Less than 1 in 5 get 5 good GCSE passes

[amberlight]

The 750 page "How Fair is Britain?" report, just out, from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, makes fairly shocking reading for most of us on this board.

www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/triennial_review/how_fair_is_britain_-_complete_report.pdf

Page 330: Pupils with SEN perform less well than pupils with no identified SEN at age 16.
For all pupils with SEN in England, 17 out of every 100 achieved 5+ good GCSEs or equivalent (including English and Maths) compared to 61 out of every 100 of pupils with no identified SEN.

If you have a Statement, the chances fall to only 6 out of every 100 pupils

What the...!

I suppose it depends what the sen is and how well the school deals with an individual's specific needs, whether they are prepared to do as much as possible to facilitate a child's learning.
My son has AS, does not have a Statement or any other learning disability.
Because of his school's attitude, he is likely to get 10 GCSEs at C or above in June. Most of them will be B or A.
They have bent over backwards to help him.

I don't think that is an indication alone that they are being failed.

I know with certainty that they are being failed and that number should be nowhere near that, but I think it is entirely possible for some SEN to mean that a child is not capable of getting GCSEs or at least more likely than in the NT population.

sorry, should have said non-disabled population really.

My DD1 with AS is academically very able but the staff have told me that I should reduce my expectations in terms of the number of GCSEs she does because she shouldn't be put under too much pressure. They have completely missed the point that she's not under pressure doing the academic work - to her it's easy, fun and relaxing.

I think it's more a case of they don't want to have to find a way to access the curriculum for those subjects where the teacher can't control the children and therefore she can't attend the lessons. It's pretty clear to me that she's been written off because she has SEN and because that makes their life easier.

I'm not taking it lying down by the way.

It is all statistics: it does not mean that every single child with SN has less of a chance of getting 5 good GCSEs. What it does mean is that the group contains a number of children whose SN mean that they will never be able to get a GCSE pass because the concepts are just too difficult for them- and they affect the statistics.

One of the children in ds' class had Downs Syndrome. Despite a lot of support, she was barely able to speak in sentences by age 9 and certainly could not write. So yes, it probably is unlikely that she will be able to write long reasoned essays by age 15. It may be that someone has failed her, but not failing her might not necessarily have meant a GCSE either. If GCSEs are to be worth anything, it must be possible to fail them.

but surely more than 6% of statemented kids have the potential to meet the usual sixth form entry criteria...

The low numbers also applied to children with physical disabilities, children who are Deaf etc. Whilst I could understand it being harder for a Deaf child to access some subjects, the 'failure rate' (to get those standard 5 GCSEs) is absolutely astonishing. It's as if children with an SEN are often routinely expected to fail, and/or no-one bothers to allow them to succeed by providing the right support. Deaf people don't have a lower IQ.

I know our ds was expected to fail. The moment they realised he was disabled, we were told he would never achieve anything. We had to change schools, and he has 9 GCSEs as a result. So much for 'he's just stupid' (which we were told....)

My friend's daughter, who wears two hearing aids, has just started at a Redbrick Uni. She has a v proud Mum (and Mum's friends).

I think perhaps the Deaf stuff may be more about communication choices/opportunities, In my experience, (and I am not making judgement on any ones language choices, only relaying what I have seen) that some very able profoundly pre-lingually deaf (ie Deaf) kids who as adults became fluent in sign language had very limited educations focusing on the use of spoken english, rather than good education in whatever language they could access...

Here's the numbers from that report, taking as an example girls who are not on free school meals:

Number out of every 100 of them who get 5 GCSE passes including English and Maths...

No SEN needs known: 65
Visual impairment: 38
Hearing impairment: 37
Physical disability: 29
Other disability: 27
Autism spectrum: 19
Behavioural difficulties: 17
Communications: 8
Specific learning difficulty: 14
Moderate learning difficulty: 2 or 3

So having a hearing impairment or a physical disability almost halves your likely chances of getting good GCSEs.

Being on the autism spectrum means you normally only have a third of the chance of success that most others have (yet only 1 in 10 on the autism spectrum have a low IQ, from the latest figures).

Ooh, that does look bad! I take back my previous post.

There is absolutely no reason why physical disability would need to lower your performance at all (unless, like my ds, you need lots of time off school- but that does not apply to most children). Again, hard to believe that it would really need to happen to that extent with autism spectrum: a lot of that must be about non-existent support. Hearing might cause delay in the early years, but you would have thought they would get it sorted by GCES.

No, that really looks bad.

I just wanted to say as the parent of a Dd with possible undx AS. School was a difficult plce for her, she has a high IQ 134 but was only predicted to get C's at GCSE, this was because they predicted the grades from the CAT tests that they did on the children in Yr 7!! She has never performed well in test situations and became extremely anxious. After applying some pressure to school and the good teachers working really hard with her she got great results but especially good ones from the courses which had course work as the main focus. All her course work was completed at school.
A levels were a disaster for her because she was expected to work at home, something she could never do. She dropped out..

I think it's a very complicated area - I wouldn't expect anyone with a physical issue to do less well but after that it can get very confusing; esp. as SN and SEN are not clearly distinguished in some people's minds, also IQ is very hard to measure esp if the child has language and learning difficulties. I am not sure if ds will reach the level of taking exams but I still have my own high expectations.

I think she is amazing riven and if she has achieved this in 6 years with all the other stuff going on who knows what she could achieve in 16 years!!. Especially with the advances in technology.

I think 19% of kids with ASD getting GCSE's is quite good! My DS is clever enough - but I don't know if he'll be able to sit GCSE's. Currently in Year 5 he is unable to do times tables tests because they cause him too much stress.

I have no idea how much he'll mature or change over the next 5 years. But there is every possibility that he won't be able to do the course work or the exams - despite being totally bright enough.

But that won't mean that school has failed him. He'll still have learnt an awful lot - he just won't have a certificate to prove it. But he'll still be able to get a good job - if he gets the social skills to be able to pass an interview.

GCSE's don't mean as much as the politicians would like you to believe...

And behind all these stats are personal stories. In the school my sister works at a blind girl is on track to get 11 A's GCSEs. Other blind children obviously won't be on track to achieve that - but it doesn't necessarily mean they have been failed by the system. Some will have - some won't.

IndigoBell, yet...imagine if a child was in a wheelchair and couldn't sit the exams because the school hadn't put a ramp into the room even though they have one.

Imagine if that same wheelchair user is 25 and goes for a job interview and finds the door is too narrow and the firm says "can't get through the door - tough luck, no job for you", when they could have altered where the job interview was held and where the job is.

Only 15% of autistic people are in work because we can't pass the interviews. We actually can't. It's a social skills test and our disability is "social skills". It's like telling Blind people that the only test for a job is to re-created the Mona Lisa in oils. Even if they don't have to do another day's art whilst in the job.

And almost not one sod out there gives a damn about it so far. They often use interviews as a barrier to STOP us getting into their companies, because they don't want us in there. It's as simple as that. How do I know? Because I'm an employer and I speak to the HR people in industry, who chat about the 'hidden methods' they use to ensure "unsuitable" people don't get in.

Like Temple Grandin says, autistic people don't generally pass interviews. Or if we do, it's to the lowest cr*ppiest job they can get away with offering us, generally.

Companies need to let us demonstrate our actual skills with a portfolio etc.

The whole system of exams and jobs stinks for most people with a disability. The government wants us to be equal by 2025. Imagine if they told Black people they could only be equal by 2025!

Mini rant over. Where's the tea

Amberlight, I hear what you are saying and agree to some degree - but again I think it all depends on what your strengths are and what kind of a job you are applying for.

I work as a computer programmer and often hire / interview other programmers. Even though programming is considered a very geeky job I am always looking for programmers with a fair degree of social skills. Why? Because they absolutely have to be able to work in a team and get on and communicate with everyone else. I don't want a great programmer who can't be part of a team. They won't be able to do their job (which is to collaboratively deliver software)

So I only test for the skills I need - but even for a geeky job I happen to need reasonable social skills.

So, yes - testing for skills you don't need on the job is discriminatory. But testing for skills you do need on the job is just common sense

HR depts however are another story. I have never yet passed a job interview when I've been interviewed by someone from HR. I only ever get offered jobs when interviewed by fellow programmers. Because I'm far too geeky to pass an HR interview. (and I'm NT)

Basically I've learnt to avoid beuaracratic companies which have HR depts like the plague....

I think a lot of achievement is down to expectations. The SN mums that post on here are obviously literate - opinionated and work dam hard to achieve the best outcomes for their children. Place their DC in comparison to a parent that - for whatever reason - has never realised their DC's potential, SN, SEN or NT and there will be a difference in achievement. Add to that a c*ap school versus a switched on school - without mentioning sub-standard IEPs - and the difference is multiplied.
Education achievement is a lottery of parental input and availability and standard of education choices.

IndigoBell, there's a software company (one example) who employs people on the autism spectrum. Social skills - forget it. But we're ten times more accurate than the other programmers. Ten times more!

Yes, you need a few social people to put the project together, but that is a real business advantage, and he's making a very tidy sum of money by differentiating betweeen people who need the social skills, and those who need to be able to produce damned-near perfect work first time, at incredible speed.

Like I say, I'm an employer. I employ autistic people. Fantastic skills. I don't use standard interviews, I don't expect them to have amazing social skills for their job. We put together transactions worth £20,000,000 a time. Clients respect that we get the detail 100% right and 100% on time. It works.

It could be that you really do need programmers who can co-operate directly with each other in a sociable way. I'm not disputing your own situation because I don't know enough about it. But I'm saying there's business models out there that allow us to use our skills very, very effectively indeed.

Amberlight - absolutely. There are jobs and companies where autistic people are valued. And those are the jobs and companies that autistic people need to try and get into....

Obviuosly software is a huge field. And there are many different ways of running companies and teams. And being a programmer (or tester) is a great job for many autistic people. If the company ethos values the skills they bring and doesn't mind their weaknesses. (And a lot of companies do value strengths like you mentioned.)

Amberlight that's a really interesting post. It reminds me of a young man with autism who said, at the end of a programme the name of which I've forgotten, 'hey, it's our world too'. Making the kinds of adjustments in what's expected and tested is part of making it our world too, I reckon: not having the NT expectations and models be the dominant or only available ones.

I don't think you can read anything into that report without having more information. The vast majority of children at ds's school (all statemented) leave in p scales. Gcse's are a total irrelevance to then. Hopefully however, they leave with more independence and communication skills than they would have without the school. For those kids these are the skills that will give them an active and fulfilled life - certainly not gcse's. I would be horrified if ds1's curriculum was altered to increase the time spent on academics.

I wouldn't want any child forced down an inappropriate route.

The concept that (for example) 63 out of every 100 children with a hearing impairment should be unable to get basic results is just wrong. Hearing impairment might mean they need the information in a different way, but it does not affect their IQ.

As McKay Vernon writes from examination of 50 years of research into deafness and IQ, "it is obvious from an examination of the IQ distributions given in the 37 studies that the range of intelligence among those with profound hearing loss is as great as the range among the normal hearing"

What schools are doing is failing to teach those equally intelligent children in ways they can access, therefore.

Same with autism, where testing on some children who have always been tested to have a profoundly low IQ beforehand now shows that the IQ tests were simply meaningless for that child. Done differently, many are jolly bright, but haven't a clue what they're being asked because no-one asking it in a way that makes sense and can get past the brain's way of processing the world's information (yet).

It's the "yet" that interests me.

But amber a child might have a hearing impairment plus another disability. I know a number of children with hearing loss - more than 50% of the ones I know also have learning disabilities. That's what I mean by you just can't tell without access to other information.

I don't agree with the autism thing tbh. DS1 is bright - definitely - everyone remarks upon it. Although his IQ is untestable so measures below whatever the lowest possible is. It certainly doesn't reflect his intelligence though- in certain things he is a genius. However, I don't think for one moment that he would ever pass a GCSE (or that it would be relevant to his life for him to even try). We did mainstream and the biggest problem was that he was expected to be like the other children. I'd prefer energies to be put into his independence and ability to participate in fun events- as ultimately that is going to give more meaning to his life than finding some way he could do a GCSE.