Ambitious about Autism's new 'Ruled Out' campaign on academic exclusion

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

Ambitious about Autism have launched a new campaign today called Ruled Out. It focuses on children with autism and asks why they miss out on school.

Ambitious about Autism say:

'Children with autism are disproportionately affected by both formal and illegal school exclusion. Some parents find it difficult to find a school that can meet their child’s needs and as a result their children are put on part-time timetables, excluded or not able to access the curriculum they are entitled to. In short, they miss out on education.

4 in 10 children with autism have been excluded informally and therefore illegally during their time at school.
20% of children with autism have been formally excluded in the past 12 months.
Over half of parents of children with autism say they have kept their child out of school for fear that the school is unable to provide appropriate support.'

The campaign has the following aims:

Every family of a child with autism should know their rights, and have the resources to help their child get the support they are entitled to at school.
Every school should have access to an autism specialist teacher, to build capacity among schools staff and to support children with autism to learn and achieve.
Every local authority should set out in its local offer the support available in its area to ensure children with autism have access to quality full-time education.

Ambitious About Autism has asked if Mumsnet would like to sign up as an official supporter of the campaign, and as ever we said we'd need to run it past our posters. So if you have any thoughts on that, do please let us know; and of course if you'd like to take action to support the campaign at an individual level, you can see how to do that at the bottom of this page.

Thanks
MNHQ

"I think this group of individuals needs their education/qualifications MORE than a nt child."

Totally agree zzzz. I make this point at every single meeting we have about my ds's schooling. Not that it has got me very far yet.

"What is clear is that no child with autism should miss out on their right to a good quality full time education. It is essential schools of all types are supportive of children with autism so that they are able to reach their potential."

Well obviously. Who could possibly disagree! it's like saying 'I believe in human rights' - no one is going to say 'I don't believe in human rights'/

Or 'I want peace'. Who doesn't want peace?

It's HOW you go about achieving this which is the tricky bit. What is patently missing from this campaign are real concrete goals which attack the causes of exclusion.

Tough on exclusion: tough on the causes of exclusion. Namely, an education service (including ASC outreach services) which AAA must know is not fit for purpose and LAs battling at all cost to keep budgets low for these 'expensive' complex kids.

At all costs, means frequently acting unlawfully.

If you don't address unlawful practice, you'll get nowhere

So why is there no real campaign goal which concentrates on improving LA practices.

Parents are sick and tired of doing this by ourselves.

I found out about autism sunday on sunday night from twitter

DS has had a diagnosis for 4 years and I keep up hugely with developments in SEN and ASD.

I still don't know what it was for or what it meant.

But perhaps the focus of the Autism community just isn't on the kids!?

Missed that too. What were we supposed to do for it on a Sunday? [confused

Sit and think about autism

Pray cos it twas a Sunday!

Pray hard that schooling in this country will become a universal service for all children based on evidence based practice. Pray also that the stone age prejudices that mean so many kids are denied access to even a basic education come to a swift end.

Thanks for all the input so far - any more for any more?

We take your point about the difficulty many of you experience in getting LAs to fulfil statutory duties. Ambitious about Autism have a parents' guide about legal rights to education here, for anyone who might find it useful.

I do support this. I really do. But when you give parents another guide to their rights all I can ask is, to what purpose?

Knowing your rights in a culture where law-breaking is common place, justified as a reasonable way of dealing with ridiculous expectations from central government who turn a blind and encourage their oversight bodies to do so too, is IMO almost worse than not knowing your rights at all, in terms of the potential to harm families.

And the thing that I am finding odd about this, is that I have heard representatives from AAA speak of this, in the way that I just have.

So I suppose what I am REALLY saying, is I support the campaign, I support the direction and I support the awareness-raising and I would be very happy if Mumsnet also did. But I am still extremely disappointed about how weak the campaign seems to be.

so if we as carers/parents and autistic children have rights how come we don't get them? yet others do for criminal behaviour citing their human rights???????? ffs.

we have to fight for EVERYTHING to get a smidgeon of teeny tiny help.

Parents have to obey the law - schools and LA's are completely unaccountable in so many ways it's not even funny. Until this changes more and more children with both visible and invisible disabilities will not only be denied access to an education but will suffer from the secondary mental health conditions that accompany being treated as a 3rd class citizen during their formative years. Thus too many children end up being 3X disadvantaged by the time they reach adulthood.

So true Boc. When you get the LGO condoning law breaking too there is absolutely nowhere you can go for any justice.

It is a great campaign, but I think until we get some decent autism training in this country, particularly for school shadows or LSAs supporting autistic kids in mainstream, anything like this is just shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Many of us favour a methodology called ABA, which is the standard therapy for autism in the US, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia etc. But there is prejudice against it in the UK for some reason, and many pals of mine are going to expensive and harrowing tribunals to win it. The real craziness is when parents want an ABA-trained shadow, but are offered instead a dinner lady LSA. I have nothing against dinner ladies, except when they are being put in charge of vulnerable autistic children, who need expertise rather than amateurism.

Maybe ask AaA why they don't shout more about ABA training, since their roots lie in ABA via Treehouse school? Why just campaign for the sticking plaster, not the best upfront treatment?

I would vote more for Mumsnet to support the campaign below, as it gets to the heart of the matter - viz, that our autism education in this country lags 7 years behind the rest of the world. But sadly it may be seen as too controversial, as it goes against the grain of the autism establishment. We do badly need change, real change.

Www.facebook.com/ABAforallchildren

Sorry

Www.facebook.com/abaforallchildren

7 years behind? More like at least a couple of generations!

well said SickOf

This campaign succeeds in increasing awareness, and I am in favour of MN supporting it. As one of the parents interviewed for this campaign, I am very disappointed it does not go beyond that.

What will this campaign achieve after the initial flush of heightened "awareness", apart from perhaps succeeding in pricking the consciences of those in schools (note I didn't mention LAs)?

It's not about ignorance on the part of LAs and schools, they already have access to advice. It's not even about arming "hero" parents with knowledge so they can carry out the policing job no one is stepping up to.

Its about looking at the causes of exclusions. It's about making sure schools and LAs obey the law. Why isn't the campaign focussing on oversight and enforcement?

This is a good start, but it needs to go a lot further.

@StarlightMcKingsThree

I support the premise but I just wondered what the following meant:

a) 'Every school should have access to an autism specialist teacher'

As far as I am aware, every school does have access to this resource, but they are usually expected to pay for it and often don't want to. Excluding a child is cheaper.

b) 'Every family should know their rights, and have the resources to help their child get the support they are entitled to at school'

I do agree with this, but I am unclear as to what is being proposed here. What resources does AAA think parents need. My understanding is that you can have pretty large resources and know your rights but often that simply expedites the exclusion.

c) 'Every Authority should set out its local offer'

I thought that every LA was expected to do this anyway. And there is a world of different between 'support available' and support that is accessible or even helpful.

However, on balance, I feel that this issue (though unsure of the solutions) is an extremely important one and would support it being in the media and awareness of it being raised.

Hello - here's Ambitious About Austism's response:

"a) We want to explain to schools and LAs that excluding a child is not cheaper. There is existing research about the cost of exclusion and how much alternative placements can cost local authorities. We want schools to understand that buying in some specialist support to help make ‘reasonable adjustments’ as required by law is the most cost effective course of action. As for specialist autism teachers, we are working with colleagues at the Autism Education Trust to think about what level of training they would need to have and how exactly this would work in practice. We have been considering the way teachers of the deaf are a defined group with a specific set of qualifications and how that might work for specialist autism teachers. We have lots of detail still to work out but hope it will be helpful.

b) We have produced a parents guide which has been linked to. We are also hoping to produce a resource for local authorities and a separate one for schools. We are not suggesting that knowing your rights is enough to solve the problem but we know this is a very complex legal area and hope that our guide for families will help those who want further information.

c) Our third recommendation is that every local authority should set out in its local offer the ‘support available to ensure that children with autism have access to full time quality education’ this will mean listing services available for pupils at risk of exclusion, specialist services that schools can purchase to help support pupils etc. The details of what exactly must be included in a local offer are still being finalised so we hope to use the campaign as a way of influencing that."

And inappropriatelyemployed, in response to your posts, Ambitious About Autism say:

'Thank you so much for your feedback. The campaign will last for a year and I hope that during that time we will achieve much of what you set out above. We are working out exactly how we might define what an specialist autism teacher is and how services might be shared amongst schools. While the local offer isn’t a perfect solution it is an opportunity for schools and families to be able to see what services are expected to be available in a local authority. At the moment this information can be difficult to come across.

We will hope to work with both to the LGA/LGO and Ofsted about their role in stopping the practice of illegal exclusions.

We have worked with a number of sector colleagues and tried to build on the evidence that already exists. Our report references the findings of a number of the organisations you mention above. We have invited a number of organisations to be campaign partners so that we can make sure we work together and use all of the research we have collected as a sector. We absolutely agree that we need to work together on this.

I hope that answers some of your questions. Please do continue to post more questions, comments and suggestions.'

I agree with polter the law needs to be adhered to but Aba isn't for me though I see it works for others