teach, but staff are reluctant to use it. They, rightly, didn’t get into teaching to restrain children or have chairs thrown at them, etc etc. So even with the training, it’s not their comfort zone because why would it be.

Teachers in a mainstream setting it seems to me will continue to feel that they’re teaching children who should be in specialist, except now they’ll be told they have to, and there’ll be more of them.

I think LAs are notified when you send an appeal in. I've found they sometimes concede before I've even had the registration letter.

Ridiculous isn't it, but its been overturned thankfully.

I felt that the kids were being failed by constant introspection of their perfectly normal emotions. I think that most kids do best with an "It's not that big a deal, suck it up, get on with it" attitude. My final school was the opposite of this and as a result, 50% of the class were neurotic. They had spent the past 6 years doing an emotional check in every morning. To let the teacher know if they were feeling "fizzy" for example. Whatever the fuck that means. Constant mindfulness sessions and brain breaks. Basically taught that they couldn't cope with stuff. By year 6, they had the emotional resilience of toddlers. Scared to try anything, avoiding anything difficult by playing with lego in the corner, hiding under a desk covered with a sheet, or just walking out. Year 6 ffs! It was ridiculous. SLT and all powerful Senco had royally fucked those kids up. I didn't want any part of it. Add to that a couple who couldn't read or write, several working at a year 1 level, several at year 3, and having no additional adults in the room, it was impossible to teach them anything.

Stop trying the ‘jealous’ thing to shut down conversation, are people who want to curb foreign aid ‘jealous’ of those in developing countries?

Pretending this isn’t a financial issue is ridiculous. Everyone wants £££ more spent in an area that is already grotesquely expensive and rising. But never say where the money will come from.

Yes, it will finish off most of the experienced teachers who have been just about been hanging in there.

I feel very sorry for any new teacher who will have to attempt to learn how to be a mainstream teacher-with all the challenges that brings-whilst simultaneously manage really high need pupils alone. I suspect many won’t make it through the ECT period.

It's ridiculous isn't it this pretence that there is 'jealousy' of disabled children.

Of course there isn't there just isn't any fucking money! People seem determined to just ignore what is fundamentally the biggest issue of all, you can't have what you cannot pay for!

I’ve got to say I do feel sorry for teachers, those in mainstream are going to really struggle. I wonder if the goverment have considered telling schools they will have to employ 4 TA’s like special schools do so that there is enough support on the classrooms?

"Stop trying the ‘jealous’ thing to shut down conversation, are people who want to curb foreign aid ‘jealous’ of those in developing countries?"

Well

"But it’s unfair for some children to receive many many many many times more resources than others."

sounds like jealousy to me.

I feel for all school staff in mainstream, my oldest son is in uni training to become a teacher and works in a school as well.
He sees it on all sides, but a lot of teachers are going to leave if any more is put on them.
The poor sendco at my child's school is run of the ground already let alone if there left to pick up the pieces from this.