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.

I am sorry OP for not making it clear in this post that I do not think you are being unreasonable. I have written two supportive posts upthread.
At no point have I suggested that I think you think the teacher is "stupid".
I was replying to the poster I quoted. They were guessing the untidy handwriting is due to tiredness. To me, it looks like a native Chinese writer has written it. That's based on my experience of advocating for relatives in multiple settings - hospital, care home, GP surgery etc.
I always write something positive if I write anything negative: I work in a school, and I always assume the subject will see what I wrote.
I totally agree with you that the standard of spoken and written English can be very poor, and that it's particularly difficult when switching between multiple varieties of learner English. Using present tense to talk about past is specific example of confusion. It's a speech milestone for normal English learning.

I don't think it's racist to say that, and I have a lot of practice saying "I did not understand what you said" or "my relative did not understand". I have little patience with allegations of racism: in your child's case they are already trying to make sense of a world that seems perplexing. The school should not be making it harder for them.
I do find that acknowledging positives helps conversations. I say things like "thankyou so much for the lovely way you are caring for my relative. Can I ask you to use the word "jumper" because he does not recognise "pullover" so he is getting cold."

I don't think Makaton, symbol charts, or whatever comm aids can make up for hearing multiple different learner accents. I would question if the staff can clearly understand each other.

With children, each week that goes by is important. I hope you feel supported. Good luck.

Op has made it clear she is not white several times now. And I imagine she would feel exactly the same way about a French white member of staff if they had a poor command of English.

On the subject of French, I myself speak and write French to the same standard as the English in the report from this teacher. If I had a job teaching children with learning disabilities in France, I wonder whether any of their parents would have much patience with gaps in my language skills impacting their children.

Something to think about. I've previously found French adults have little tolerance for my accent!

Probably not if you couldnt coverse with their child and communicate to an accetable standard