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MNHQ

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

6 replies

RowanMumsnet · 11/02/2014 14:27

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

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MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 11/02/2014 14:42

Thanks Lougle - we will pass it on and let you know what they say.

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 12/02/2014 11:54

@moondog

Hi It would be good if you could follow up my request (I have already asked you twice) to get Professor Richard Hastings onto the MNSN board for a Q&A session. Professor Hastings is one of the leading professionals in the field of LD and Autism and is heavily involved in both Ambitious about Autism and Treehouse.

He has very kindly agreed to this but MN have not taken me up on this!
Getting tiring keeping on asking!

Apologies moondog - we got all busy behind the scenes setting up the chat, but didn't let you know we'd done so. Professor Hastings is on board and will be doing the webchat in early March

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 12/02/2014 11:55

OK, we've had the following response from Ambitious about Autism to the question about mainstream/specialised settings:

"We want good quality full time provision for children with autism whatever type of school they are in. We know that for many children with autism mainstream education can be a really positive experience - providing schools fulfil their duties to make reasonable adjustments. For some children a specially adapted curriculum and input from other professionals like speech and language therapists will be essential to their progress at school. This support can be available in any setting, and we support parents and young people’s right to choose a type of school that works best for them.

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."

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 13/02/2014 14:09

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.

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 14/02/2014 17:27

@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."

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 14/02/2014 17:28

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.'

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