Is this usual for primary school?

[LollyPopLouie]

Ds is 6. He goes to a mainstream school with 60 kids over 2 classes. In his class there are 3 children with 121 support so the class is busy. In the other class there are 2 children with 121 so overall 5 over the 60 kids. Ds and other kids have had some issues with violence towards them. The 121 staff I'm not sure if they're able to control the kid they support. Is it usual for the needs in mainstream to be so heavy ?

@LollyPopLouie That would be high in schools I know. However more behaviour SEN behaviour is seen in deprived areas. Schools don’t often pay for 1to1 as it’s expensive. There probably aren’t any special school places and many were closed after integration became the mantra. If the dc are disturbing everyone else, the school needs to consider how to manage this. Other dc must be kept safe.

It is also still (thankfully) up to the parents to accept or decline an offered school place.
I'm guessing there are parents who are uninvolved enough to not send their child to the setting offered and then social care might get involved but that is rather different to "refusing all the places offered".

Talk to the school OP, but make it about your child as they can't speak to you about childen that aren't yours. What are they doing to keep your child safe, what can they do to keep them safer.

It sounds like for once their might be reasonable support in place in the classroom. More supporting adults in the classroom does give more options to allow them to step in earlier, this is really dependant though on being able to see when a child is getting overwhelmed and stepping in with the appropriate support.

Sounds normal proportions.
DS has a 121 altho she's more a class TA these days.

N uses her as a 121 a lot, awaiting a possible place in a Special Needs school.
M started with very little English, and behavioural problems. Still has the latter.
M needs some 121 time although this has lessened as he's got older.
T was only with us a few terms until he got a place as a Special Needs School. English also wasn't first language. He came with a 121 and she left when he did.
F doesn't require a 121 but does have issues with his behaviour.

Class of under 30 (it usually sits around 27 but there's a fair degree of flux)

Incidentally, its all boys.

The girls tend to mask better and get diagnosed a lot later. Many around the time high school starts and.the wheels fall off. In my DDs year 6 there's about 80 kids. I know 1 boy who is Autistic and two girls who are. Im sure there's more. I know of 3 boys who are disruptive, I dont know details, and several girls who have MH issues including one with an eating disorder and one who's a bully.

Yes, there was a white paper to reduce the number of ehcps and SEN places. In the SEN school I'm a governor at, we have closed out assessment nursery. That 14 pre school places where we would assessed and placed the most severe and profound children. They will be going into mainstream settings. All in the name of inclusion. But it's purely budget cuts. It's the wrong environment and most of these kids parents will not be happy either.

@IncessantNameChanger When I was working in education in the early 90s, we had many parents desperate for inclusion. Most of this was fuelled by the Warnock report and the 1981 Education Act 10 years earlier. Many did not want dc separated from peers by going to a special school. Some parents were dead against it and we had to make a lot of effort to persuade them. Schools did exclude too! Especially dc whose behaviour they struggled with. We have so many more dc diagnosed with sen it’s difficult to see how schools can cope without a new programme of building special schools. Money given to schools for sen (which used to be held in LA central budgets) isn’t spent on sen.

@TizerorFizz I'm not sure the vast majority of non verbal kids with ASD think mainstream would be the best option. My dd is right at the cut off of being diagnosed with a higher than adverage IQ and all her school have to offer is being excluded from class.

I see that the vast majority of parents deny their child's needs, that's true and always has been. But it's the severity of needs now going into mainstream. A child that can't talk I'm not sure those oarents think mainstream is right.

The parents in denial is a never ending tale. I had two mums in SEN school asking why I though my son had ASD. Go figure. They are actually the happy parents with low worry thresholds.

Totally normal, you’re lucky that each child has a one to one, in some schools they share due to budget/staffing issues.

@IncessantNameChanger I do agree. The high needs of dc in mainstream is not acceptable. To anyone. It’s the area where we need most money spent. My LA did not close special schools. Lots of LAs did. I’m not sure it’s been helped by LAs having to give all money to schools either. However the notion of inclusion really doesn’t work for far more than we ancknowledge and it is trying to provide for complex needs on the cheap.

The high needs of dc in mainstream is not acceptable
Why? Why can't children with SEN have a mainstream education?
Children with SEN aren't a problem to be shelved and put away so other families don't have to see them.
When the movement to inclusion started, they noticed huge improvements for children with Down Syndrome now they were being educated in mainstream settings. It's not up to parents of other children to decide how a child with SEN should be educated.

@drspouse I agree. The more I look round special provision, the more I think mainstream needs to be put under less stress, so that every child is given a real chance in mainstream.

I see that the vast majority of parents deny their child's needs, that's true and always has been.
Good grief. You're joking, right? Those of us who have battled and battled to get our children's needs taken seriously and you come along and say that?

We had the school on our side for DS ADHD diagnosis but he also has dyspraxia and anxiety - the NHS had no clue how to diagnose dyspraxia and when he was 4 and couldn't even draw a straight line they just said "oh he'll grow out of it". Turns out he's at the 0.1st centile i.e. out of every 1000 children, 999 are more coordinated than him. Same with anxiety. Oh he's not anxious. He's just hiding behind you because he's playing up and he doesn't feel like being in school. Bring him back when he feels like behaving.

Other parents do actually expect their child to be educated without facing danger and disruption. Inclusion is absolutely not right for all SEN dc. Not remotely. You have to recognise the difficulties of class management and some dc need far more help that a special school can offer. I didn’t mention DS but behaviour is the obvious one. There also used to be sen behaviour and nurture units for part of the school week and lots of expert outreach behaviour management advice from the special schools. We have thrown a lot of good provision away because inclusion rules for too many dc and they don’t thrive.

Really interesting subject, and very worrying. I wondered if I could ask a question, do those with experience of educating feel that there has been an increase in children with SEN over recent years?

If I look back at my primary school days I don’t remember any disruptive children. Sure there were some naughty kids but never any physical issues or 1-2-1 care. We had large classes of up to 33 children. It wasn’t great but never as described in the thread (unless of course I simply didn’t notice)

Is it that there were more specialist facilities then, so those children were not in mainstream school (it was a large village but I can’t imagine where the nearest specialist school would be, at least an hour away and it was mid-Tory years so I can’t imagine great funding), or has there been an increase in children with SEN, or perhaps a mix of both?

@SaltyGod As you can see from my posts, I believe far less dc had behaviour SEN than now. Other sen were addressed but the dc were not disruptive. Warnock thought 20% of dc could have sen but that their needs could be met and this figure would fluctuate.

When I was at school, we had 39 in the class. No one behaved badly, however the population has grown and so has the school population. Hence you will see more sen children. We had a couple who could barely read or write in y6 though. Both needed far more help then they got which was a sen teacher taking them out of class. I’m going back many many years though.

As I said earlier, inclusion was a convenient green flag to close special schools. Our LA special schools staffed at 1:6. So you can see the expense and why some LAs thought help in classrooms was “better”. Certainly cheaper. My LA didn’t close any schools but we always needed more spaces and more for certain SEN diagnoses as these grew and grew and more info was gained on how educational
needs could be met.

Plus many parents were not that engaged. Quite a few parents were very low achieving themselves. They didn’t engage with behaviour strategies and there was work even if you didn’t achieve much. They wanted dc to be happy and not have to worry about homework and certainly didn’t pay for specialist reports. So loads more diagnosis now.

Also, there’s a difference between social ,emotional, mental health needs and autism for instance. Many chn with ASD do very well in mainstream with 1:1 support( if lucky enough to get it) but we struggle at our school with the former problem in several chn and parents that have similar problems themselves. It’s not all about educated parents fighting for the best setting for their chn.

Yes, autism often comes under social communication needs, rather than semh. Just like being blind is a different primary need. No primary need is "better" or "worse" or more or less deserving than another.

What are you trying to say about children with SEMH needs, @43ontherocksporfavor

Not sure what you mean @startatthegin I haven’t said anything about chn with semh.

My DS' 1-1 is beneficial for the class. He has her as he needs help accessing the material, but once he's got it he practises independent work and she can help other kids (i am fine with this). He and she are obvs not disruptive as a lot of parents are surprised who she is and that he needs her.

In the 90s he probably would have been the class clown/daydreamer who didnt learn anything. We are so lucky to have got the ehcp and the reason we have it is pure good fortune tbh.

"but we struggle at our school with the former problem in several chn and parents that have similar problems themselves"

You know many sen run in families?

You obviously have something to say about SEMH as a primary need, so please, do tell us what you're getting at? @43ontherocksporfavor

I’m not going to comment anymore on this thread as my posts are being twisted.

This ^. I work in a mainstream school and we have several members of staff trained in “Positive Handling”. Some of them work directly with the children prone to violence and others are available to attend when called on.

Unfortunately some parents are unwilling to accept that their violent, non verbal, 8 year old child isn’t going to wake up one morning with the same abilities as his non SEN peers and then when they do accept their child has a need there aren’t the places for them.

Education in this country is in serious crisis but to fund it properly will take tax increases. (Same as the NHS).

I think it is important to remember there are a significant number of SEND children who do well in mainstream school, particularly when the adults supporting them are well supported, and throughout my 30 years in the classroom I have seen many children with a wide range of needs succeed in mainstream.
However, there has been a steady increase in children with a greater range of needs now, often accompanied with challenging behaviour. When you combine this with the cuts to school budgets for over a decade it is a recipe for a stressed and stretched education system in which nobody benefits.

Good - I'm glad you're giving up. Your post aren't being twisted. You just don't know what you're talking about and you're being called out by people who do.