Email from my child’s infant school uk? I’m sorry but this all seems wrong?

[Frazzledmomma123]

Dear Families,

I wanted to address a concern that has understandably been raised regarding the use of a ‘safe word’ to move children out of the classroom. On reflection, we recognise that terms such as safe word and evacuation can raise anxiety and concern.

We agree that children should not have to leave their own classroom in order to feel safe. However, there are times, though not daily, when moving the class is the safest option for all children. This has happened a few times, and only when absolutely necessary. We fully accept having to go to such measures is a worry, but it is a system that schools are having to turn to more and more. I appreciate this provides little comfort, but hopefully helps you hear that supporting emotional regulation has become a real focus and factor for schools nationally.

The children themselves were involved in choosing the word, and the purpose was to minimise panic and keep the situation calm if it needed to be used. Our aim is always for every child to feel safe, happy, and able to learn in their classroom, as is their right. We are putting a range of steps and strategies in place to work towards this, and we do not intend this approach to become the “go‑to.”

We also want to reassure you that we are supporting children to understand that behaviour is a communication of feelings, but the way those feelings are shown must still be safe and appropriate. We do not condone unsafe behaviour, and we share parents’ concerns about children seeing this as “normal.” I have spoken with the class to reiterate that message and reminded them that they should always talk to a trusted adult if they feel unsure or worried. In school, children choose five trusted adults; it may be helpful to have a similar conversation at home about who your child feels they can talk to at school.

We are very aware that things are challenging at the moment. We do not want this to continue, and we are actively putting support in place to help all children feel safe and settled in their learning environment.

Thank you for reading, please keep speaking to us about your concerns.

If you could design a system to torture a child with autism you could not do much better.

This is absolutely correct, and evidenced in academic research, e.g.:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37810599/

The statistics in this study are illuminating and, to those who are unaware of this issue, should be shocking given that NOTHING has been done about it and the Government’s latest proposals again completely ignore existence of these children (like mine) and clearly intend to continue to provide no appropriate state schools at all that they can attend. Not one such state school exists anywhere in the country. There are tens of thousands of children like this for whom no educational provision has been made at all, in breach of UK and international law. Putting them in “units” with other children with different and clashing needs (like disruptive behaviour) where they will receive no specialist subject teaching at all and STILL be in huge overwhelming schools with too many people and too much noise is clearly NOT a solution, it will make matters even worse and they won’t attend school at all.

This study and others show that the vast majority of children who are being utterly failed by mainstream state schools are autistic children: the vast majority of those who end up with no education whatsoever and severe mental health difficulties are autistic children and this is ENTIRELY down to the school environment being inappropriate for them. Many of these children are talented and highly academically able and desperate to learn and not at all disruptive.

It is an absolute disgrace and a systemic failure and the current school system refuses to accept that such children exist, who simply need a calm, quieter environment with smaller classes not dissimilar to that in a small private school. Far cheaper, for example, than sending them to a mainstream state school with a 1:1 (around 50% of the cost). Not hugely expensive, and far, far cheaper than the catastrophic effect of trashing these children’s mental health, often leaving them out of school for years and them getting no qualifications, therefore becoming a huge drain on mental health services, housing, welfare etc in later years when many of them could become high net contributors with appropriate education provided.

It is a systemic, deliberate failure of which the Government is fully aware because it is so well-evidenced in this study I have linked and numerous others. It is a breach of UK and international law and the Government refuses to address it or even acknowledge it.

Yes, I think that’s obvious but perhaps it isn’t: there is little correlation between the two. The majority of violence in schools comes from children who are suffering from social issues and neglect etc, not due to disabilities (except in very extreme cases where again, these are children who should never be in a mainstream state school in the first place).

Although a child who is so dysregulated their classroom is regularly evacuated does have SEN and requires SEP to be made for them. SEMH needs are one of the broad areas of SEN.

@followersfriends my original comment to which you replied was focusing on the disruption that is due to disabled children who shouldn’t be in a mainstream school as this was the topic of the thread, and obviously the white paper consultation is about SEND provision so only deals with provision for disabilities in schools.

I didn’t mean to imply at all that most disruption comes from disabled children, so thanks for pointing out that my comment could have been misinterpreted that way. That definitely is not the case. In fact, one of the reasons that disabled children like mine (like many children with autism) frequently cannot attend school is because of the disruption caused by children who are not disabled.

The main focus of schools, LAs and other parents of course is on disruption and they are far keener to help in those cases because it affects the teachers and other children. That’s one reason why it’s been so hard to get any help for my children: effectively they are penalised for being well behaved. A lot of the general SEND support budget for many schools is in fact being used for children who aren’t disabled but have behavioural problems, while children with disabilities who aren’t disruptive are ignored, which is appalling.

I think the behaviour issues are a separate topic where disability isn’t the cause and you’re absolutely right that these shouldn’t be lumped together and it would be false to think that fixing SEND provision would fix behaviour issues when much of the behaviour problems are unrelated. Schools need to be able to take far more significant sanctions to actually enforce appropriate behaviour and there should be separate schools for children who have behavioural problems that mean they cannot be in mainstream classrooms without impeding other’s learning, with specially trained staff to deal with this. It is absolutely unacceptable that any child or teacher should be having to tolerate the disruption, abuse and violence that is currently going on in mainstream schools. Schools have to be able to exclude these children and move them to more appropriate schools that are equipped to deal with this. But I guess that would be the topic for a separate thread as it’s not related to disabilities/ SEND.

Yes, BUT SEMH needs are often not related to violence at all. Both of my autistic children have had mental health breakdowns because of the school environment (still in primary school). Neither has ever been disruptive or violent at school.

It’s really wrong to conflate needs caused by disabilities with disruptive or violent behaviour caused by dysfunctional home lives or neglect etc. as if these are remotely the same thing or should be dealt with in the same way.

And doing so, @scoopofmintchocchipicecream, is one of the things that causes stigma and discrimination against children who have disablities.

I didn’t say all with SEMH needs were violent &/or disruptive.

Neither did I say all should be dealt with the same way.p or conflate anything.

As a side point, autistic DC’s SEMH needs are, in the vast majority of cases, secondary to their primary need of ASD under the C&I broad area rather than having SEMH as a primary need.

The problem with this is that LAs often don’t fund it properly, or expect the parent to facilitate it. Do your DCs actually have a full time education provided via EOTAS/EOTIS? My children are still primary school aged. I have a full time job.

One of them was off school for four months previously. I had to home school DC in the day and do my full time job at night, and sleep for only 2 hours per day. As a result I have developed permanent chronic health issues (for example, this week I had to be ambulanced to hospital as a direct result of this). Frequently I am called to collect them during the school day because they are so distressed by the inappropriate environment.

I need to be able to continue to work and provide for my children because I am a lone parent. I cannot be co-ordinating their education from home, or expected to ferry them between activities/ venues etc during the working day. I have a job to do, which pays for their home and the endless legal battles and much of their healthcare due to the failing NHS.

Therefore, an EOTAS/EOTIS package would have to be fully co-ordinated by the LA to provide an actual full time education for them per the law with arrangements for any travel etc built in and not expected to be lumped off onto me, and need to be genuinely full time with tutors/ other sessions all day each day and contingency plans should any of these fall through due to staff illness or whatever without expecting - yet again as with everything else - me to miraculously clone myself and pick up the pieces. I’d be interested to hear, if you don’t mind sharing this @scoopofmintchocchipicecream how this actually works in your DCs’ cases? Just because I’ve heard some horror stories of LAs having ideas that EOTAS actually means they think they can use the parent as an unpaid member of staff to fill gaps between 2-3 hours of tutoring per day or cover staff absences or to ferry children around between activities as if I don’t actually have a full time job of my own to do while now also - thanks to them - chronically ill myself.

I don't think this is exactly true in all honesty. I understand you don't want disabled people to be stigmatised as automatically violent but there is a link between some SEND and violent behaviour. In my experience the children who lash out are at least just as likely, if not more likely, to be lashing out because of unmet SEND needs than chaotic home lives.

What you don't want (which has happened a few times on this thread) is the stigma to run the other way and see a child being violent and say "ahh, they must have a shitty home life". That has been going on for years and is a reconstruction of the "refrigerator mother" theory.

What we need to do is be honest. There are several (NOT ALL, NOT EVEN MOST) SEND needs which can culminate in violence (lack of understanding, inability to communicate need, delayed emotional development, impulse control difficulties, extremely low frustration tolerance, mood control issues, etc etc etc). There are also several (NOT ALL, NOT EVEN MOST) social factors which can contribute to violent behaviour (learnt behaviours, actual brain damage causing SEND e.g. traumatic brain injury or FASD, lack of role models, stunted social development due to severe neglect). Any child with challenging behaviour may have SEND, or a difficult background, or both.

Just pointing at the child and saying "must do better" is not going to work whatever the "cause" is. It's also almost impossible, unless you know the child and family very, very well to know what the cause is, so we shouldn't really be speculating. What we can do, is draw on our personal or professional experiences and advocate for changes which will improve things for everyone.

Children who are regularly violent because they have SEND which is very difficult to meet in mainstream classrooms need special schools.

Yes, absolutely agree. The mental health issues of my DC have been caused entirely by school. Prior to school they were autistic but well-adjusted, happy children, with autism but which had been well-supported by me and my childcare providers and they had no mental health difficulties at all. Their mental health problems are entirely the result of school and therefore a symptom of their educational needs not being met, not a cause of their need for different educational arrangements. And if their educational needs were finally to be met before any more damage is done then in time their mental health issues would likely almost entirely disappear. Whereas, as their many specialists have highlighted, if the status quo with school continues much longer their mental health issues will become so severe that they will probably become unable to access any school environment at all.

I don’t think you read what I wrote properly. I specifically stated that there are some cases where there are disabled children who become disruptive or violent at school because they are in completely the wrong school environment, having been dumped in mainstream schools that are totally inappropriate for them. This is easily fixed: set up appropriate schools for children with different needs (the opposite of the proposals in the white paper consultation) and then these children won’t be in mainstream schools and will not be in an environment that causes them to behave this way because it is an inappropriate place for them to be with their disabilities.

What I stated was that this is not the cause of the majority of violence and disruption in schools and that the majority of this is in fact caused by children who do not have disabilities, but have other reasons that they have behavioural problems such as abuse or neglect at home or other social problems. This should absolutely not be lumped together with the difficulties facing disabled children as the causes of the problems are entirely different (one physical and medical, the other social problems). Conflating the two causes stigma to disabled children, many of whom are not at all disruptive or violent, and are actually in many cases the children who struggle the most to cope with the disruption and violence from other pupils.

This was the bit I took issue with "What I stated was that this is not the cause of the majority of violence and disruption in schools and that the majority of this is in fact caused by children who do not have disabilities, but have other reasons that they have behavioural problems such as abuse or neglect at home or other social problems."

It's very difficult to untangle all the data, but how can you so confidently say that most of the violence is from children with social issues rather than children with SEND? A lot of the time it's from children with both SEND and social issues, so how can you say it's the social issues which cause "majority" of the violence?

ETA: The are also children in special schools which work really hard to meet all their needs and those children are still violent.

It is.

I genuinely think this person just wants them all locked away out of sight.

@Eridian I am sorry about your health issues.

To get a proper EOTAS/EOTIS package, many have to appeal then enforce the provision.

LAs cannot compel parents to organise, facilitate or deliver provision. LAs often try to get parents to do their job, but parents don’t have to accept that and can force the LA to properly fund and staff packages. Neither can the LA force you to accept provision at home. There is case law on this. There are options other than the home but they often take parents forcing the LA’s hand.

My DS’s packages aren’t just a little bit of tuition with maybe a bit of therapy or exercise thrown in. That would not be a proper EOTAS/EOTIS package.

My DSs have proper, comprehensive EOTAS/EOTIS packages. It is a full-time education. At the moment, DS1 has 33.5hrs of direct provision per week plus some bits that aren’t weekly. DS3 has 35.5hrs of direct provision pw plus some bits that aren’t weekly. On top of those hours, both have travel, breaks/lunch (including an extended lunch time for DS1 so he can have a nap), professional time for planning/meetings/updated advice/training/liaising with other staff etc. Both have 2:1 with DS1 having 3:1 at times. Both have equipment, resources, tech, memberships/subscriptions, and budgets for accessing the community, PfA, etc. Both have some provision that continues outside of term time.

The LA does not co-ordinate the packages. They don’t have the expertise to do that. No way would I trust them either. As part of their packages both have a specialist teacher who leads, co-ordinates and oversees their packages. We also have a pay roll company. I don’t need to be involved in the day to day running. Alongside the specialist teacher, I am involved in recruitment. That is my choice. No-one works with DSs without my agreement.

DS1 has had EOTAS for many years. DS3 only since 2024. They have what they have because we have appealed then enforced the provision. We actually have live appeals to tweak the packages slightly (and for DS1, the placement because the LA has named a completely inappropriate setting for September).

If DC can’t attend school full-time, have you requested section 19 provision and enforced it if refused?

You are missing the fact that a child who is so dysregulated their classroom is regularly evacuated does have SEN and requires SEP to be made for them.

That isn’t saying all DC with SEN are violent. That isn’t saying the picture isn’t complex. That isn’t saying the solutions are all the same. It isn’t about stigma or discrimination.

It is saying the child meets the legal definition of having SEN.

Yes, good point. It doesn't actually make that much difference what caused it, if it requires SEP. I think there's case law on this, e.g. learned sexualised behaviour requiring SEP is still a SEN.

Yes, and that’s exactly why EHCPs with individual assessments by medical specialists of each child’s specific needs are essential:

1. Some disabled children can cope perfectly well in mainstream education with the right adjustments for their disability and not be disruptive at all;

2. Some disabled children cannot cope in mainstream school with any level of adjustment and will be violent and disruptive so need moving to another setting specifically set up to be appropriate for their disabilities and with staff trained to deal with the violence/ disruptions;

3. Some disabled children cannot cope in mainstream school with any level of adjustment but will NOT be violent or disruptive and they ALSO need moving to another setting but NOT with the children who are violent and disruptive - rather a calm and quieter setting with smaller classes and NO violent/ disruptive children;

4. The majority of children who are violent and disruptive are NOT disabled and these children also need moving to another type of school which is set up specifically to cope with those problems which need a totally different approach because their behaviour is caused by social issues not disability.

Lumping all of these children into various categories without any thought of the CAUSES of their difficulties or specific educational environment that they require to address this, to be determined by school staff who are not medical professionals, is what the education secretary proposes to do. While keeping the vast majority of them in mainstream schools, together with all the children for whom mainstream school might actually have decent outcomes if all of these other children were not forced to be there when it isn’t appropriate for them.

These are school staff who have HALF A DAY of training on SEND as part of the PGCE, are not medical speciailsts, and have no capability or capacity to make such an assessment. The EHCP assessments involve multi-disciplinary teams of doctors and specialists across a broad range of medical specialisms to identify the causes and therefore the necessary remedies for each child’s issues with accessing education. Each of these assessments, by a specialist, if done thoroughly can take several hours (I know as I’ve had to pay for many of them). She thinks unqualified school staff like a SENCO (who have NO qualifications and certainly are not neurodevelopmental paediatricians, SALTs, OTs, ENTs, physios, etc etc) can possibly do such an assessment themselves? Laughable.

And as many posters have pointed out, some children absolutely will not fit into any of the ridiculous, facile “categories” in which the Education Secretary proposes to allocate them.

After this impossible assessment has been done by school staff without the qualifications to do so, and the children have been allocated to “categories” which many of them will not fit, her plan then involves moving all children for whom the mainstream state school environment is inappropriate into “units” and miraculously magicking up various specialist staff in each school to staff these (in shortage areas like educational psychology or speech and language therapy in which it takes 8-9 months currently to get an appt with one even privately at rates schools will never pay, because there is a national shortage of qualified staff in these specialisms, but apparently there will be several in each school!?), without any money to pay for these non-existent staff, or the new buildings to accommodate them and keep all of the children with entirely different and clashing needs separate from each other, or any plan of how to pay for additional subject specialist staff to teach the children in these “units” (with the children obviously needing to be separated by category because some of them have needs that are in direct conflict e.g. children who need a calm environment needing to be separated from the disruptive and violent children, so she’d therefore need to be having enough subject specialists to teach children in groups of 2 or 3 given they’re in different years and covering different curriculums so have to probably triple or quadruple the teaching staff in secondary schools at least to make this viable… unless of course she’s proposing that disabled children don’t have access to actual proper teaching by subject specialist staff and normal timetables of subject learning like everyone else, which would be illegal?).

In short, the plans put forwards by the Education Secretary are totally unworkable, impossible to implement and completely unfunded and will lead to a complete meltdown of what is left of state education currently, which isn’t much.

I just hope the insanity of the proposals is recognised and objected to by enough parents - not just those who have disabled children - before this disastrous experiment is inflicted on all of our children because it is obvious to anybody with half a braincell, once they read what she is suggesting, that it will be catastrophic for all children in state schools. The situation is already dire, but this will push it over the cliff edge.

It does make a huge difference: the required response to resolve it is entirely different because the cause is entirely different.

It also makes a huge difference because, as I’ve said, lumping these difficulties together causes huge stigmatisation of children who have medical disabilities and their families because they are treated with suspicion as if there is some kind of social problem/ home problem underlying the child’s difficulties when for disabled children the problem is inappropriate educational provision for their medical issues. Therefore the problem needs to be addressed by changes in educational provision/ a more appropriate school.

Families are therefore treated like dirt and as though they are the cause of the problem, because of this false conflation. This causes SO much damage to families and children and the relationships between school and families.

The approach that needs to be taken if the child’s problems are not due to a medical issue or disability and actually a dysfunctional home life is entirely different. The actions that needs to be taken to support the child are entirely different.

So yes, it matters. It matters a lot for the children and the families involved.

@StartingFreshFor2026 are you thinking of H v A London Borough [2015] UKUT 316? That said that even in cases where learned behaviour isn’t directly a learning difficulty in and of itself the provision to support the learned behaviour can sometimes still be SEP if related to a learning difficulty. It ruled the FTT had erred when it had a restrictive view of what SEP could be in relation to learned behaviour.

It does make a huge difference: the required response to resolve it is entirely different because the cause is entirely different.

This argument is flawed. Even when the cause is the same, the response required can be entirely different. It is part of the reason why the SEN system is needs led, not diagnosis based.

The alternative being, do the opposite of what is in the white paper and make a far wider range of state schools available which are appropriate for children with different needs/ abilities/ skills/ difficulties so they can be taught in appropriate environments for them to learn and teachers can actually teach because they have groups of children who need a similar environment and learning approach together, rather than shoving children with wildly different and clashing needs all together in one classroom and pretending they are clones.

Currently a teacher may have several children in the class whose plans state that one must have a quiet, calm environment and smaller classes which the state schools cannot provide. Another need to be allowed a lot of freedom to roam around and movement and may be loud and needs a lot of noise and excitement and stimulation. Another child is violent because they have a disrupted and neglectful home life and should really be getting social services help (which basically doesn’t exist anymore). Another child finds violent behaviour and shouting distressing. One child needs a quick pace of academic learning. Another needs things repeating multiple times and a very slow pace and struggles to even learn the basics of the curriculum. Another child needs lots of hands-on-learning and social interaction. Another finds this exhausting and group work distressing due to excessive forced social interaction for 6 hours per day being overwhelming. Then there are other children who have talents in sport or practical skills or music or art which make up a tiny proportion of the curriculum now but are made to feel stupid because so much of the curriculum is focused on academic learning only. And then there are children who are highly academic who are bored to death because the work is so repetitive and easy for them, so start to hate school or mess around because it is so mind-numbing repeating the same thing for the 5th time when you understood it the first time it was explained.

Then there are the children for whom a mainstream state school would actually work if all the other children listed aboev were not there, in severe distress because NONE of their needs can be met because the teacher cannot possibly do all of these opposite things at once. And these children - for whom mainstream school has been designed - get barely any teaching at all because the teacher is trying to deal with all of the above.

Set up different schools to meet the needs of different children so similar children can be taught together. Save a fortune in trying to put “support” in place to make square pegs fit into a round hole that they will never fit. Save a fortune in wasted lives, failed educations, healthcare costs, welfare costs, justice costs all of which would have been avoidable if we’d invested in appropriate schools from the start. Save a fortune in fighting legal battles against parents, lost tax revenue from parents being forced to quit work, additional healthcare costs (like those that the NHS will have paid for me recently after my latest ambulance trip and hospital stay, all caused by the failure of schools that have made me chronically ill), save a fortune in lost productivity and tax revenue from our children when they are adults because they haven’t had the education they deserve. But no, it’s all, “how do we cut the cost today?” with no thought to what this will cost us all in the future in terms of tax revenue as well as wasted lives.

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel here, just copy education systems that actually work, which do the opposite of what we do in the UK.

Your response is a logical fallacy.

Of course the required response to resolve it is different if the cause is different.

That doesn’t imply that if the cause is the same the response required will always be the same because that can be affected by other factors ON TOP of the cause.

But you have no hope of ascertaining the appropriate response to resolve a problem if you don’t even ascertain the cause of the problem in the first place. None.

That has no bearing on “diagnosis-based vs needs-based”. The point is that you cannot identify what the NEED is from behaviour/ outwards effects alone, you have to get to the bottom of the cause of the problem in order to know what the NEED is and therefore how to address it. Otherwise you are just shooting off random pre-prepared standard format nonsense in a scattergun approach effectively saying “this worked for some other children who presented similar behaviours” without any idea what is causing them, and therefore not the faintest clue what would be effective in helping the child because you do not know what is causing their problems.

This is the very basics of scientific method and logic and it’s disturbing that anybody would be unable to understand how identifying the cause of the problem is the essential first step.

Think so, but can't remember off the top of my head.

No, it’s not.

No-one on this thread has said you don’t look at the cause/need. No-one at all.

What I have pointed out is that you are misunderstanding what the legal definition of SEN covers.

A child who is so dysregulated their classroom is regularly evacuated does have SEN and requires SEP to be made for them. To say otherwise is legally incorrect whatever your opinion is.

Because it isn’t. Ask teachers. The vast majority of the disruption and violence that they are dealing with is not perpetrated by children with disabilities.