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.

He will not engage with PECS or AACs.

He uses speech but is a gestalt language processor so learns in chunks of language that he hears and repeats and then breaks down to use in other contexts.

If I were you, I would wait to see if the setting's staff is a hindrance to his progress. If you really cannot understand what is written in his communication book, you are ask for clarification. In the meantime, if he is enjoying school and is well cared for, the level of English of his carers should not be your primary concern. I too have worked with pre-verbal children and the language used with them was simple and supported with Makaton, pictures, gestures and facial expression. I would be more concerned about their ability to communicate with your child in the most effective ways to help him, rather than fretting about their ability to speak and write fluent English.

It sounds like you’re saying it doesn’t matter because he won’t learn to ‘talk’ conversationally anyway?

I think I feel catfished. His class last year was wonderful. He was progressing and I saw evidence weekly. I’m not sure I’m seeing that this year but it’s early in the academic year so maybe my expectations are unreasonable.

Of course its impirtant my son is 16 and totally non verbal he has lilmited understanding but he can understand speech
Surely its even more important for these children to be able to understand their teachers.

No, I’m not saying it doesn’t matter.

Deaf people can be taught to speak English (other languages are available) but won’t learn it just from adults around them modelling it. (The deaf guy who teaches my bsl course is like this).

other disabilities can mean that adults modelling English is not enough for the child to learn English on the normal trajectory and the op has confirmed this is in fact the case.

most children learn to speak English simply from conversations with their parents and then later caregivers and other adults.

op has confirmed her child is a gestalt processor so for example has learnt the phrase “food’s up” to mean dinner and uses the whole phrase for any kind of food.

this sort of processing is usually a feature of autism (other disabilities are available) where echolalia evolves into hearing and repeating phrases in particular situations.

developing communication in this case often involves a total communication approach where signs, pecs cards and vocalisations (English words) are used to signal particular situations.

You mentioned above about complaints

Honestly, you do what you need to do, I hope it works out well and the response is positive for you and ds, as you're just trying to do right by him.

For me, we've met many teachers with different heavy accents so their English isn't always as understandable as someone without an accent, but I don't think it matters. The main thing is she's safe and looked after and taught her social skills.

Actually the English teachers at her old school werent very kind to her and the Irish, Geordie, spanish, Iranian and Nigerian accented teachers I've met now seem better 🤷‍♀️

I get the worry though, it's not an easy journey advocating for our kids.

Oh my. The teacher cannot possibly be qualified- this is horrible. Grammar and spelling and it looks like a 6 year old's handwriting. At first I thought it was a TA- some are immigrants and are learning English while working (you find them in all jobs that are low qualified with shitty pay as care work, ta, cleaning etc.).

Professionally and privately I have met many SEN teachers and they have all been highly qualified professionals whereas the TAs can vary. I don't think this teacher has a diploma of any sorts - or perhaps one bought online. I wouldn't accept this level of incompetence- YANBU

I have to log off so not ignoring anyone. Hope noone was offended, we just want the best for our kids don't we.

Oh I see sorry I got the wrong end of the stick

This is what I find confusing about it too.

The professionals I’ve met in my time working in education, and then in my son’s SENd education journey, are qualified and then some.

I’m not quite sure how someone with that level of language ends up teaching SENd children.

As someone with hearing difficulties, I know only too well the effort and focus that it takes for me to understand someone with unusual sentence construction or an accent that blends sounds or omits some consonants. I am constantly piecing together meaning from the incomplete input that I'm getting. It's exhausting. I have been accused of being racist but it's nothing to do with racism, it's because the sounds I need to hear are not being clearly enunciated.

OP's child is already disadvantaged and he's having to work much harder than most children to understand what's being said to him. Children like this need as much clarity and precision as possible. Sentence structure and accents that might be acceptable for most children are absolutely not acceptable for someone who's already working as hard as they possibly can. Most children will have spare capacity for dealing with something a bit out of the ordinary. He will not.

This is rubbish. We have a huge amount of fluent english speakers in the uk who want work, there are no actual required qualifications to be a TA. The reason they can't fill roles is it is not paying enough fof people to live off.

This writing is poor. There's no structure/syntax, spelling mistakes in simple words. This is not a high enough level of written english to be working as a teacher.

There are requirements to be in ratio for teaching assistants, actually, you have to be L2 or L3 cache qualified in most instances or the class is out of ratio.

Some SENd settings use unqualified LSAs, particularly academies, but basic English is still a requirement.

We advertise at £15-£16 an hour for SENd support and still can’t fill roles, unless with overseas candidates, none of whom would be in post if they didn’t have suitable English skills.

It’s a tough job, not everyone wants to do it, and unfortunately we do find that for some roles - UK nationals want to do it even less.

I experienced a similar concern when my Autistic son was at a small forest school preschool and at the time had moderate hearing loss and a speech delay. I was supporting him to settle in and was having to repeat questions a certain staff member was asking him because he didn't understand her. She was actually only there temporarily so I didn't get to see if he would have got accustomed to her or not. They did have some really nice interactions though and her warmth and enthusiasm was evident through her tone of voice and facial expressions. I liked her more than the person who was supposed to be his keyworker later on but didn't actually spend any time with him. I appreciate neither of these is ideal but if I'm thinking about my own son I would accept some compromises on progress if relationships were warm and positive and he was happy. He's not happy currently (mainstream) which is contributing to my feelings here.

At the same time, if your son isn't happy or you feel standards are so poor that they wouldn't pass an Ofsted inspection, or that the teacher isn't suitably qualified I think you are right to question it.

Your expectations aren’t unreasonable OP, but they are unrealistic.

My next steps are to speak with the head and find a way to work with the school to improve his experience. I don’t know what that looks like but it’s certainly not marching in and demanding he’s moved ir people are sacked etc

How do you work with the school to get all teachers to have clear English? If the school had the option of hiring teachers who all spoke good, clear English then they’d do it, but they don’t. So what are you expecting ‘working with them’ to actually mean? Are you going to offer to pay for more English training for teachers? Are you going to offer to provide it yourself? Or are you going say you want to ‘work with them’ while actually expecting them to solve an impossible problem?

So schools should only employ white, English staff from the home counties? This thread is outrageous. People are allowed to have accents.

I would 100% not raise this viewpoint with the school if I were you. You need to get out more.

A variety of things could be considered:

His last class had 4 TAs all of whom spoke good English. Could they redistribute them?

Is there another class he could join?

Could he have more SALT input during the day?

Adjust his EHCP and obtain funding for a TA who follows him through the school?

I don’t have any demands, I just want to see what can be done with what they have.

No. His last teacher was black and she was brilliant. One of his TAs was a muslim woman with an accent but excellent spoken English.

I am not white - the family who raised me are not white and not English.

That is not at ALL what I am saying.

Literally nobody is saying that.

They’re saying that children should be taught by people who they can understand, who have a decent grasp of spoken English. Whether it’s their first language or not.

I employ education staff for a living. They all, without fail, speak clear unbroken English. Including those who are from overseas.

Expecting your child to be able to engage with the people teaching them, is not an outrageous idea.

Thank you for this viewpoint. It’s completely valid and has given me a different way to think about the situation.

Please point out where the Op said that ?
You cant becsuse she didnt
Its a basic expectation that Qualified teachers should have fluent English and a good grasp of Grammar
Or do you think it doesnt matter because the children are disabled?

Yes. And there is no way that the "teacher" is qualified. @Merryoldgoat I would ask the head about qualifications required to teach if I were you.

I'd guess that's exactly what she means. It's amazing how the needs of disabled people always come last.