Is lots of children with SEN in a school usually a good thing or a bad one in terms of provision?

[genieinabottle]

There seem to be a significant number of children with SEN in DS's school.

The school is catchment for a not very nice area.
And i expect there must also be a number of children with behavioural issues caused by their social background. (i'm keeping the SEN and the behavioural separate here, i'm not saying the social backgound causes the SEN of course! )

Anyway in DS's class there are 8 children with IEPs that i know of, not sure if any are statemented, no extra TA is usually present from what i can see.

I knew there were an above national average of children with additional needs in the school before DS started.
I thought it was going to be a good thing, as my thinking was staff will be expereince and senco able to see issues and offer support accordingly. How wrong was i!

Now i'm thinking there may weel be too many children sharing the SEN budget pot and the school will not offer the necessary support due to this.

Don't know maybe i'm wrong. Just don't know whether i'm coming or going these days with the schooling issues.

Me too! :(

I thought as hardly any SEN dcs in DDs school more provision for DD , they have experience of AS..but not sure if anything else. But as you know they are rubbish!

Are you looking at moving like us?

Have a meeting with PP next week and a meeting too with EP and SALT , so will wait to see what they are saying and doing!

SALT i expect will get things moving but school isn't following her startegies.

EP that's another story!!!

Well, I can tell you my experience in a school with a high number of SEN pupils (ADHD/ASD).

It had an excellent and well-respected reputation for they way staff worked with these children, so much so that these opinions influenced my decision to send ds there.

However, I believe now (as do other parents whose children were there at the time) that they'd over-stretched themselves to the point where they were no longer able to effectively provide for the children in their care. Ds was only there a year before I took him out to HE and the treatment he received in the interim was dreadful. I won't go into detail here but it wasn't pleasant.

So I think it's a mid-way balance issue. It helps to have a significant number of SEN pupils in a school to give you the confidence that staff will be adequately trained, but too many and support could be too thin on the ground and your child might not get a fair share.

My ten pennorth .

I thought about this exact thing for a long time when choosing DS's school. He has just started in reception.

Theres a school near us with a lot of SN children and therefore (I imagined) a lot of experience in dealing with SN's
There is also a smaller, stricter, school with better results (in better area too) which is nearish to us.

I thought for ages and eventually decided on the smaller school with better reports.
So far its been FANTASTIC! Because they have little experience with SN, they spent ages talking to me before DS started to work out how best to manage him. They set up an IEP straight away and it is spot on tbh. They also work with him 1-1 daily with speech therapy and social skills.
The strictness of it has helped DS because he knows the rules to follow and is very much kept in line (along with everyone else)
Even my SN Hv has told me that she would have gone with the same thought process in choosing the school as the ones with less SN experience are more open to trying different strategies for each child and more open to the parents being the expert on their child!

The other school with more SN experience, I feel would have given him more leeway due to his ASD and he would have taken an inch and run a mile imo. I would bet money that he would having a LOT more behavioural issues if he had gone to the other school/

Im struggling to find out info about local schools too. Is it always to best to go by reputation? ...I dont know any other parents with SN DCs at primary.

We have a meeting next week with Inclusion, SENCO and me...Im taking SALT report and dx in as they havent read them yet.

Good points streaky...how may is too many!?!?

DD hasnt seen EP, do you think I should push for the referral now??

Thank you for replies.

SteakyB, what you describe is what my gut feeling of what is happening at DS's school.

If things do not improve over the next few weeks i will be looking for another school for DS.

Wooly, ime, we've had 2 EPs, one who was useless and one who was much better and did see a lot of DS's problems.

Sadly we were back with the first EP. The other one isn't here in the area anymore.

Like all professionals EP can be good or not so good or frankly useless.

meant to say 'we are back with the 1st EP'.

We have a school in our area with a high number of children with SEN. The problem is that the school does not refer these children on for statutory assessment. If the parents do not do this either then what you have is a lot of children on school action or action plus with very little 1:1 help. The school have a reputation for being very inclusive but in actual fact the children do not get the support they need as the school is too stretched.

"The school have a reputation for being very inclusive ..." that sounds familiar!

And as i said no 1:1 TA present in the classroom when there are a high number of children with SEN doesn't sound good.

"The school have a reputation for being very inclusive ..." that sounds familiar!

IME it means bung 'em in mainstream and let them get on with it

Our IEP is rubbish too, only two targets on it, both rubbish. Im not waiting to find another school as I dont want to waste DDs time 'training' the school how they should be supporting DCs with SEN. Ive seen upto 3 TAs in the room but sometimes the teachers are gone. ..and the class is actually two classes combined, two teachers...lots of parents worried about this...in jan could be 60 DCs!

genie would you consider a ASD school if you could get in? Or a MS with a unit? ...Obviously down the line when/if you got a statement. The ones Ive seen online are from age 7/8 so that my goal...I think!

Wooly, i would.

DS used to have a spilt placement last year, p/t at his ms nursery where he made very little progress, and p/t at a language unit, where he made huge progress.
The staff were brilliant, and the support excellent.

I'm so sad he had to leave (was only for children up to age of 5).

But now to get to a language unit for permanent full-time place he 'd need a statement. same goes for asd unit. And DS isn't statemented and i think we face an uphill battle with that.

8's not a lot (out of a class of 30)

Most of the kids may well be on the SEN register for very mild things. Things that even their parents aren't particularly worried about.

20 - 30% of the school should (statistically) be on the register. So that's 6 - 9 out of a class of 30.

There are no reqs for putting people on the register. So any kid who is falling behind academically often gets put on the SEN register.

I know 2 Mums whose kids are on the SEN register - and they don't even know why.

I moved DS from a MS to a MS with a disability base. It has higher than average SN and SEN. DS really benefits from the OT who is based at the school. All the training and equipment is there. If wobble cushions, writing slopes, stress toys etc are needed they are available. SALT is there several days a week. Move was right for my DS and he is thriving. Every school is different though. You don't know if they can walk the walk before you've gone for a stroll with them TBH.

Sounds great auntevil, I take it you have a statement then? Preparing for battle is the only way to describe thing now then. :)

It's certainly true that it depends on the school and its overall ethos, which is largely dictated by the Head. In ds's first school, he had two amazing teachers in Y1 who wanted to do all sorts to support him but they were blocked from the top and could do nothing.

The most important feature of a school, IMO, is staff attitude. If they truly want to support a child they'll find a way, but again that ultimately depends on the Head's attitude - if you've got a Head who will have no truck with SN then you've got no hope.

It's tricky to get right. When we moved ds to a school with an ASD unit we asked all the right questions, got all the right answers, felt all the right vibes at each visit, yet in reality they still had no practical support for him and the damage was so great that we're still picking up the pieces two years later. Because of the unit on-site, the staff should have been very autism-aware, but that wasn't the case. IMO, you can put your team into training but you can't make them absorb what they're being taught, which was very much in evidence in this particular school to an alarming degree.

Every school has a risk and you've really no way of knowing how it will work out until you put your child there and see them in action.