Your views on Inclusion in education please? Everyone welcome!

[dottee]

Hello everyone,

The success of the 'way for onlookers to behave' thread has really got me thinking and I hope you don't mind me starting a separate thread about 'Inclusion' in education.

I am a Governor at my daughter's school which is for children with Severe Learning Difficulties. We are in the middle of a review at present following the Government's directive of encouraging Inclusion into mainstream of children with Special Educational Needs.

I'd love to hear from everyone (whether you are mum of a SN child contemplating special or mainstream education or a mum of a NT child in mainstream). Please don't be shy of writing what you think. If the thread gets going, I'll add bits of what has been the opinion at our school, and what my own views/concerns are. Thank you.

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Cool Galaxy .

I agree hmb....the funding should be there and used correctly. I have an aquaintance who's ds is in mainstream. He has severe verbal dyspraxia but his learning support has no experience with speech problems whatsoever

as a parent of a child with sn and a secondary teacher I can see arguments for both. In my form class I have a lad with cp. He has been a part of the class and school for five years. What I have seen with my students is that they are okay with children with physical impairments but not children who may have autism, tourettes or conditions like that. I think as most people have said - appropriate support and inclusion works well for all involved. As a teacher - I have had more training regarding sex education and other twaddle but nothing about teaching children with SN. Most I have picked up along the way thanks to having worked with a couple of brilliant SENCO's ( one who was excellence in teaching national winner - she is amazing!!)

Dd attends a mainstream nursery full time while I work and it is brilliant for all the children. The older class has been learning sign language and makaton as part of their language study and the other day they came into the toddler room where dd is based and did a nursery ryhme with makaton for her ( as well as the others) Dd fits in so well - I am concerned about the move back to Aus and how she will cope. What I also find encouraging is the nursery's willingness to take on board any of my suggestions re: makaton, her physio etc..... at this stage she does not have a support worker.... In fact I also worry that she is the favourite of every one of the workers in the nursery - makes going home a long process in that we have to smile, wave and show off our latest tricks to every one of the nursery workers on our way out the door. I suspect she may get a little too much attention I just hope that inclusion leads to breaking down ignorance.....

So that is my humble experience with children with SN. I have worked with brilliant CSA's who have made the class situation so effective for the children with SN and thereby the rest of the class - and of course I have worked with some that are hopeless.... it really can be a lottery.

I have a 5 yr old son with Downs Syndrome. He is non verbal but has very good understanding and is fairly compliant. He is in the reception class of a mainstream school and it's working brilliantly. He is what I would call fully included. No one minds that he is different and although he's expected to behave like the other children, they give him just enough slack (like when he took his shepherd costume off at the end of the nativity play and wandered off the stage!!). They encourage him to take part and be a full part of our local community.

He is largely taught with the rest of the class and is learning to recognise words, count to 10 and can recognise the phonics signs for most of the alphabet. We have been amazed by how good his social and academic progress has been.

The keys to success have been the open mindedness of the school teachers (who have neve done anything like this before). Their willingness to get training and adapt their teaching methods and our battle to secure a proper comprehensive Statement (we had to go through a tribunal but it wasn't too bad and worth all the effort).

I also feel that the school has got a lot out of it as although the LSAs are assigned to our son, they are available for other tasks and can generally help in the classroom on an adhoc basis. It also means that the other children who are struggling to keep up get a lot out of working at a slower pace with our son in group work.

This is close to my heart Dottee. My LEA is downsizing its special schools and units. My son has autism and has really benefited from a small group placement. I feel that in a mainstream class even with support he will be lost as he doesn't cope well in a large group and switches off and withdraws.
My LEA claims it is downsizing in the name of inclusion when it is in fact a cost cutting exercise.

I'm typing this without reading any of the other replies. I probably have very little right to comment seeing as I have opted out of the school system altogether.

My feeling is that any situation where the children's needs are different and they need to compete for attention is not good for them. And I don't just mean SN children, I mean any child.

This is the view of someone who despite attempts not to admit it, dislikes the whole concept of school. Smaller schools, with smaller classes and well paid teachers, to me are the only way forward. Children need to be able to form relationships and understandings with their teachers, no matter what their needs. Aren't every child's needs special?

Hello Dottee,

I am going to comment from a slightly different angle and would be interested if you (or anyone else) had info that may help. My DDs local school has a comunication disorder unit attached and where possible/appropriate the children who attend this specialist unit are also integrated into mainstream classes.

I have been unable to get an answer from the school as to what is appropriate/possible (appreciate in the same category as how long is a piece of string but felt there must be some guidance) and have also been unable to source any research into the effects (if any)on NT children of this policy. Our gut feeling is that there must be effects in both directions - good to have the opportunity to mix with a diverse range of children but a potential detriment in teaching/attention from teaching/support staff.

Any views?

(DD hasn't started school as yet)

Gomez my son attends a unit attached to mainstream. When a child attends a mainstream class they do so with a support assisstant in place.

I've only just logged back on - what a huge response!

To give you some idea what is happening at dd's school, we have 112 pupils on roll at present (should have a maximum of 110) and we have been asked by the LEA through consultation with our Head and a Head from another SLD school to cut this to 80 pupils over the next four years.

When I attended the first meeting of the Governing Body with the Strategic Inclusion Leader on this matter, the first proclamation of the Leader was 'this is not a cost-cutting exercise'. We took that with a pinch of salt.

When facing questions from parents, the Leader confirmed all existing places are safe, however, the LEA are looking to cut numbers by a reduction of intake in nursery and early years. This has been going on now for over year and the LEA has extended the reduction period to 2008 bearing in mind our numbers are increasing rather than decreasing. He also tried to reassure staff that there would be no redundancies and the school would take on a role of a resource unit for support workers in mainstream. We were concerned that others were going to tap into our expertise (we are a centre of excellence for Makaton, for example) without our staff being rewarded. He said this was going to be taken on board during consultation.

We live in Rotherham and moved into the area from Rochdale due to my dp's job relocation in November 2001. We chose Rotherham because of the SN provision. Barnsley had already undergone a review and some SN schools had closed. Sheffied was on the first stages of review, and now I learn some SN schools in Sheffied are under threat.

I was a Governor in Rochdale. I attented the initial consulation meeting regarding Inclusion with the Director of Education in the summer of 2001 on behalf of the school where my dd was at then. The idea there is to build two new schools which are to co-locate SN and mainstream side by side on the same site. I've heard from friends over there that this is going ahead, however, the some of the existing SN schools are facing closure. At the summer meeting the idea of co-location appealed to me but there is now a low moral amongst staff facing uncertainty of there jobs. Another uncertainty is how the children are going to cope in their new environment. I feel the secondary SN provision has to improve over there as in parts this was almost non existant and had we stayed, by dd would have had to travel to Oldham for her needs to be met before the completion of the new co-located schools.

I am going to print this thread and take it for bedtime reading. I note some mainstream teachers have responded and I'm glad of their point of view. We did ask the Rotherham Leader whether the mainstream heads had been consulted at the time of our parents' meeting last year and he said that was yet to be done at that stage.

IMO, I think each SN should have a choice between special and mainstream and the places AND FUNDING should be there to ensure the child's needs are met in the most appropriate way. And paramount, the child should be happy! Some of the children in our school could be placed in mainstream with appropriate support but it has been the parents' perogative to put them where they are. I am keeping an open mind for the time being but a lot of parents at their meeting were concerned about any future children (even as yet unborn) not having the freedom of placement if our roll numbers have to be reduced.

i was in a mianstream school but it was disigned in away that children with special needs could get the help they needed as well it helped us understand there needs better aswell as our own but its a bit difficult now we have all left school because if someone says hes been diagnosed with this or shes got thatthe first reply i have been told to say the "right" thing as they put it is oh poor thing but i cant i just reply yeah and and it annoys somepeople because i dont treat people with special needs any different unless they need my help i think it helps growing up around kids with special needs because it makes you see the person and not the disability
well thats whay i found anyway

Thanks for such a positive response Mary and you too Maddie as I presume you were heading to the same place with your explanation of classroom assistants. I think the information we are looking for doesn't exist to be honest they are just too many variables involved in the whole education process to isolate the impact of one aspect of the experience.

This thread has got too long, too fast! I haven't got time to read it all now but will tomorrow.
IMHO, of course, Inclusion is a cost cutting exercise, in the mould of care in the community. Its disguised as being to benefit the child with SEN but is to save money. Of course, it wouldn't save much money if the right support was always provided which, from my quick scan, is a point lots of people have mentioned. And access to transport to m/s school if the children and parents need it, this seems to be missing when SEN children go to M/S school. Without enough support it wont work, not just during teaching time but at playtimes, lunchtime, arriving, going home etc. Also, being in the same physical place as the mainstream kids doesn't make a child included. The other thing, sorry if this depresses anyone, it WON'T work at secondary level, certainly not for leaning disabilities. I have many friends whose autistic or aspgerger children have been to mainstream nursery and junior schools with good support, even if its provided by the parents. I don't think any of them feel they can consider bog-standard mainstream secondary school. Of course there will be exceptions and other types of disability or special need may adapt well, I can only speak from my experience which is of ASD and AS. Personally I think there should be a lot mroe flexibility, e.g. part home with part m/s school or part special school with part m/s AND children with SEN should be able, if it makes sense, to be in classes with NT children younger than them. Its amazing how resistant LEAs are to SEN children being with NT children even slightly younger, I'm only talking about one year below chronological age or maybe 2 years. LSAs and SNAs need more training, support and status as its a hard job and they seem like second class citizens in the school hierarchy. Units with m/s schools sound like a good thing but the reality I've seen is not so good.
I'm all for children with disabilities and their parents being able to choose m/s but don't like it suddenly being the ONLY choice, how is that meeting the chlid's needs?

Davros
I hope you have managed to wade through the batch of messages! I agree with you that there is a real danger of LEA's seeing inclusion as a great cost cutting exercise. One huge help is that the SEN legistlation is LAW, not an option (which the LEA's, praticularly ours, tend to forget!). The legistlation about how inclusion should be supported and funded is all very much in the child's favour.

I happen to personally feel that mainstream education is great for some children, but not all and it is very important that we keep strong special schools.

I don't know what SEN's the children at your school have, but I am sure that many of them, particularly children with Downs Syndrome can thrive in a mainstream setting. However, it is absolutely critical that the LEA have worked out how they are going to fund it, what training is in place for teachers etc. Ask them. They need to be realistic about how much support a child with SEN needs in a mainstream setting. We started off with being offered 2 days LEA support a week which would have been a disaster. We eventually got virtually full time.

Many LEAs are doing this already so it might be a good idea to get in touch with one that's doing it well and see if you can link up with a school like yours who have already started the process. If you contact IPSEA , I am sure they will be able to put you in contact with someone.

Agree with everything Davros has said.

Umm someone asked the effect on NT children? IME - if properly supported- the effect will be positive, as they will see difference. I don't think my son's presence affects the learning of the other children at all as he isn't kept in any class he can't cope with. I think he sometimes does small group work with the other children, or will share a computer, but he has his own table, and effectively his own room where most of the work takes place. He is very well known throughout the school now and often older children come up and say hello- which is quite sweet.

Without sufficient support its a different matter. For the first time ever he hurt 2 children at nursery this week. Not aggresively- he has discovered that if he pinches people they make an interesting noise (and boy does it hurt). I don't think its any coincidence that this has occurred within weeks of the LEA cutting his support (from full time one to one to 50%) at nursery. He has attended that nursery for over 2 years and has never hurt a child before this (although he has been in the incident book for cases where he's been hurt occasionally).

The trouble is we had to battle for full time support for a child who clearly cannot cope without full time one to one and his own individual curriculum. What happens to children like him without parents who have the confidence to do that?

As you know Jimjams, they go to the wall

Inclusions should work for the vast majority of children. In the 21st centuary we should be able to get over any difficulties and fully integrate our society. And that would benefit everyone.

But at the moment inclusion is dreadfuly underfunded and the people that this hurts most are the children with SEN. They are being sold short, and may become disruptive as their needs are not being met, and frustration mounts. So when inclusion is done badly, everyone suffers.

In our school we have just 'lost' a boy with ADHD. He had no classroom support at all, jsut and IEP that was inpossible to fulfil while he was unsuported in a class of 26. The poor kids wasn't learning anything, and by the end neither were the other 25 kids, as I would have to spend all my time trying to calm him down. The only other alterative we had was to place him with another class to work alone....not inclusion as I understand it. In the end it became a H & S issue and he has been withdrawn, what a damn shame

DS1 is only four and a half but I must admit my blood runs cold when I think of him and secondary school.

Davros, I'd be interested in knowing a bit more about the sorts of choices your friends have made - can I email you about it?

Just to say how lucky we are that our DD is in a mainstream school attached to speech and language unit. Our daughter benefits from 50% mainstream and 50% unit time (speech & language therapy, social skills lessons). We had the option of leaving our DD in the mainstream school with a support worker (just a mum, not trained specifically unlike the school DD's at now!) for a couple of hours a day. In the new school the language base children always have an additional language unit worker with them at all times. The benefit of this is that the other childrens time is not taken up by the SN children. When DD was in the mainstream I didn't really feel that she belonged. Her behaviour was terrible as she was not coping, the teacher was not coping and all in all it was a miserable situation for all involved. Finding a school that fully UNDERSTAND my dd and where there are 49 other children with similar problems does make you not feel so different and I am sure that my dd is more relaxed being around children with similar problems. Inclusion is great but not at the cost of the child. For some children like my daughter units - attached to mainstream schools - are the only way. I would NEVER want my dd to go back into mainstream and I'm hoping that she will stay in the unit until she is at least 10!DD is only 4 but has made so much progress with the specific, professional help. Units are the way forward:0

although the units must be funded properly as well. We were offered a unit attached to a mainstream and I said no. This particular unit is underfunded, understaffed and my non-verbal son would have been given group speech therapy with AS children! He also would not have been allowed his own individual LSA. He would however have been allowd to watch the video whenever he screamed and to play all day. It has a lot of space, and with proper funding could have been good- but once again the LEA cuts corners to save money.

It all comes down to funding. I do think that units have their place, but as you say they need good funding to work. I see a lot of kids who cannot access the mainstream curriculum as they lack the literacy skills to cope. It is almost impossible to set work at GCSE level when children have reading ages of 7, but that is what we are expected to do, and it doesn't help them!

To be blunt I'm a secondary teacher, I don't have the specialist skills needed to teach someone to read! But we are all supposed to deliver the IEP, even when we lack the support and skills to do so. I am more than happy to do what I can, but the kids are suffereing.

Special units for behavioural problems (separate ones from the SEN) would also be a boon. At the moment I teach classes that have children with SEN, and also children who have more non specific behavioural 'issues' (not talking about ADHD here). The SEN children who are ofter very vulnerable are in with children who's behaviour is out of control.

All I can say is that in MY experience, I am over-the-moon with the school that my DD attends. We had a meeting with Ofsted last night as the school is being insoected next week and they need parents views. Some of the parents of children in the unit were near to tears because of how much the school has done for their children. This particular school also has a high level of special needs within the mainstream so the school is overfunded. All I can say is that I get on my prayer mat everynight and thank god that my dd is at such a wonderful school. It also depends on each child. My dd has a speech and language disorder and the specific language work that they do with her, on a daily basis, you couldn't pay for privately! My dd,s special need is language but most of her work is age appropriate and above!

KBP, that is great! And it just shows what could be done if the funding was there in all mainstream schools.

KPB that sounds excellent. There is a specialist language unit in our city as well and I have heard good things about it (my son wouldn't be suitable so it was never an option for us).

One thing I've noticed specifically about autism units is that they're often tacked onto schools in quite "needy" (for want of a better word) schools. I'm sure this makes it far harder for there to be inclusion within the school (as it will have enough problem pupils already).

Hi Jimjam, Funnily enough this school is also in a deprived area but according to the school as my dd has some social problems the fact that these children (some of them) do as well is great for dd as she doesn't have such a "gap" and these children are far more accepting than children perhaps from a nicer background - if that makes sense! One mum from the ofsted meeting last night (v. well spoken) was telling us her story of how they had realised their son had a problem and felt he would cope in a private school - wrong, he didn't! He came to the school that my dd is at, it was a culture shock for the parents but was recommended by the LEA! He is now in year6 transferring to the secondary school in the area with a unit! This mum, as I have, only had really good, positive things to say about the school. The lovely thing about this school is that ALL children are treated as individuals! Some children will have behavioural difficulties as my daughter has due to her lack of understanding. hand on heart she has changed so much. The approach to behaviour is very positive and stickers/visual programs are used that do work. A very good friend of mine has a son with autism and he attends his local school with the autistic unit attached, again in a "problem" area! I will ask my friend to post her experiences as he has sone so well since being there. His speech has really come on and the things they do with him speech therapy, music therapy and swimming. They took them to McDonalds, Clarkes to have their feet measured and the farm. This school that my friends son goes to is not only educating these children but preparing them for life. So as you can see the borough that I live in and the experiences I have had have been v. positive. A year ago I wanted my dd at ds (aged 6) school. We went along with this and dd went to the nursery. What a nightmare, they were not understanding at all. My poor dd even had a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet in an assembly. My dd kept coming home saying how naughty she was and bad - takes everything literal. Even when she had an assistant - it wasn't enough she just wasn't understanding. I had to make a choice and I can say hand on my heart - I made the right one. If you had told me 18months ago that this would be the school dd would go to I would have said "No way!" but it frightens me to think how different things could've been had I not taken that gamble. Sorry to ramble on but for us, seeing the MASSIVE difference in our dd has made me very passionate about the subject. I do not believe mainstream schools can offer the "tailored", "specialist" help that some, not all, children benefit from!!!!