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."

[Beb]

I actually agree with everything she is saying here. So many schools are quick to label a child with SEN because purely for budget reasons. 1 in 5 is an incredibly high amount of children to be labelled as SEN.

Meow75 - in regards to your first post about Christine Gilbert, and how she should try teaching your class before she comments - Christine Gilbert was actually a teacher, then a head teacher, for many many years. My sister was at her school when she was a head teacher, and she was an absolutely fantastic teacher. Not just some ofsted jobsworth, but a women with fantastic knowledge of education. Just wanted to defend her a bit, because of sis's good memories of her!

[wonderstuff]

cory I really think that all schools should have on site counsellors - so many have so much to deal with.

[JenaiMarrHePlaysGuitar]

Considering the number of people with ASD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, Down syndrome, EBD and so on and so forth, I don't think 1 in 5 is a large proportion at all.

I think it goes to demonstrate just how normal it is to have additional requirements (big and small).

[Claw3]

Wonder, poor attendance can be due to inadequate help/support being in place in school.

For example my own ds's attendance dropped to 75% because he had to take so much time off of school being assessed and attending appointments, so he could receive a diagnosis, so the school could provide adequate help/support.

He was then hospitalised for 2 weeks, because he began in engaging in sensory and/or anxious behaviour, which resulted in him injuring himself because there was inadequate help/support for him in school.

He then began school refusal because there was inadequate help/support for him in school.

My ds is on SA+, so is therefore one of the children who according to the report doesnt have any real needs (i have applied for a statement) so he can enter the children with 'real needs' bracket.

The Local Authority can use poor attendance as a reason NOT to issue a Statement, as the child would not benefit from it.

I know you were not suggesting otherwise, but just wanted to pick up on the point of poor attendance

[ColdComfortFarm]

I have grave reservations about the increasing use of TAs in schools. There are studies that show that giving TAs to children who are struggling can actually impede their progress as they then spend less time with a qualified and trained teacher, and more time being babysat by someone who may well be less intelligent and is clearly less well trained. I have seen this happen with my middle child who is extremely intelligent but made no progess at all last year. This year however, he has a very switched on and dedicated teacher (and a super-bright TA too) and I can already see his confidence growing and he is learning. I am sure he is getting more teacher time, and from an excellent and experienced teacher. I suspect this is the sort of thing Ofsted may be talking about? I think some teachers farm out their SEN kids to TAs and don't even realise they are doing it. I also worry that July and August born boys are disproportionately diagnosed as having SNs and SENs. These are often normal boys with normal intelligence, ability and behaviour for their age, but thrown into a classroom at just four, understandably struggle to behave like boys and girls of five. The answer to that? I'm not sure.

[shimmerysilverglitter]

Agree Jenai.

And that just totally sums up what is wrong with our education system. A massive big deal being made out of SEN, they exist, fact. So provision for them should be normal rather than the exception to the rule. It shouldn't even be a huge discussion in the first place.

[spiritmum]

My cousin has no qualifications (even GCSEs) apart from a certificate that she has as a TA. She used to take whole classes of SEN kids on her own.

[Claw3]

Cold, i agree to a certain extent. TA's need specific training, as teaching children who are not progressing or the implementing specialists recommendations always falls to them.

The Ofsted report seems to be blaming teachers, rather than actually addressing why this is happening.

[ColdComfortFarm]

Not all teachers do a brilliant job, of course. Many do, but some don't. Last year I wasn't the only parent to see their child stall. Teacher was a lovely person, but tired, preoccupied, and the children did not make great progress. TAs seem to be primarily effective at improving the learning of the children who DON'T have them - ie the keep the kids with time consuming and/or disruptive kids away from the teacher who is then able to concentrate on the 'normal' kids. I'm not sure that is supposed to be the point of them. I would like to read the actual report, rather than the reports of the reports to see if specific recommendations are made.

[ColdComfortFarm]

I mean the kids with time consuming and/or disruptive SNs, of course!

[Claw3]

Cold - Further up someone provided a link to the report.

The recommendations are again very vague. One of which is "Schools should stop identifying pupils as having special educational needs when they simply need better teaching and pastoral support" Genius!

[Claw3]

Another little gem of a recommendation is.

1. Access to additional services should not always depend on a formal process of assessment or medical diagnosis.
   

1. Specific rights to additional provision, enshrined in law, should apply only to disabled children and young people where the Disability Discrimination Act applies.
   

One contradicts the other.

1. You should not need a formal assessment or diagnosis to access help/support.
   

1. You need a formal assessment or diagnosis to have any rights to additional support.

[salizchap]

A couple of years ago as a Secondary TA, I was offered some basic CAMHS training (Child And Adolescent Mental Health). We were told that at least one in five children suffer from mental health issues at some point, ranging from bereavement, eating disorders, OCD, depression, bipolar, and scizophrenia among others. Some are relatively minor, and short term. Others are severe and ongoing. However, as funding and subsequently access to CAMHS services (ie, therapy) is virtually impossible, due to lack of funding, many problems remain untreated and begin impacting on kids behaviour and ability to focus at school. These kids are also often put on the SEN register, normally as SCHOOL ACTION, and where possible and timetabling allows, a TA will be in some of their classes.

This is just ONE example of SEN, which also includes Looked After children, young carers, as well as the more obvious learning difficulties and physical disabilities. SEN is not just SN!!!!

When you take into account all that SEN covers it shouldn´t surprise anyone that 1 in 5 kids is on the register, it´s surprsing that it´s so few!

[DinahRod]

That's a good point. More and more services for children are accessed through school. We have looked after pupils (pupils in care)and children from traveller families and they all attract separate funding, looked after under the banner of SEN.

[cory]

Agree with Salizchap. Considering how common mental health issues are in the adult population, considering the hoops you have to jump through to get CAHMS treatment for a child, and considering how impossible it is for children (as opposed to adults) to get signed of "work" to recover from mental health issues, I am not at all surprised at all if a high percentage of those SEN children are in fact children with mental health issues, who would have stood a better chance of being treated if they had been adult.

When we applied for residential treatment for dd last year, the paed, though very sympathetic, made it quite clear that this would mean her chances of getting residential for our more severely affected ds would be practically nil; there would be no way she could be approved to refer to children from the same family for expensive treatment like this. In the event, they came up with what I think will be a better solution for dd, so it will hopefully work out for the best- but can you imagine that happening to an adult? No, Mrs Suicidal, I am afraid we cannot offer you any treatment, because we find from the records that you are a blood relation of Mrs Schizophrenic who had treatment last year.

[BoneyBackJefferson]

so many people here quick to jump on the blame the teachers bandwagon.

Its fairly clear that most people do not understand the difference between SEN and SN and also don't understand that teachers do not diagnose the pupils.

I can suggest that a pupils may have a learning difficulty but I do not examine nor label the child as I do not have the power to do this.

Statements and the like have to come from the corrct medical body.

Seems that teachers can't be right whatever we do.

[cory]

Statements do not come from the school but the application process can be initiated by either the school or the parent. And parents do not always know that they can start the application process regardless of the school: certainly dd's school did not inform me of the fact when they told me that they had no intention of applying for a statement because they didn't think dd needed any support.

A teacher/headteacher who very forcefully tells a parent that s/he can tell from her own experience that there is nothing wrong with a child can also affect the parent's confidence to apply for a statement. Likewise a teacher/head who states that there is no point in applying for statements as they are impossible to obtain.

Yes, I know a good teacher/head wouldn't be doing this. But some of us have come across the other kind...

[DinahRod]

I didn't know that, Cory, v useful to know.

The problem with my school is that it's in one county but takes gepgraphically from two. If a pupil lives in the other county, the two LEAs pass the buck are not willing to fund over county lines.

[silverfrog]

Dinah - that's appalling.

FWIW, home county LEA funds the statement, and yes, they do pay for out of county placements (althoguh, if the school is that borderline, then any professionals that a child from county A needed could visit form county A, and likewise for county B, so no funding need cross borders, other than direct funding to the school)

god, the barriers to statementing are just so shite.

[FullFactUK]

As lots of people pointed out, quite a lot of the media managed to mangle the facts on this story:

The Daily Telegraph: ?Schools are wrongly labelling almost 750,000 children as having special needs to disguise poor teaching, according to Ofsted.?

The BBC: ?It said up to 25% of the 1.7m pupils in England with special needs would not be so labelled if schools focused more on teaching for all their children.?

The Guardian: ?Half of special needs children misdiagnosed?.

What the Ofsted figures actually show is nearest the BBC line. See fullfact.org/articles/how_many_special_needs_children_are_misdiagnosed

We're going to be asking the Telegraph, Mail, Guardian, Independent, Sky News online, ITN online and New Statesman to correct the record.

(Full Fact is fairly new non-party political factchecking charity that's trying to make it easier for people to trust what they see in political debate)

[DinahRod]

Silverfrong, all I know is that I've started an assessment process that has no positive outcome for this pupil, and have never felt so bloody impotent as a teacher.

[DinahRod]

Thank you Starlight, that's lots to get my teeth into.

[globalmouse]

Isnt the 'problem' to do with children on School Action more so than those needing statements? Seems to me the govt are saying that too many teachers are claiming children have SEN under School Action, when 'really' it is because of poor teaching??

But identifying children at SA level is actually an intervention! The teacher compiles an IEP and this helps focus support on that child. This is particularly of use when the child changes class / school etc. Surely haveing a child on SA identifies that that child has particular needs and barriers to learning that put it outside of normal levels of differentiation? Then the child is highlighted as needing more support / interventions to help it learn? So highlighting as SEN actually highlights the need for, and hopefully ends up with, the 'better teaching and pastoral support' the child needs???

So surely identifying them (whether 'real' SEN (eg dyslexia) or with EBD, looked-after etc) is a good thing, not a bad thing...

genuinely confused here...