Your school's philosophy on children with special needs.

[skewiff]

Some of you may have seen my previous post about clashes I've been having with the school.

I am just wondering whether different schools have different philosophies on the way they include children with special needs.

I am trying to get my head around the way that DS's school are trying to include him. His school is well know for being excellent with SN children. However I am finding that the school puts far more emphasis on treating all the children in the school the same, rather than allowing the specific needs of the SN child to be met.

DS's school is not keen on children being taken out of the class. They would prefer the whole class to do the exercise that the SN child needs to do ...

When I first heard them say this I thought it sounded brilliant, but now we are actually in the school I realise that it really reduces the amount they can actually help the SN child. They can only get a whole class to do so much ie 1 or 2 exercises a day. When often a SN child needs a good 10 minutes or so.

DS's school says he should not have a TA as it will separate him from playing with the other children. DS has a statement saying that he should have physio every day and some 1:1 help during the day. So at the moment the school is getting round this by having me do DS's exercises in the morning (they want this to stop though) and getting shared TA's to come and help him out at odd moments.

Do any of your children's schools have philosophies such as these. I hope what I am saying makes sense and is not a load of mumbo jumbo.

I'm just finding it really hard to communicate with the school at the moment. They don't seem to understand where I am coming from. And I really don't understand where they are coming from, hence this post.

Thank you.

At DS2's old primary he had 15 + 5 hours on his statement. They employed a atA specifically for him. Initially she was extra to the class TA, all through infants. By juniors she was the only TA, so she was more like a class TA, but always there if DS2 needed 1:1 support. Not officially, of course but that was how it worked. It actually worked well for my DS. Now he's in secondary he has a 1:1 for 20 hours, this may be slightly more than he needs, but was necessary for the transition.

I would definitely be arguing with your DS's school. A good 1:1 TA shouldn't prevent him making friends, they can encourage social interaction. Equality doesn't mean treating everyone the same, it means giving all DC equal opportunities to access the curriculum, which may mean lots of adjustments for your DS.

Your DS's school's philosophy isn't helpful at all. His needs are different from those of other children, whether they like it or not. Actually, even more than unhelpful, I think it's lazy. That statement is a legally binding document and they should be making an effort to meet the terms of it.

My DS2 is non verbal and can't hold a pencil. It would be ridiculous for the other children to do the same activities as him en masse. Yes, some group activities are engineered for him to join in with (and his 1:1 facilitates this), but he needs a lot of intensive 1:1 input at his own level and, quite often, he just needs to be away from other kids or else he becomes overstimulated and screechy.

our school is fantastic.
ds1 goes out of class to do sessions with the SENCO (communications group and stuff) and they are very keen to adjust things that need adjusting- for example providing him with somewhere quiet to work if it's getting too noisy, giving him visual aids, ensuring he is prompted to do things he struggles with- but they don't single him out.
so the quiet area is set up for ANY children to use who need it iyswim, so he has never been told "ds1 this is where you need to go if you're getting cross" or anything like that,

but they also understand that actually he does need to learn to function in society and as such changing everything to suit him actually isn't helping him in the long-term

I guess what they do is treat all the children as individuals, which is what you want from every school isn't it? they can't treat ALL the children the same be that expecting a child with SN to do what everyone else does, or expecting all the other kids to do exercises designed for a child with SN.

They need an approach which allows a child to participate as much as possible with everyday aspects of school life, but also give them those things they need that others don't so maybe that's physio, 1-1 time on certain areas etc etc

We are incredibly lucky though that ds1 is at a very small Montessori primary (one of the new free schools") so I realise that at a larger school it does make it more difficult.

I would expect any school to have a "policy" of teaching to each child's individual needs though, where possible

Inclusion is a really fine line imo. In DS's school they run lots of different 'classes' of small group work, OT, physio, social skills, anger management,behaviour management, educational support etc. The SENco, Inclusion Officer and teacher decide who is in need.
Some of these sessions run for no more than 10 minutes, often daily, and fit easily around classes and do not seem intrusive into learning time.
I do have issues with some aspect though. Sometimes i think they put children in these sessions to tick boxes that they have done something - but don't tailor it well enough to the individual.
Also, whilst they do that, they also run many other competitions, teams etc, where there is no levelling of playing field whatsoever. Examples recently have been a competition where entries had to be handwritten. My DS switched off at that point - he was upset as he would have liked to have joined in. By the time the teacher spoke to me to ask why he hadn't entered (DS never mentioned it to me) - it was too late to say 'well of course he could have typed it' ! Letting him enter trials for sports teams that he clearly cannot manage, and then not dealing with the aftermath of rejection, leaving it for me to do. The list could go on!

Having a 1:1 TA will not prevent a dc from making friends and being included. It doesn't mean TA being attached to him all day for every minute. I have read some of your earlier posts and really can't seewhy the achool can't arrange for a TA to be properly trained in the exercises and then have a set time each day to do them. It should be no different from my dd having her TA do her SALT work with her every day. It is probably the case that they are trying to get round the statement by using other dc's TA's to do odd bits with your ds. I think you really need some kind of assessment from an OT which will state that he needs his OT to be delivered every day for x length of time so you can use this to get atighter statement.