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."

[cory]

I can't marry you, Claw: I have just been elected pope by Hully on another thread, busy polishing my halo (and doling out condoms on the sly).

[hotspot]

To my horror, I was told by my son who attends a very competitive, private school, that at the recent GCSE examinations, he noticed some of his perfectly clever class mates were among a surprisingly large cohort of candidates enjoying an extra 25% extra time and use of laptops for no apparent reason other than that their parents had managed to find obliging Ed-Psych's willing to tick the SEN box for a fee. This cannot be fair.
Surely the results show on the Certificates that these candidates had extra time?

[Lancelottie]

Good god, did you agree with your grumpy teenager's view of all this, or did you gently challenge his assumpttion that all SEN are blindingly obvious?

My son (top sets for everything) will get 25% extra time, hotspot, because he has Aspergers. Could go either way: he could whizz through his GCSEs in the same time as everyone else, or he just might have an utter meltdown at the pressure, in which case 25% extra will do him no good at all, so I'm not sure how I feel about it.

You, on the other hand, sound very cross about the unfairness of having a child without additional needs. Would you mind telling me where these obliging EdPsychs all live, because there's a sad lack of them round here.

[cory]

How does your son actually know about the SEN or non-SEN of everybody in his school? I thought that sort of thing was confidential unless the parent/student chose to reveal it.

As a university teacher I am occasionally involved in arranging extra time for students who need it - and you know what? they don't come with a label branded into their forehead. They look just like everybody else. Shocking, isn't it?

As does my son whose chronic joint condition means that he is in pretty well constant pain when writing- but there is no way your son would know that from looking at him. And as the consultant has told him that he will be bullied if his mates at secondary find out he is disabled, you can be fairly sure that he is going to be reticent about it.

I am glad that my own teen does not spend her time making ill informed judgments about other people. But then though perfectly clever she is also disabled- again, you couldn't tell from looking at her!

[cory]

I like the way you contrast perfectly clever with SEN, hotspot,as if they were somehow opposites. Tell that to the student with mental health issues or severe dyslexia! Or to my dd who is sometimes in so much pain that she cannot sit upright or hold a pen and who goes through intermittent periods of extreme panic attacks and depression. Or to the autistic child or the child with Aspergers.