Wednesday 23 September 2009

Inclusion and home education

Inclusion. It sounded such a great idea. Instead of herding all the disabled kids into special schools, why not integrate them into the mainstream, let them learn alongside everybody else? Of course there is no reason at all why somebody in a wheelchair shouldn't be able to use an ordinary school. Nor should deaf or blind children be excluded; with proper adaptations, they too can be accommodated. So far, so good. The problems really began when this same principle was applied to children with what is euphemistically termed "challenging behaviour". Some of these were what we call EBD (emotional and behavioural difficulties), others were on the autistic spectrum.

A few words about the motivation for all this. As usual, it was money. Special schools are colossally expensive to run. Closing them down enabled local authorities to sell the sites to proper developers, always a smart move, and the children themselves can be "supported" in mainstream schools. Instead of highly paid specialised teachers, why not pay classroom assistants to follow them around and keep an eye on them? It's got to be cheaper! You can guy it all up as compassion for the less fortunate as well. Some people even described this as the last civil rights movement, giving disabled children the same rights as everybody else. How caring is that?

How does all this affect home education? In several ways. Firstly, because autistic children no longer had the special provision that they needed. Often, they were just chucked into ordinary classrooms and expected to get on with it like the other kids. With luck, a speech therapist might pop by once a week and perhaps you can pay the dinner lady for a couple of extra hours at playtime to keep a watch upon the kid and see that she doesn't get mocked or picked on too much. This actually happens, dinner ladies being given extra hours to "support" autistic children. Little wonder that quite a few parents withdraw their kids and decide that they are better off at home.

Another problem is that if you have an EBD child rampaging round the classroom, refusing to sit down, maybe grabbing other children's work and tearing it up, then you won't have so much time to spend on the rest of the class. The more capable ones might just be able to get on with their work despite the disruption, but what about those children who find it hard to cope at the best of times? Hey, what if some of those children have special needs of their own; Aspergers, dyslexia, mild learning difficulties an so on. Well of course if you are the teacher, who are you going to focus your attentions on, the kid charging around shouting and having a tantrum or the quiet child sitting in the corner struggling desperately to understand the work? No contest really.

The parents of some of those neglected children also choose to de-register their children from school and who can blame them? I am bound to say that if my daughter had had autistic features or been any less robust than the average child, I would have thought very carefully before sending her to an ordinary school. It is not hard really to understand why there seems to be a higher proportion of children with special educational needs among home educated children. The wonder of it is that so many parents still put up with the system as it currently operates.

19 comments:

  1. dont worry that f uncle Badman will come to our rescue? lets ask him to take in a few speical needs children into his home.He is such a pratt and simon was crawing all over him! did you sit on his simon and what dud your daughter say to him? come on dont be shy tell us what your daughter said to him? or is she to ashamed to say?

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  2. Anonymous, are you mad? What on earth are you talking about? "did you sit on his simon?"

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  3. Ah, that's very astute of you Gisela. His name is Peter Williams of Alton in Hamshire and as you so shrewdly observe, he is completely mad.

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  4. i want our school attendance order? who got the guts to send it? im soooooooooooo scared

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  5. Yes, anyway, back on Planet Earth...

    I was one of the poor hapless, under-qualified, under-trained Special Needs Dept Heads (before 'co-ordinators' became the term) trying to implement the Warnock Report recommendations in the mid 80's. Even then, we all knew it was a cost-saving exercise.

    However, there was a lot of stigma associated with going to a special school back in the old days. It was usually as good as a sign on your head which said, 'Uneployable' which is why parents of kids with (then, the term was) MLD or mild EBD fought like hell to keep them out of them.

    Autism is different. Aspies and kids with High Functioning Autism, but also with various language/social/learning difficulties, weren't so well or appropriately diagnosed back then so they were in the mainstream schools anyway. Suffering. And sometimes contributing to the suffering of those around them.

    The problem was that we lost the expertise of the staff in some of those special schools that closed down. Some of them were brilliant. (Some were horrible Victorian prison-type institutions.)

    The excellent teachers weren't, unfortunately, transferred to the mainstream schools to help us cope with the influx of SEN kids. That would have been sensible and we all know by now, surely, that LA's are not predisposed to be sensible.

    I seem to remember, in an LA I worked in, a group of parents buying the school back and running it themselves after they realised 'integration' wasn't working for their children.

    Mrs Anon

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  6. Jim is froze like a rabbit in hadlights you ever seen that mrs Anon? he cant move? come on Jim make a move? we waiting?

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  7. I don't work for an LA any more. I've not done so for almost 20 years. Try to keep up.

    Mrs Anon

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  8. Yes, you are of course right Mrs. Anon about some special schools having a stigma attached to them. Some were also, as you say, pretty grim. I don't think any of us would like to see a return to the "Blind Schools" of the sort that David Blunkett attended. The initial impetus for the whole scheme may well have come from those with good intentions, I am thinking now of people like Linda Jordan in Newham, who herself had a child with Downs Syndrome. As soon as the local authorities realised the savings though, boy were they enthusiastic! As you say, the experienced staff were not transferred to where their expertise was needed. Another benefit of the whole thing for LEAs, lose a lot of expensive salaries.

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  9. Big mistake Mrs. Anon, in revealing that you were once a teacher! I am guessing that Mr. Williams will now hound you every time you post a comment here. For some curious and inexplicable reason, his local authority had doubts as to his ability to provide a suitable education for his son. I find this frankly baffling. I mean he does not present like somebody who is certifiably insane, does he? Why would they be uneasy? Just one of those little mysteries I suppose.

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  10. what did simon daughter say to Uncle Graham Badman?

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  11. You have an unhealthy obsession with my sixteen year old daughter. I posted the minutes of the meeting that we had with Graham Badman and Liz Greene. I have nothing to add to them. I am going to start deleting some of your comments because they are rambling, incoherent and have little bearing upon the original posts.

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  12. simon incorrect again simon HCC told lies about us get you facts right. it took 5 years to get the information from those liars got it now and lies have been told about us. i ask again if a lie is told about your daughter or you by your LEA what would you say? dont worry about it? never mind? oh ont woory im sane never seen things so clear! all them lies half truths sly emails and then running for cover when found out! but of course if you belive im insane you must do your duty simon and phone that pratt jim McGilvery why wont you phone him simon?
    i want a school attendnace order simon? come on HCC send it im soooooooooooo scared!
    Your a real teacher are you Mrs Anons? like Julie? she a teacher to! pop round one day i show you all the paperwork with the lies in it wrote by LEA officers from Hampshire county council. i have an apple waiting for you. I want me schoo lattendance order want to burn it on our county councllor Dr Tony ludlow fire! like the last one!

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  13. you never said what your daughter said to uncle Badman?

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  14. and you have an unhealthy obession with Graham Badman and LEA officers.delete away we still here!

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  15. why did you crawl all round graham Badman?

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  16. Continuing with the whole inclusion subject; many years ago I saw a documentary on the LB of Newnham, which was a pioneer of the whole idea I believe. It was very positive and I was amazed that they were (at least then) placing children with multiple disabilities in the mainstream classroom. Yet I can see it was really a cost cutting exercise - when I see the costs involved in sending our multiply disabled son into special school, it must be so expensive. There are more adults than children in his school - teacher (ratio about 1:4, LSAs 1:2 ish. 2 full time nurses etc) without all the additional cooks, therapists etc. The school is 20 miles away so he is collected by taxi - with an escort as well. The school building are brand new and fabulous...and so on.

    The thing that struck me most about the documentary was that it interviewed a girl of about 9 ( minatream child) on her views- she said it was very good, because now she had a friend to listen to her problems all the time. Her friend - a little girl with no obvious speech or language sitting fairly unresponsive in a wheelchair. I thought it was a bit of a sad reflection on society when the only one who would listen to this child was someone who couldn't answer back!

    More later - hungry children!

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  17. Yes, Newham did pioneer the idea. Linda Jordan was Chair of Education there from 1984 and she has a daughter with Downs. She later moved to Hackney which is how I knew her. The savings really are astronomical. To send a child to the best out of borough placement, the top special school in a neighbouring borough costs something ridiculous like £80,000 a year in Hackney, if you include transport and everything else. If you stick him in an ordinary school in your own borough, you can get a clasroom assistant to work one to one with him for perhaps £5000 a year at most. Wow, you've just saved the council tax payers £75,000 a year!

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  18. The sham is that the LA then try to tell home educators that they have their SEN child's best educational interests at heart, when the best they can provide is a recruited dinner lady.

    My mother in law is one such recruit, and I'm sorry to say, but as much as I love her, she's hardly a SEN specialist.

    Also, no teacher or TA will have the same vested interest in a child as it's parents.

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  19. One other observation however that even in special schools silly target setting has taken hold. Several years ago, my sons then (SLD) school had a terrible OFSTED report - among other things it was criticised for "too much emphasis on life skills and not enough geography!" Well, since my son can't actually manage to lift a spoon into his mouth with any degree of accuracy, guess what I would like him to spend time doing? They will have them all studying latin next!

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