I want to ask this somewhre where I might get a range of responses so not asking in SN, ismore a would you agree with this lady thing than a AIBU. Sn kids in mainstream education.

[Peachy]

Someone today whom I respect immensely and regard as kind, told me that in her opinion children with disabilities like dyslexia etc (so ampresuming the whole gamut of SEN - SN) shoudln't be in MS schools because of the effect on the other kids.

She is someone who though not employed by school has access to DS1 (ASD) and ds2 (SEN not sure what) during school time in a volunteer role. I pretty much trust her.

DS3 attends an SNU placement, but I do wonder how many people really share that attitude. My experience and belief tells me that different kids benefit from different settings so parents should have final say (it took me 2 years to get ds3 his place, and I face a battle now to get ds1 into SN Comp placement).

?

Oh ds1's brothers learn a lot about all sorts of important things from having him as a brother (as a stroll through tonight's threads showed me). When hecwas in mainstream (disastrous - a total waste m of over a year if his life) I often heard what a great education in difference and acceptance he was providing for the other kids. Fine but not at his expense thanks.

Children from the local mainstream come into his SLD school - a much better way for him to educate others IMO.

I found out today that there are 88 children in a school of approximately 360 children on the SN register (DS1's school). That is roughly 25% of all the children with some sort of SENs.

Quite apart from the fact that whether or not or not a child is in MS schooling should be considered on the basis of the needs of the child, how on earth could the education system cope if all those children were taken out of MS schools? Where would they go?

Strange, considering the whole range of SN out there that this woman should chose dyslexia to pick on. Of them all, I would have thought that this was perhaps the least problematic of the bunch to deal with if it doesn't come with other behavioural problems.

If anything the fact that DS1 doesn't cause any trouble and gets on with things is a problem more than his SN affecting the rest of the class. He causes no disturbance and sits in the middle of the class getting on with things and perhaps not getting the attention he diserves.

Sickofsocalledexperts post really struck a cord too. That is how my DS is - he is still an innocent as he should be at 9 when so many children are trying to grow up too soon. His teacher said she wished the whole class were like him.

So no, I don't think children with SN should be in SN schools unless they need to be.

I found out today that there are 88 children in a school of approximately 360 children on the SN register (DS1's school). That is roughly 25% of all the children with some sort of SENs.

Quite apart from the fact that whether or not or not a child is in MS schooling should be considered on the basis of the needs of the child, how on earth could the education system cope if all those children were taken out of MS schools? Where would they go?

Strange, considering the whole range of SN out there that this woman should chose dyslexia to pick on. Of them all, I would have thought that this was perhaps the least problematic of the bunch to deal with if it doesn't come with other behavioural problems.

If anything the fact that DS1 doesn't cause any trouble and gets on with things is a problem more than his SN affecting the rest of the class. He causes no disturbance and sits in the middle of the class getting on with things and perhaps not getting the attention he diserves.

Sickofsocalledexperts post really struck a cord too. That is how my DS is - he is still an innocent as he should be at 9 when so many children are trying to grow up too soon. His teacher said she wished the whole class were like him.

So no, I don't think children with SN should be in SN schools unless they need to be.

heqet that bloke at the school gates sounds like one of the parents that would be watching their future beckam at kids football(another nasty experience i would choose to miss)what jerks,why are adults like that perhaps they need a trip back into schools themselves and what sort of shoes were you thinking about?

Yup. Don't know if anyone else is like me, but I've developed a hide like a rhino when it comes to that sort of stuff.

"There are kids with no SN at all who are very difficult to teach - should they be exited for using up too much teacher time too?"

Ohhh Yes Please. Can I make a list of those I feel need a personal home tutor?
When I get my son's grades home, we always look at the behaviour and attitude first, then subject levels. Used to be 3s and 4s, now mostly 1 with some 2 (One is perfection)
That's because his school are committed to the education of sn children and worked in partnership with everyone involved to get it right. And they have. Mainstream and around 1500 pupils.

Her statement is a bit daft though. Of course there are children with SN in mainstream who shouldn't be there as it's do bloody difficult to get specialist provision. My don should never have been in mainstream but we had no choice.

His inappropriate placement didn't affect anyone else - he had a full time 1:1 (from an untrained TA) and rarely got anywhere near another child. It affected him (and the rest of the family) though.

It would be nice if she could understand the effect of inappropriate placements on the child.

There seems to be 2 differing issues here, children with SN and no behavioural issues, and those that do have disruptive behaviour. My DS falls in to latter category, and in my experience that is when you get the massive amount of negativity from other parents. Undertand they want to protect their own children's education, but they should have some empathy, many people with SN children with behavioural issues really would like specialist placements, they just don't exist. Having a child who hides under tables/ runs away from school/ hits himself with objects/ rips their own skin off their arms/ screams etc etc MAY be very disruptive but Christ, don't the playground mafia have any empathy for the parents/ child?? Sadly in my experience, not a bit, the blinkers are on. BTW - I have had none of this behaviour now he is in the correct setting, just goes to show, different needs for different SN children.

Children with SEN like ASD, dyslexia and so on should be in mainstream education. What surprises me on this thread is people describing children who are so aggressive that they are in danger of being expelled and/or seriously harming another child as 'normal' and not an SEN child. Being that aggressive is in itself a special need, surely?

I think that children who have serious emotional and behavioural problems, not because they are autistic but because of their upbringing should not be in mainstream education. Many of these children are in children's homes, serial foster care or with parents but on the at risk register, and often end up getting expelled. It would provide much better continuity of care for those children if they were in boarding schools (as they used to be until the 1980s) with small class sizes, staff who were committed to working with children with behavioural problems, and small house units to live in where the staff care and are there 24 hours a day.

People are constantly saying behaviour in schools has got worse. Well of course it has, because children with serious behaviour problems have been put back into the main stream, and mainstream teachers are not equipped to help them.

It is all very well saying those children should be in the mainstream, but in reality they are expelled or over-represented in struggling schools. We can all agree with inclusion but in reality we fight to keep our children out of the schools that the aggressive kids go to, leaving the poorest children in society to be educated alongside them.

Milly I find that idea quite sad.

another thought,where i live there are three large sn schools within 15mins of each other,do we then split the extremely placid calm children that have serious needs away from the more disruptive children that have serious sn and not forgetting the children that arent able bodied but may also have any of the above mentioned,the childrens needs are so individual that we could never really achieve what i suppose some people think should happen to children with sn we just try our best

when i first read this my thoughts were:

SN children should be in mainstream school if that's what the parents think is best for them. But, unfortunately I do think it can affect the other children, because sadly a lot of MS schools just aren't geared up to cope well with a child with SN. which is wrong.

a friend of a friend has a little boy with general learning delays, who is/was non-verbal. He is in mainstream school and they have done much to accomodate him. He uses special cards (pecs??) and sign language to talk.
the children and teachers have now learned sign language, but he is being kept back a year because he isn't ready to move up to Y1 yet

I can't help but feel that actually, he may have been better in a dedicated SN school where teachers would already have known sign language, and where their specialist skills and knowledge may have helped him come along quicker. I kind of think, why make him struggle to be understood (while teacher learned to sign) when he could have been elsewhere with people who already got him??

But then I am not his parent, so you have to trust that they know best.

ANYWAY, having read most of the thread I have read so many things that I hadn't even thought of. the fact that a MS school full of NT children will still often have those who are aggressive, anti-social, very quiet or just otherwise generally take up a teachers time.
so it's actually no different is it?
And just because a child has SN, doesn't mean that a class full of other SN children will be the best environment for him/her. Thinking now of a child I used to look after as a mother's help who found his SN school stressful at times because of the noise and teh behavioural issues of other students

so, um, yeh. parents know best, but ALL schools ought to be able to acccomodate SN pupils

Goodness, its a balance.

What is your definition of severe EBD? Many local authority care kids need to mix with "normal" people so they don't become over insitutionalised. Putting children in child prisons should not be done likely, unless the child is extremely dangerous and has been properly convicted.

A lot of EBD children are distruptive rather than criminal. They might make it completely impossible to teach a class but not on a par with two young brothers who attacked two boys in Edlington, South Yorkshire.

There is a huge difference between a child who jumps up and down on a desk swearing and a child who is murderous. They need different specialist provision.

Boarding EBD schools do exist for the most disturbed children, but these children need to learn to live in a proper family unit. Sometimes a mixture of weekly boarding and being with foster parents at the weekend is sucessful. They need love and all the things that our own children take for granted.

Saggy locally there are two SLD schools - one is better at dealing with challenging behaviours than the other and the parents tend to choose accordingly. In children with learning disabilities challenging behaviours are not related to agression. My son is not agressive for example but certainly has challenging behaviours.

Milly ds1 has autism and most certainly should not be anywhere near a mainstream school. I dib't think you can really give blanket placements according to diagnosis. Fir him his only chance if inclusion in the community and access to activities others take for granted is specialist schemes and events. Provide an 8 foot wall abd licked doors for example and be doesn't need an adult holding onto him. For him locks give more freedom than open spaces.

Reallytired, I agree. But the schools that used to exist but were mainly shut down, for EB issue children, were not for children who had committed crimes and were not prisons - they were not 'approved' schools.

Children like the Edlington kids would not have been in an EB issue school.

And kids in the EB schools did go to foster homes in holidays and at weekends wherever possible. Many also went back into mainstream education and did not stay in residential school for the whole of secondary school.

SN and non aggressive def main stream. Agression and highly disruptive may require a mix or something more specialist. at dyslexia - My ds (suspected dyslexic) has a dyslexic Learning Support who has two dyslexic sons. She has been brilliant with him. people like that should be on an island with their 'ideals'.

Should have said challenging behaviours are not necessarily related to agression.

Agree with really tired's post.

MillyR I am at your post. I work ina mainstream school and teach children who often have serious EBD difficulties (generally because of very precarious homelives). I see inclusion working everyday. I do a lot of work with the Prince's trust and some of the brilliant programmes they run to support such young people and the idea that these kids should be segregated as you described is shocking.
In my reality I would be happy for my children to go to the inner city comp I teach at, it shows inclusion working, it shows that students along the whole spectrum of SN can attend a mainstream school, access a curriculum and leave in year 11 having achieved thier potential. The teaching and support staff word incredibly hard to make this the reality and I think that as parents and for our children we shouldn't expect anything less.

(sorry if that makes no sense I am exhausted..I know what I am trying to say though!)

I have worked as a special needs teaching assistant in both mainstream primary and secondary and there is a HUGE difference.

A lot of primary schools now have excellent facilities for children with SN and it really does help other children to see that everyone is different. It teaches them patience, tolerance and acceptance. For the children with SN it ensures they are not segregated, they too can benefit enormously from being in mainstream education. They tend to copy the behaviour of others around them at that age, and in special schools often the children will copy the more difficult and challenging behaviour of their peers.

However in secondary school it's a whole new ball game. If your child has severe ATSD then I would possibly reconsider. In my experience those children who were friends with them at primary no longer wish to be associated with them at secondary. The children with SN tend to be put in the bottom classes with the children who have behavioural issues or who simply cannot be arsed. The only things they learn then is how to misbehave.

Not all secondary schools will be like that, some also have excellent facilities for children with SN, but I would check up to see which classes they are in for their chosen subjects.

Some parents are just so determined that their child will have a mainstream education that they are unable to see that their child is not learning anything at all. That their child would be better in a school that teaches them life skills such as how to communicate effectively, how to develop social skills, how to become more independent. There are not many secondary schools that can offer that.

It's a tough decision at secondary and it really does depend on the school and on the child. But at primary I don't see the problem - I see only benefits all round.

Hackney, in reality what you are describing doesn't happen for lots of children. They get expelled from school, or frequently suspended, or spend large periods of time truanting.

Even within your school, many of those children who are cared for within school hours are living outside of school hours in a hellish home life or in a children's home with no continuity of care.

Depends on the child
This is a subject very close to my heart at the moment.My DD2 is in a class of 20 children and 2 of the boys have very serious behavioural issues.Both constantly interrupt the teaching time .One isn't aggressive but has a fixation with long hair and pulls DDs hair and rubs his face on it antyime he can he doesn't mean to hurt the girls (and the TA with long hair who very sensibly wears it up in a bun now) but it is of course horrible,gross,inasive and painful to DD and the other girls to have their hair pulled and snuggled.He also snatches other peoples things.(The other day he was holding on to DDs furry school bag and I could see poor DD looking very tense a TA was sitting beside him trying to gently persuade him to let go gently from him.I marched up and said 'Let go of that its Xs bag' he let go of it straight away.)
The other boy is very distructive ,violent,deliberately breaks things,chucks stuff about and this week painted over lots of childrens artwork on the drying rack.
Neither of these kids should be in a mainstream school because they frighten and upset the other DC and disrupt their education
On the other hand there is a HUGE aspergers boy in DD1s class who says totally inappropriate stuff at the wrong time but is not a danger to other childrens wellbeing or their education.Sop yes fine for him to be there

I'm not sure I agree that children in special schools will copy disruptive behaviour. A lot of the children in my son's school can't copy - they haven't developed imitation skills so they can't copy good or bad behaviour.

If you place a child with significant SN in mainstream (as my son was) then you remove them from their peer group this isolating them. There were a few sweet girls in mainstream who petted him (literally - they would stand and stroke him and pat his hair) but there was no-one there he could form a friendship with. No-one that he was equal to. Yes a lit of people pointed him out to their parents in the playground and be was well known in the school but he didn't have friends. Now he does - in his own way- have friends. There are children he shows me pictures of and children he is pleased to see outside school.

Should just be down to the individual child and common sense imo.

My son is on the autistic spectrum and goes to mainstream. He is the least dissruptive member of the class though and has benefited so much from being in mainstream. He has learnt a lot about social interaction through his peers and has actually made some really good friends. They don't patronize him,they accept him for who he is and recently he went to his first sleep over party (he's 8).
At 3 years old i was told he should not be considerd for mainstream nursery never mind school. These proffs were clearly wrong and it's thanks in part to these other children and parents at his school that accept him as he is and haven't thought he should be placed elsewhere without first giving him a chance that he is now doing so well.
I am not anti SN schools/placements though and if mainstream secondary is not right for him then i will reasess.

I don't think generalizing does anyone any favours and children with SN should be treat as individuals and it be recognized that as such each child may have different needs.

My son's last school report also stated how through my son the other children in his class have become aware of empathy and the class had become a very close unit that the teacher said was a joy to teach !
His presence in his class and school has had a very positive impact.

Society and children could loose a lot if every child with SN was kept away from their environment because it may make life a little more awkward for them. Without learning about additional/other needs then there won't be any understanding which i think is pretty sad as there seems to be little enough understanding as it is.
I really agree with posters last paragraph.

I don't agree with her one little bit but I know some people do. My dd2 has a purely physical disability (thankfully a temporary one though 2 years on we are not feeling it as very temp) and is in a wheelchair at school.

I know there are a couple of mums who also do parent helping in the school who have expressed surprise at the amount of help she gets (support auxiliary to push her about/use of the lift/transport provided from the door of the house not from a general pick up point 15 mins away etc) and have said "wouldn't she be better in a school for children like her?

A friend who also does reading groups in the school told me and I reported it to the head (with my friend coming along quite eagerly supportively).

Cue whole school training for support staff on inclusion!

Hee Hee!