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.

How much training do you think can be delivered in 2 days? It won’t cover much. It won’t cover the range of SEN presentations. DS1&3’s EOTAS/EOTIS packages contain more just for their individual needs.

Teacher training for SENd is (or certainly was) woeful.

I completed a PGCE over a full academic year, and we used 2 of the days to go into SENd schools, in just one class so only one set of needs per day, so someone could basically say “here are some disabled kids.”

I vividly remember being told “if you’ve met a child with autism, you’ve met one child with autism” and that “real authority doesn’t need volume.”

That was it. How that would ever have equipped someone for teaching the range of
needs even a mainstream class has, is absolutely beyond me.

TAs are no longer free to do reading interventions and any other mainstream interventions for those children that need them as they are all deployed with SEN children. I have an interventions list that runs to 2 pages long just for the 2 EHCP in my class. I also have another list of children (approx 10 mainstream children) that are looking unlikely to reach age related expectations this year in either maths, reading or both that I am supposed to support and run interventions for. We have identified what is needed for the mainstream children but I cannot physically fit it all in to the day as the main priority is fulfilling our obligations and more importantly the medical needs of the 2 EHCP children. There is no money to employ anyone else. I am leaving and there are currently no plans to replace me. The likelihood is that a TA from another class will have to take on the EHCP interventions and take care of the medical needs but there will be no physical TA in the classroom at all with the children once I am gone.

Every single other politician has told the SNP idiots that this is devastating Scottish education but they just bury their heads in the sand. People that haven’t been personally affected think it’s just not happening. Someone will be killed by a child that everyone warned about. Then there will be an inquest and then questions might be posed. Until then we’re all just waiting, praying its not our kid.

One of my friends has become a teaching assistant in her child’s school purely in the hope that if the child in her child’s class that’s prone to violent outbursts lashes out, she has a chance of protecting her child. It’s truly madness.

I think this post highlights how SEN is so misunderstood even among some working in education.

You say “TAs are no longer free to do reading interventions and any other mainstream interventions for those children that need them as they are all deployed with SEN children.”

Those DC needing reading interventions and other interventions have SEN. They may not have EHCPs, not all pupils with SEN do, but they meet the legal definition of having SEN.

You say “We have identified what is needed for the mainstream children but I cannot physically fit it all in to the day as the main priority is fulfilling our obligations and more importantly the medical needs of the 2 EHCP children.”

Yet those 2 DC with EHCPs are still ‘mainstream children’ in that they are in a mainstream school. ‘Mainstream children’ can still have SEN and EHCPs.

You are lucky then. In most schools now there is no resource available for interventions with children a little behind because all the resource is going elsewhere

And this sounds awfully like as long as your kids are getting what benefits them, you don't really care about anyone else?
That's how a lot of parents feel - they start to care when their child falls on the wrong side of the eligibility threshold.
In a few months if someone turns round and says sorry we can't do those interventions for reading with your daughter now, her needs just aren't high enough and she's coping OK, not enough money to do stuff for kids who are coping .... Suddenly you might feel a bit differently.

I don't know of any local secondary schools that don't have extra help for year 7s who are a bit behind on reading. It saves time and money in the long run, after all.

My son is in primary but his class still does intervention groups too. He does handwriting intervention and maths intervention and also has differentiated maths work when applicable.

I think this is a good point. People appear less tolerant of SEN now as the costs are so enormous our other children’s educations are being detrimentally affected. It isn’t selfish to take a position that is best for your own child - after all, that’s what everyone on this thread is doing.

They will have to save money by offering the anxious ASD profile types an online school as I said earlier, and a basic supervised version of this in person where they need it.

That solves the issue of them not coping in mainstream.

My nephew was behind in both Maths and English his entire life, but doesn’t have a significant enough delay to be diagnosed with anything or get an EHCP.

He had interventions for both; right up to GCSE.

I have delivered reading recovery and phonics interventions, and taken children out to do number work, and sat with secondary kids to develop their handwriting.

Lessons are differentiated by need, all of the children’s needs. We used to have to put on planning the breadth of needs in the class and how many were in each group. Staff are deployed to work with core groups to either enhance learning or scaffold it.

I have a school currently paying £200+ a day for a SATs intervention teacher.

This idea that schools just only focus on children with an EHCP and ignore everyone else is an absolute nonsense.

other children’s educations are being detrimentally affected.

Yet some will, and do, equally complain when DC with SEN are in their DC’s class.

They will have to save money by offering the anxious ASD profile types an online school as I said earlier, and a basic supervised version of this in person where they need it. That solves the issue of them not coping in mainstream.

It really doesn’t. You don’t have a clue. You don’t understand SEN and you don’t want to learn.

Many schools have policy of “Disadvantaged First”. Do those who object to SEN support because it is ‘unfair’ also object to that? It doesn’t apply to my DC, but I don’t begrudge those DC it does apply to and I am not selfish enough to want the policy changed.

What amount the admissions code requiring priority to be given to LAC/PLAC, do people object to that too? Similarly, it doesn’t apply to my DC but I don’t begrudge those it does apply to or want it changed.

The 10 children in my class do not have any form of SEN at all, they have been basically neglected and allowed to fall behind because there is no one to put in a bit of extra support for them. In the past TAs would be running routine catch up sessions for those children who needed a bit of extra help. This would happen in every year group from year 1 onwards. These sessions no longer happen because all TAs are being used to support SEN. A lot of our SEN children do not, as you say have EHCPs, they do however have recognised issues diagnosed or otherwise which require support both inside and outside the classroom. However, there are still children like the 10 in my class that have fallen slightly behind in year 1,2,3 etc and are left to flounder without support. The curriculum is so fast paced now, with little time for consolidation of concepts in the classroom that these children will continue to struggle year on year unless the gaps and misconceptions in learning are identified and addressed quickly. It is these children who are suffering and it will only get worse.

That's not the solution. You can't give children inadequate provision and then say "That'll do them".

If they need interventions and support, they meet the legal definition of having SEN.

This was happening at DD previous primary - so badly that we pulled her out. My friends still have children there and half the class are at least 1 year behind (headteacher told me this) because all TAs have been redirected to SEN.

So everyone is ‘SEN’. Then what?

Non SEN kids get this all the time 🤷‍♀️ so yes they absolutely can.

No, everyone does not have SEN. That isn’t what I said. Stop lying.

My son has fallen behind because of how much time he's had out of school. He doesn't have any learning disabilities but because he's fallen behind to the point he likely won't meet expected standards this year in some areas and is receiving interventions, it is legally classed as a SEN need.

Scotland really should be a warning against inclusion at all costs. From what I can see they pay more per child for education than we do, have worse results and seem to have 40% of chikdren identified as asn somehow and people terrified for thier lives!

I don't think that is the case. You could have a few kids who struggle with a particular concept in a lesson, let's say equivalent fractions, so you pull them out for some extra time on it. That isn't SEN. You might also have a group of higher ability that you want to stretch outside the classroom. That isn't SEN either.

If they've fallen slightly behind, one of two things has happened. Either the teaching wasn't adequately differentiated to ensure that all children could access it, or those 10 children are behind despite adequately differentiated teaching and therefore have SEN, albeit mild.

The mindset in your school is that problem. Those 10 children aren't 'extra' to the 'ones with SEN'. They are part of the ones with SEN. If you need more funding your SENDCO should be applying for more funding. I'm not saying they'll get it, but at least applying.

If it's that bad now, how do you think you'll fare when they try to strip EHCPs?

I'm telling you now, and you can look back on this post in 2035, that exactly what has happened with EHCPs will happen with the new 7 categories of support system. Children will meet the criteria and then the Government of the day will say 'wait .... We didn't expect that.... We need to roll back.'

Children with high needs will still be children with high needs, no matter what you call them or what you categorise them as. The support will have to be there because without it, outcomes for all children will worsen.

Well by this definition both my children are SEN then because at one point or another they both had some form of intervention or catch up session during primary and secondary. Both are at uni one doing a masters the other undergraduate degree in stem subjects.

Your fractions example isn’t what the pp is talking about. They aren’t talking about one lesson/one topic. Stretching higher ability pupils wouldn’t be called an intervention.

Interventions and extra support are “provision that is additional to, or different from, that made generally for others of the same age” i.e. the legal definition of SEP. If they need SEP to be made for them, they have SEN.