SEND education issue for non-verbal child - standard of English in the classroom.

[Merryoldgoat]

I’m am extremely conflicted and finding it really hard to know if my opinion is reasonable or utterly disgusting.

My younger son is 8. He is pre-verbal with ASD and is in a specialist school with a focus on communication needs, so all of the children have SALT and OT input. He has been there since March. His first (half) year was excellent. His teacher and lead TA were superb and I saw progression regularly.

His new class is concerning me. Now I suspect some people will think I’m racist or bigoted but I am genuinely not sure what to do. There is a classroom team of 4 - 1 teacher and 3 TAs for 8 children so it’s high input. Not a single teacher or TA speaks English to a high level. They are all heavily accented and their written and spoken English is not to a level I would expect to be acceptable in a classroom.

The standard of writing in his communication book is concerning; there are at least three contributors, none of whom can write appropriately in English.

After a conversation with his teacher on Friday I am still concerned. I couldn’t entirely understand what he said to me, owing to both accent and grammar.

I feel that for children with significant learning disabilities around speech and language it’s a reasonable expectation that they have clear English in the classroom. Is this unreasonable? Am I being disgusting?

To be clear: I am non-white, I’m a second generation immigrant, I am not racist but I’m starting to feel utterly unable to know how best to deal with this and advocate for my child whose education is suffering (I believe).

I work in education (not a teacher) - I know it’s stretched and stressful and hard and thankless. I’m not wanting to add to the school’s burden but I’m worried for my child.

If you want more context, for anyone who remembers my little boy is the subject of the long-running ‘my son just called me mummy’ thread.

Happy to answer questions.

OP, I have come across similar in health and care. Lovely people but with accents and/or language use that the recipients of the care struggled with. I remember one incidence where a person with some mild cognitive deterioration got very upset because he said the carer was calling him "a spaceman" when in fact they were asking for "a specimen" ie a urine sample. the carer hadn't recognised that they were being misunderstood and the situation just spiralled until a second carer got involved and sorted it out. Difficult but I don't know what the answer is. Yes I think you should raise it.

You absolutley should be able to raise this aa an issue its not racist to worry about poor communication
My son should be having four overnight respites a month ( he isnt for reasons i wont go into )
His key worker is polish so English isnt her first language and whilst she does have a noticable accent her spoken and written language is excellent and i have no concerns with her communication with my son
You will have proof of the poor written language with the communication book.

You are absolutely not unreasonable to want your child to be taught and cared for by someone with a good standard of English and for them to be able to speak clearly enough that they can be understood.

It is very sad in this country that we can no longer raise issues with understandability without been seen as racist or discriminatory. It should be a basic requirement of anyone applying to work with vulnerable people (children/ SEN/ elderly/ in education or healthcare) that they are able to speak a good standard of English, clearly and can be easily understood - this also goes for heavy regional accents.

We have a similar issue with elderly grandparents accessing healthcare, my 90year old grandpa is unable to understand his consultant for his bladder cancer, my father went with him and they really struggled to understand the diagnosis and treatment offer due to his very strong accent and poor English. It made consenting to procedures difficult and he very much felt like they didn't really know what was happening. My DH's 92 year old grandmother also struggles in her care home with some of the staff with very strong accents and poor English skills.

Have you seen a slowing down in his progress since joining the class? That would be an issue for me.

It’s hard to say as his progress has always been spiky, but that is my feeling.

Issue is low pay and very hard work. Brits don't want these jobs.

As it is maintained, I would think OK to assume they are trying their best to recruit the best people but are limited by the pool applying.
An adult with limited language could maybe improve, speak slower, go on courses to improve it? I am just thinking about how you could raise this diplomatically with SLT. If there is an issue, further qualifications could help.

If they all spoke with one accent it would be less difficult, but switching between English accents based on Urdu, Cantonese, Arabic, Spanish - it's hard enough for an adult to understand.
It does occur to me that in settings like SEN classrooms, A&E wards, and care homes it's rare for an English language learner to hear Standard English, which must compound the problem.
No brilliant ideas here, only sympathy.

I completely understand your concerns but I don't know what the solution is since not many people want that job in the first place. It's really, really tricky.

All teachers and TAs need to have very clear well understood English. It shouldn’t even matter if it’s a Sen school or not. If you cannot understand then you cannot learn it’s really that simple.

It’s even worse though because your son then does have communication issues. I’m not sure how you manage to word this though.

Same in medical settings. When I took our oldest daughter to the hospital a few months ago I could barely understand the nurses. Ended up just smiling and nodding lots till we got to the consultant.

Or training Brits but then not employing them.. there's many reasons.

Primarily lazy Brits.

https://www.workrightscentre.org/publications/2025/migrant-workers-and-the-national-minimum-wage-our-submission-to-the-low-pay-commission-consultation-2025/

We have so many young people unwilling to work or crippled by medicalisation of normal anxiety. We should actively encourage them into paid employment. Carrots and sticks.

You can't carrot and stick people into working as teachers and nurses. Or good luck.

This is entirely untrue. My daughter, at preschool, picked up language, pronunciation, grammar from the staff who worked there and it was not at all clear and correct. To the point that she came home one day and said “ah wis pure soakin”. It made us laugh but we did spend a lot of time correcting her grammar (I done this, are yous ready, ahm needin a drink). This did continue in to primary school, and many of the written communications that come home from school, even now in high school, is littered with spelling and grammar mistakes.

It has never occurred to me to complain about any of this because it is easily corrected. My daughter now speaks, writes and spells beautifully so it clearly hasn’t been a problem.

If my child was non verbal but was learning to communicate, I wouldn’t care about how it sounded or was written. Finding TA staff is incredibly difficult. It is a minimum wage job, done with so little training or support. We’ve had some absolutely hideous support assistants, and some who are brilliant. The only difference is whether they care about the children they look after. If the only problem is with how they speak but they are otherwise doing a brilliant job, don’t even think about making a complaint.

What a load of nonsense.

You should raise it, ask to speak to his SLT as well. If I were you, I would focus on specific obstacles, not just being generally unhappy because of something that might happen.

1. Eg has there been an issue where your misunderstanding of the message in the communication book led to a bad situation? have you had to call the school and say “I can’t understand what this means and that impacts on my son negatively.
2. look at his communication targets for the term and ask how they are teaching towards them. There will be a range of inputs, verbal, visual, tangible objects, audio visual, being used to support your DS receptive understanding.

Also, You will only know he is not understanding them if you test it.

Weird how people only seem to complain about it when the person is an immigrant though.

My mum always whines about how she doesn’t understand someone either on the phone or in person because they spoke with an accent, but it’s never white people. She worked with a French guy who spoke heavily accented English, never had a problem there. Her Italian neighbours have really strong Italian accents and speak really fast. She has never noted that as a problem. My cousins wife has a really strong Belfast accent that gets stronger with every drink, mum can follow every word. But, the Nigerian priest at her church, oh he is soooo difficult to understand. 🤷‍♀️

Yes but your child is not non verbal and could make herself understood
Its not about regional difference its about effective communicstion
If the TAs are unable to communicate with these children how can the childrens needs be met?

and they are all going to be highly educated? I'm not seeing how forcing young NEETS into SEN schools with vulnerable non-verbal children is the answer.

I think it was a broader point about immigrants working these jobs because we have so many NEETs and Brits that don’t want to do it. Most of them do it for a VISA, ultimately most people just want to get paid and their job doesn’t stem from a burning passion.

Whilst it may be a small issue and humourous to you. It is actually an issue. Especially where someone is relying on you for language development, building language skills and education.

You would not have been unreasonable at all to raise it with the school.

I worked in a very diverse outer London primary where we had staff from every corner of the globe. We had some very strong accents, some very heavy dialect and pidgin English. When we got a new headteacher, they did quite a few staff meetings about being very mindful of our spoken English in school, making sure we were speaking standard English in the school and teaching time and making sure we spoke slowly and clearly.

Of course you’re not being racist to expect your child’s teachers to be able to speak, read and write English. I’m surprised tbh that they have been allowed to teach in the UK. Don’t you need at least gcse English to be a teacher in the Uk? I would complain and I would contact my local MP to clarify the qualifications adults actually need to have to be authorised to work with children. This is shocking tbh.

Where do you live? I've had 3 DC go through/going through school and I've never experienced one teacher or TA with poor English. There have been teachers of a different ethnic background but always with very clear English. It's very unlucky for all 4 staff members to have poor English. Are there lots of staff at the school with poor English or have they all just been put together? If it's the latter that sounds like poor planning from the school leaders and also should be an easy enough fix for school to spread them across classes and ensure there is at least one staff member with clear English.
Are there not standards for teachers when it comes to English? I'm a social worker and being fluent in English is a standard required for registration.

Quite the contrary, one of the care home staff DH's grandmother struggles to understand is from the Scottish Highlands. Lovely person but incredibly strong accent and still uses a lot of highland slang to describe things out of habit.

Similarly, I've really struggled to understand someone from Liverpool on the phone when sorting out my banking and it made it very difficult to work out what was being said.

I worked with a cockney for years and struggled to understand her at times as her cockney accent was very thick and she loved using cockney rhyming slang in conversation.

Good standard English and understandable communication requirements should not just be for immigrants or those from overseas. It should be across the board. It should especially be the case when working with those who are vulnerable in some way - child/ elderly/ sen or working in a job where it is important the other person understands you - healthcare, financial services, education.