SCN0370
This is a submission from a family with two children:
We have been on a rapid learning curve over the last 4 years and in terms of education we wish we had been able to access far better information which would have helped us make decisions.
The support for children is hugely variable and this is partly due to the disincentives for support children with special educational needs within education and local government. Schools who take special educational needs in [local authority] have to allocated at least £6,000 before any educational health care plan will be provided – since the amount given to schools in the local area is around £3,500 it is a case of robbing Peter to educate Paul. A further disincentive is the focus given to SATS in terms of ranking each school, children with special needs are at a disadvantage and the rigidity of the system in terms of techniques like phonics (which are an anathema to children with Asperger’s).
As a result the schools that are best for SEN appear to be those that are lower on the SATs and are interested in the education of children rather than just training them to do well in exams to improve the reputation of the school. Initially for [name 1] we chose a school on the basis of the Ofsted ranking of “Outstanding” – we do not know how they came to this conclusion but an option of “Unproven” would have been less inaccurate.
This has improved dramatically in the last year as the council has good from a flat denial of support for anyone who is not in school to the extent that [name 2] has received 12 hours of 1-2-1 support. The results have been incredible but because the council have ignored special educational needs for so long, preferring to push such children into home-schooling, there is as a result not enough support in terms of special schools places etc. The system is still far too slow and reliant on a medical diagnosis although the new Early Years Management Team was able to move things on at a pace for [name 2] after he was initially rejected for support. The main problems have been due to the lack of an occupational therapist who understands sensory issues and the need for boxes to be ticked which resulted in [name 1] visiting the audiologist 3 times when it was clear on the first visit that he had marginal hearing issues but was not able to sit still long enough to do one of the tests. We were quite taken by the Canadian system where parents are given a set amount of money around $21,000 for diagnosis and they can choose what is needed but this may exacerbate the time poverty of the paediatrician as parents would need expert guidance. The assessment for autism and ADHD is far better than for Dyslexia which is a disgrace – there is no opportunity to have dyslexia diagnosed by the NHS and schools refuse to accept private sector diagnosis.
[Name 1’s] current school and the one he is looking to move to could not be more different. In his current school if he did something considered wrong he would be sent to the headmaster to be shouted at (the first thing we were told about his condition was never to shout) and as a result leaves school angry and confused. His newer school would look to understand what has triggered this outburst before considering any punishment. In general his current school suffers from marginalising of the SENCO and the one person who has tried to understand him in preference from “experienced teachers” who were trained before Autism was recognised by the NHS and have are poorly equipped to deal with this issue. There is also a refusal to support a child unless there is a diagnosis, as a result the school continues with disciplinary programmes that are recommended for some children with ADHD rather than looking at what works – we feel that ASD is actually dominant and a scheme called “Positive Praise” works better (this has been confirmed by Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) who introduced us to the concept.
It is difficult to assess this as the headmaster is an expert in everything to the extent that the school refuses to follow medical advice. This permeates throughout the school so that the issues a child with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) who is two years older than [name 1] are being repeated. The school has refused advice from [organisation] and other charitable organisations although it has recently accepted support from [school] which has started an outreach programme. In addition the school has received support for Speech and Language within school time and support from [local authority] Autism Team ([acronym]), a group of ex-teachers. The observation reports from [local authority autism team] suggest that they are poorly trained in observation techniques (for example their first report did not include simple observations such as did the child make eye contact with his friends etc.) and did not seem to understand fully autism – when [name 1] stated that something had happened to his friend the conclusion was that he was unreliable or a liar rather than taking it as being evidence that he find the concept of linear time complex. In mitigation this may be down to cuts in budget, restructuring and generally being a low priority for the council and they are better than nothing, providing at least some guidance to the school.
This is too reliant on luck. We had the great fortune that the management team at [nursery] were dedicated to supporting [name 1] and then [name 2] in helping to communicate that they would have a special educational need and provide evidence to help the Paediatrician. The key individual has however left the nursery and now works at the local [organisation] school due to the cost pressures put on the nursery.
There indicators that we relied upon when looking for a school for [name 1] were flawed – the Ofsted reports are inadequate at best and individuals who could see we were about to choose the wrong school for [name 1] were unable to comment, rather than to say that they had not had any dealings with the school we were looking at. There is currently no information out there to help choose the right school and highlight where best practice is going on.
The transition was fairly smooth in the case of [name 2] and the only issue with the school was there refusal to complete an educational health care plan for over a year, even after we received the ADHD diagnosis. They refuse to tell us why this was the case but we believe it was due to a failure to provide evidence of the £6,000 that had been allocated by the school to his education.
The funding of education in the county is difficult at the best of times but the need to allocate £6,000 before an EHC plan will be even considered is frankly appalling. A figure of £2,000 to £3,00 0should be sufficient to reduce spurious claims and would allow schools to spend more money on the things that matter such as wider education of staff and improving facilities to benefit SEN and other children.
At one point we had a family support worker – who was supposed to bring the education, health and social care sectors together. It was a disaster – none of the “professionals” knew or cared anything about their condition. The representative from the NHS demanded that we sat round the table every evening and then demanded that [name 2’s] little table and chair be removed because it was a bit tatty leading to severe limiting of his diet. The family support workers distorted the evidence – we were advised not to medicate [name 1] which was reported as we refused to medicate him and we were told our children would be removed if we failed to comply with their demands.
N/A it is out of our experience – [name 1] and perhaps [name 2] are likely to fare better in employment than in education due to the failure of education to keep pace with the needs of the commercial world. [Name 1] is likely to earn more than the teachers who have branded him a failure and [name 2] seems mechanically minded so will do well as a tradesman,