Wrongly classed as having special needs?

[DinahRod]

The article here

"In all, 1.7 million children in England are identified as having special educational needs. The vast majority come from disadvantaged homes. In three per cent of cases (250,550), the need is obvious and acute, such as blindness or deafness, and they receive the help they need speedily.

"Christine Gilbert, chief executive of Ofsted and chief schools inspector, said: "We found that schools are identifying pupils as having special educational needs when they just need better teaching and pastoral support.

"If they had been identified better in the first place, their needs wouldn't be so acute later on. More attention needs to be given to identification."

She added that there was a "poor evaluation at all sorts of levels of pupils' needs".

"With over one in five children of school age in England identified as having special educational needs, it is vitally important that both the way they are identified and the support they receive work in the best interests of the children involved.

"Higher expectations of all chilren, and better teaching and learning, would lead to fewer children being identified as having special educational needs."

The review urges schools to analyse the effectiveness of its teaching ? rather than put in for extra support ? when a child falls behind in class."

[GettinTrimmer]

"I think she is mixing up SEN and SN personally"

That makes it a bit clearer Bramshott. She must be talking (1 in 5) about the vast number of children who have been identified as needing extra help in the classroom.

[spiritmum]

Just reading back and I can see I haven't put it well. What I mean is that if a child is disruptive in the way some kids can be when they aren't engaged at school or are dealing with change at home or whatever, is there a culture that diagnosing SEN means that there becomes less of an expectation that the behaviour will be sorted out?

I'm not doubting fro a moment that many children do need emotional support btw, I'm just referring this back to what my cousin was taught about 80% of children being abused in some way and therefore having SEN.

[GettinTrimmer]

Thanks as well Claw, my ds was SA special needs and the school have been great with him, identifying he needed help very early on, which they did between themselves with LSA/ELSA/SENCO and he did progress.

That's clarified things for me a little, I though the inspector was very vague on the BBC Breakfast News this morning.

I agree Claw this is unhelpful and more help needed in classroom for children who have a 'special need' for coping in that environment.

[paisleyleaf]

"The numbers said to need less intensive support have soared while the school population has declined ? from 1.16 million to 1.47 million (or from 14 per cent to 18.2 per cent of the school population) in the past eight years."

eh? The numbers are all over the place. Since when has 14% to 18.2% been a decline?

[Claw3]

Gettin, the report is very vague and worded in such a way as some might interpret it to mean that children are being over-diagnosed with disabilities. Extremely misleading.

Pediatrician's are the only people who can diagnosis a disability, not teachers.

Nice to hear that your ds is progressing

[MamaChris]

paisley I think the journalist has been unclear in many places. It would have been better worded as:

"the numbers said to need less intensive support have soared (14% to 18.2%) while the school population has declined".

This article is clearer:

"While the number with the most severe challenges has gone down since 2003, the number identified as having milder problems has risen from 14% to 18% of all pupils in England in the past seven years."

[DinahRod]

The DFES have made available some limited training for teachers to become more specialised e.g. re dyslexia as presumably rather than buying it in, they want schools to go more 'in-house'/do it on the cheap. The flaw with this is that support for SEN requires intensive 1-2-1 or small group work of about an hour a week and schools with budget restraints won't free up costly teachers to do this and teachers now have more contact time in front of classes of 30+. Even skilled TAs who would ideally be placed to do this are thought too expensive. It only works for instance in my father's school where they ring-fence the SEN budget and have a highly specialised dept.

[DuelingFanjo]

Doesn't this mean that those kids who do come from disadvantaged homes and who are in need of SN support might just be left with no support at all!?

[paisleyleaf]

Thanks Mama, I can see that now.
The piece is so badly put together.

[purits]

paisleyleafeh? The numbers are all over the place. Since when has 14% to 18.2% been a decline?

The whole school population has declined (8.3m to 8m, by my calculation) but the SEN population has increased in absolute terms (1.16m -> 1.47m) and percentage terms (14% to 18.2%).

[purits]

x-posts.
The article seems badly worded. Here is the BBC article instead.

[purits]

X-posts.
The article seems badly worded. Here is the BBC article instead.

[Claw3]

Dueling, exactly. It seems they are stating that only children with statements have a real need. While then making statements near impossible to get.

A win, win situation for the government and saving money.

[OrmRenewed]

I heard this on R4 this morning. So did DH. He's a teacher in a special school and he just laughed. He has children who hit, bite, scream, throw punches and chairs - but clearly they have all been misdiagnosed and should be in a mainstream class

And IME (not mine admittedly) it's very hard to get extra funding for children with SEN - which is why schools are reluctant to acknowledge them more often than not.

[OrmRenewed]

And as the guest on Today said, the children with these problems 30yrs ago would simply have failed. Much more acceptable obviously.

[prettybird]

I have a friend whose dd3 has a genetic syndrome that meants that she is clumsy, has no sense of danger and will never be able to live without support. It's a little known genetic condition that means that she is very sweet but will be child-like forever.

Because of excellent support from home and school, she has actually done much better educationally than anyone expected (she has global developmental delay? - forgive me if I don't get all the terminolgy right) and is actually reading and writing to very nearly her age - but all that has happened is that that means every year she and the school have to fight for the extra support that she needs to keep her safe. At primary school her wee friends knew to watch out for her - but in the bigger environment of a secondary school, that won't be possible.

My friend is having to resort to threatening the LEA that if her dd suffers an accident becasue of the lack of supervision, she will hold it responsible as the statement clearly shows that she is not capable of taking responsibility for herself.

How many kids like that who don't have articulate GPs for parents who know the system end up without the support that they need.

[MamaChris]

Claw, but it their report, OFSTED do criticise the current problems with statements:

"Often [parents] saw an SEN statement as a guarantee of additional support for their child. But inspectors found that the identification of a special need or disability did not reliably lead to appropriate support for the child concerned...In some cases, repeated and different assessments of a child threw up a time-consuming obstacle to progress rather than a way for effective support to be provided, the report said."

I think that with all these children being identified as SEN (1 in 5!) the resources, which are thin already, are potentially being spread too thinly. They need to be concentrated on the children who have the greatest needs and who can benefit from defined assistance.

I was moved to a special school during primary (= a portacabin where we did colouring in) because my school said I wasn't able to keep up in the classroom. My mum fought hard to get me into a better (mainstream) school, where teachers bothered to try and catch my attention, and lo and behold, I caught up. Ended up with the best exam results in the school at 18. I don't think I had special needs, I think I was just a bored child being ignored by teachers who therefore played up. So I do have some sympathy with the idea of over labelling of SEN.

[Lougle]

It is no surprise that the rates of children with the 'most extreme needs' have declined - these will be the statemented children.

To get a statement, a parent has to jump through hoops:

1. Get past the teachers/head teacher/SENCO at school, who will tell them what they have been told by the LA. "Statements are only for children who are at least 2/3/4/8 years behind..." "There are lots of children worse than yours"
   
   
2. Get past LA propoganda "we don't statement anymore" "We use IPAs/IPF/CRISP/API now" "Only physical/only sensory/only ASD get statements"
   
   
3. Apply to the LA, who then have 6 weeks to decide whether to even agree to assess your child.
   
   3)Go through assessment process, in which professionals are pressurised to be vague and non-specific and are told that they are not allowed to give opinions on educational needs because they are 'health'.
   
   
4. Get refused a statement - appeal
   OR
   Get proposed statement and weed out vague and unenforceable terms such as
   
   'regular' - isn't the Olympics regular, once every 4 years.
   
   -'opportunities' - well you all have the opportunity to go to Eurodisney, but most can't afford it.
   
   -'access to' - vague, doesn't mean you'll actually get it.
   
   And so on. This can take weeks, with the LA arguing each and every ammendment.
   
   
5. Get statement. Challenge school each and every time they don't provide the specified provision.
   
   
6. One year later, go through similar during the Annual Review, knowing that even a small amount of progress by your child could see them stripped of the help that got them there.
   

[Claw3]

Mama, of course they criticised statements, they dont want anyone to have one!

What they are saying is dont bother with a statement as assessments are time-consuming. Its the Government who make the process time consuming, by insisting on assessments before a statement is given.

If the government were already providing effective support, no one would need to apply for a statement!

You attended a special school or a portacabin in a main stream school?

[shimmerysilverglitter]

Oh didn't realise this was here, just started a thread in SN Children. Will have a look at this one.

[Claw3]

Lougle, i would also add.

1. How long the whole process takes, how time consuming it is.
   

1. How much money parents have to spend on private reports/assessments.
   

1. Parents literally have to become experts in Law etc.
   

1. Parents literally have to become experts in exactly what difficulties their child has.
   

1. There must be so many children who actually need statements, where their parents dont have the time, the money or the knowledge to get one.

[MamaChris]

Claw, we're interpreting this differently, I think. I understood that in criticising the current process for getting a statement as tood difficult, and inconsistent, not saying don't bother with them. I may be wrong. But the summary from OFSTED themselves is quite well written.

I can't remember if the portacabin was in a main stream school. It was within a bigger school, but not the school I had been in before. My mum always referred to it as "a special school", but I was young, and my memory's fuzzy, sorry.

[Annamaria0]

My ds has SEN, he has autism - it certainly wasn't easy to have him statemented, and I still think he is not getting enough support, even with SEN.
I didn't grow up in this country and I think the whole educational system in England needs a complete overhaul - children should start school later, like they start nearly everywhere else, children that don't go to school until 6 actually do better at school and there is evidence starting so early is particularly bad for boys and is linked to high levels of dyslexia in this country. Secondly, why such disparities?! You will never have a fairer, more equal society, if you start segregation at 4 yrs old! Private schools, faith schools, failing schools in poor catchment areas and good schools only in expensive areas! Look at France, look at Sweden - far more equality and a child's education doesn't depend on how much your parents earn or what class background they hav or how much their house cost. UK is falling behind because it clings on to antiquated ways and quite a lot of people DO NOT actually want more equality and social cohesion.

[DinahRod]

Would like the training to be more skilled in SPLDs (spelling and language) to support those in my class rather than just gleaning what I can from dyslexia websites but it's very hard to find the training and funding if you are not a SEN teacher or don't have a significantly very large % of SEN in school.