Can 20% of pupils really have Special Needs?

[moondog]

Good article from the Telegraph on the inexorable rise of the SEN industry.

From my perspective this is absolutely correct. All smoke and mirrors.
Meanwhile children who really do have special needs are not having them addressed properly.

It is interesting when you see these pieces on how more children are labelled SEN when most of us have such a battle getting this 'label' for our child. To be fair, I think the article picks up on that too.

The problem is that the system needs relabelling 'teachers educational needs' as it is not about the child's!

If a teacher has a problem, for whatever reason, it is easier to label a child SEN as this is the quickest way of getting additional LA money and a TA to babysit the child. God forbid you should have to do anything yourself - like teach!

This has been made really clear to me with my son having a teacher as a TA. Great I thought! But she is flawed by the most minor of behavioural challenges. If he says he doesn't want to do something, she hasn't a clue what to do but of course that is his fault.

It made me think that teachers get by with 90% of the children 90% of the time without doing very much once they have all been 'broken' in to school ways. If a child needs more than that, for whatever reason, the teacher has a problem, so the child has a problem.

And of course, what the system offers is provision to get the child back in line so the teacher can teach. Ask them to skill a child and you can forget it

Still it keeps some people in a living!

I read some of the comments that have now been moderated or deleted. This article only seemed to make some people think they could attack parents of SEN children and SEN children themselves. SO I don't agree that it is good article. Comments such as these kids with ASD ADHD Dyslexia should get a good smack that would cure them. Comments that say poor parenting has created these SEN issues. Comments saying that parents just want to claim DLA so don't bother teaching their children so they get a label. Articles such as this give Joe public a free for all.

Well 75% of my dc have special needs.....

This is a nice one posted today

""Absolutely agree. You have to be vetted to give an animal a home but any old thicko can have kids and the benefits that ensue. You can also claim other carers benefits if you have a child that has been 'labelled' as having SEN. Jackpot for some, no wonder so many people are desperate to give their kids a 'disability'. ""

I think though any time there is an article on anything like SEN, you will get comments like that, no matter what the tone of the article!

""Wonder how many of these children are stigmatised by their parent(s) so that extra state benefit can be claimed. Have met dozens of kids with ADHD, aspergers or autism whose main disability is a greedy irresponsible homelife. ""

""Special needs parents are the problem. We reward them for breeding with no means of support and spend billions on an ineffective parallel universe of social workers trying to guide them as parents. The group within society most likely to have very early children are the least intelligent, already proven academic failures in the same schools their kids will attend.""

The article could have been written with more care I think.

I think that you need to ignore the trolls. They'd be the first to bleat if their dc had SEN or SN.

It would be great to ignore them but 90 % of comments were by trolls!

Actually I don't think it is a good article - the writer either doesn't understand or deliberately confuses SENs with SNs.

The 20% figure is not the number of pupils with SNs but the number of children who need extra support in school, which will include those whose learning is being affected by their home life.

I trump you Sally. 100% of mine have SN

45% of children in DS's school are on SA, SA+ or SSEN.

My little 25% announced that his career aspirations have now changed from being a Spy/RockStar/Army Guy (sic) to a Spy/RockStar/Army Guy/WWE Wrestler! Good grief!! And I thought that the other three (75%) were a worry!!

I think it is easy to use such issues to 'bash' those getting state money just like articles about the disabled being 'benefit scroungers' etc. It softens people up for cuts to services for the vulnerable and this is from the Torygraph after all!

I agree tabulahrasa - if children have needs in school, they should be met and the SEN framework is wide enough for this.

However, my point is that the system frequently does not meet these needs so many is clearly wasted propping up people and services that are not of any particular benefit and that it relies on a teacher's needs and not a child.

If a child is having problems at home and it is affecting them and their learning, what is the chances this will be dealt with if it does not also affect the teacher through behavioural problems etc

I do think, as Moondog has often said, that there are very clear and genuine questions that need to be asked and answered about the delivery of provision.

I agree that some on the money spent on SN/SEN is misapplied, and with all the points appropriately has made on this thread. In my own experience the local early years inclusion service was nigh on useless. But I think that was rather an unpleasant article, with unpleasant undertones about sharp elbows and that dig about toilet training was nasty.

I would absolutely welcome media coverage of what actually works btw, I know that Jean Gross has been v successful with early years work in Stoke on language develpment.

Before I start to rant I would like to say how much I admire all you parents who have stuck with your SN DC's it would be so easy for you to throw the towel in. The reason you do it that you love them not for the bloody benefits.This is in reply to waasup reporting on an article she read. What a load of crap. On paper we look like a feckless family 8 DC's with SN sadly 3 have died and we have claimed benefits, are but all adopted, because
their parents unlike you couldn't be arsed to care for them. I take my hat off to you all. Sorry nothing to do with OP which is a good thread. Teachers seem to be unable to adapt to a child who may be a bit different without labelling them. Is it something to do with money?

When I started school in 1980 all the children had been toilet trained in my class of 25 apart from one boy who had spina bifida - the teachers picked on him mercilessly and encouraged the children to do so, so his parents removed him from school and home-educated. So that worked for the teachers 'cos they didn't have to deal with it.

When DS started school in 2009 in a nursery class of 15, one started in nappies (ASD), DS and one other (ASD? and dyspraxia) had frequent accidents and two of the other boys had occasonal accidents (all well cared-for). But then they were 3 and we were 5 - there isn't enough time to get some boys who are developing more slowly toilet trained before they do start school. It's a bit of a red herring suggesting that some old teacher not suddenly having to deal with younger children than she prefers and the ones who would just have been sent straight off to a special school is part of the supposed societal desease of disabled people as scroungers.

I think it frustrates me that because there seems to be higher SNs levels at schools in lower income areas, people tend to make general assumptions - like lower income also equals poor parenting.

I do think that there is the possibility that lower income cannot access the assistance or support they need (because of these assumptions by, for example, medical or school personnel) and therefore the needs become more pronounced, causing more fallout.

It's also true that parents with a child with an SN are more likely to have a lower income - the SN causing the lower income rather then the low income causing the SN.

Just to confirm those comments were not mine^^

The biggest mistake is to make the assumption that additional levels of state provided 'support' is the way to solve the problem.
The fact is that the Special Needs 'industry' has ballooned and yet SEN is on the rise.

Go figure as the Americans say.
Centre for Policy Studies has a very interesting paper on the rise of the SEN industry which, irritatingly, I can't find on their website.
LP, Jean Gross didn't do any of this work herself as far as I know. She was commisioned to look into provision as part of a big s/lt initiative called 'Giving Voice'.

My opinions on the whole Giving Voice thing are better left unrecorded althoguh having read Gross' final report, there is no doubt that hse is a good woman.

Also from Surrey - and also not from the leafier parts, I can confirm that at least 20% of children in my DSs school have SN/SENs. Surely it is how the administration is done that will affect %. In EYFS and KS1, there are so many children with SALT input, OT input CAHMS input. So as such they are all SA+, so as such SEN register. By KS2, many of these children will have been booted off SALT/OT/CAHMS as we all know that as soon as they can, they ditch, regardless.
Some children will have developed and improvements made, but surely this higher % at early ages will skew any general school %.
Personally I would like to throttle any journo or troll that makes 1 more comment about us feckless mothers that send our DCs to school when they are not potty trained. I pointed out a potential problem with my DS before he was 1. Due to the ridiculous wait and see, i'm sure he will develop, attitude of the NHS these days, no-one medical took the issue seriously - and the teachers are picking up the consequence, just like I have been doing as well.
I would also like to point out to that journo, that my DS helps the school with their stats by being a very bright lad. A nappy change 20 minutes after eating will hardly cost society £20,000. Keeping him out of school, or me potentially not working (so as to come and change him) could effectively cost society far more.
And breathe - rant over

tabulahrasa (eeek hope I spelled that right!!) that is so true - it's a point that I think is often missed by the general public.

Moondog - I had assumed she was involved in some sort of consultative aspect of the Stoke work, but possibly I am wrong. I don't agree that decent support inevitably must be outside the state system, but agree with your scepticism towards these initiatives with spangly names, I think we would have common ground in believing only in initiatives which have some form of measurable better outcomes! and I mean outcome not in the purely administrative sense but in terms of tangible achievements by children with speech/language/communication needs.