Monday 9 May 2011

Off-rolling children with Special Educational Needs




Following the piece I did a couple of days ago about forced deregistration, I was emailed by several parents of children whose difficulties had made the school wish to get rid of them. Incidentally, it is interesting that these parents wished to email me privately, rather than putting their stories here in the comments for everybody to read. Two of them told me that this was because they actually taught their children and thought that they would be the subject of attack from some of the more aggressive types who comment here. I have had emails from other parents who say the same thing and explain that they do not comment on other blogs, lists or forums for the same reason. This is a pretty weird situation, when the home educating parents of children with special needs are fearful of attacks from other home educators whose methods are a little different from their own.


I want to focus upon one woman's story, because it seems to contain all the elements which I have heard mentioned elsewhere. In other words, it is typical of others, although not all have every feature which she mentions.


When truanting children or those who are disruptive are eased out of a school and their parents encouraged to educate them at home, things are made pretty plain to the parents. I have mentioned before about Firfield School in Newcastle, which actually typed out letters for the parents to sign, stating that they would be home educating. According to Alison Sauer, the same thing happened in Hull, although she does not give the name of the school. When the school are trying to remove SEN kids, they are usually a bit more subtle about it, although the message they deliver is no less plain.


The common thread in all the cases of which I have heard is that the it is intimated to the mother that her child is a demanding nuisance and that she herself is a neurotic fusspot. If the provision for her child's needs is inadequate and she mentions this, she is told that there are other children in the class and that hers is not the only child's needs to be considered. In one case, an autistic child was entitled to twenty five hours one-to-one support a week. The child's mother found that the person supposedly providing this support was actually dividing her time between other children in the class. When she raised this with the school, she was told that her child was 'hogging' the attention of the support worker! I have heard of a number of cases in other schools and nurseries where this has happened. A person is supposed to be working with one child and gradually becomes a general assistant to the teacher.


Schools sometimes make mothers feel that it is they who have the problem. Even where their child is plainly miserable and being made more and more unhappy by the circumstances at the school, the mother is told that nobody else has seen this and it is hinted that she is an anxious and over-protective parent. Rather than the school tackle their own shortcomings in the field of special education, the situation is transformed into a parent harassing them with unreasonable demands about an imaginary problem. This is almost a form of brainwashing and after a while the parent begins to doubt the evidence of her own senses.


Having established to their own satisfaction that the problem is the child and his parent, rather than their own approach to handling children with special needs, the school now feels free to be a little firmer with the mother. They start to be a little blunt, for her own good you understand. She must adopt a more realistic attitude about what the school can and cannot do for her child. If she objects, the feeling is that she can take it or leave it. Of course there are other schools... She is thinking about taking her child from the school and keeping him at home? Well yes, that's her right.


The mother finally realises that the school are not going to take her concerns seriously. They will close ranks to protect staff who are saying things which are unacceptable and her child is becoming more and more desperate. She sends in a letter of deregistration. This is not of course 'forced' deregistration, as such. Instead it is the skilful manipulation of a the conjurer who while appearing to offer you the choice of any card, in fact forces the one upon you which he has chosen.

35 comments:

  1. Webb says- This is a pretty weird situation, when the home educating parents of children with special needs are fearful of attacks from other home educators whose methods are a little different from their own.

    afraid of an attack on a rubbish blog? or some daft forum? dont read it may be a good idea if your that nervous! its just a blog or a forum and means nothing!

    as for what she said the school did your never stop it schools dont want to many children who will hinder the schools passing all those tick boxes and school tables etc!

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  2. I can see just why you think like that Peter, there's so much concern been expressed by so many people across so many blogs and websites regarding your son.. And then there's the TV programmes, they couldn't have helped.

    You yourself have been painted as such a selfish and ignorant man..
    but you do seem insist on keeping that image so perfectly maintained and work so hard at it.

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  3. 'I can see just why you think like that Peter,'

    Is that because you're the Blog Psychoanalyst? LOL!

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  4. Yes, this is a picture I recognise. Actually, I think I lived it.

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  5. It happened to me, and has been the best possible thing for my family. I hope it doesn't stop.

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  6. there's so much concern been expressed by so many people across so many blogs and websites regarding your son..

    if you got a concern about Peter then you have a duty to report it at once to Hampshire County Council do you want the phone number or can you find it your self?

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  7. anon says-but you do seem insist on keeping that image so perfectly maintained and work so hard at it.

    have you missed out the word to anon? is your grammer slipping?

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  8. Times are tough for webb; few of the few people that bothered to comment are not bothered any more, so masterful Webb resorts to sending anonymous replies to bolster his delusional ego that people are interested.

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  9. 'Times are tough for webb; few of the few people that bothered to comment are not bothered any more, so masterful Webb resorts to sending anonymous replies to bolster his delusional ego that people are interested.'

    The return of the conspiracy theorists! Even by the demented standards of these characters, this is an outstandingly weird accusation.

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  10. "I have had emails from other parents who say the same thing and explain that they do not comment on other blogs, lists or forums for the same reason. This is a pretty weird situation"

    Very weird, as I've seen several comments on various lists recently about parent's teaching their children with no adverse comments at all. I've asked a few times here for examples of these adverse comments (the list name and post number would be sufficient) yet have not been given any proof that this actually happens so far. Very weird...

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  11. Yeah, I guess I missed a word out in error.
    but hey...how sad is it when your kid says
    'I won't die without friends, but they are nice'

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  12. "how sad is it when your kid says
    'I won't die without friends, but they are nice'"

    Not sad at all, seeing as it was said when his activities with friends was being discussed. He has friends, that was the point.

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  13. You might not be saddened by it but there's a lot of comments on the web from people that were/are.

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  14. "You might not be saddened by it but there's a lot of comments on the web from people that were/are."

    What's there to be sad about? If he didn't have friends, it would be sad. You've got to remember this was an answer to a question posed by TV interviewer for a program that seemed to be seeking to make these children seem strange and unnatural.

    We don't even know what the question was. It could have been, 'how important are friends to you?' for instance. To answer, 'I won't die without friends, but they are nice', seems a reasonable statement of the facts from a youngish child. It's true, we wouldn't die without friends but they are nice! If this seems to a sad answer to you, maybe it's more an indication that you are being drawn into the biased view (as presented by the program) of intelligent children and their assumption that they often don't have friends than an indication of a real reason for sadness?

    This seems related to the view many people hold about home educated children in general when they ask the perennial question, 'but what about socialization?'. You and others seem to be reading his answer in this type of light.

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  15. The government solution to this type of issue is the 20 day cooling off period/delayed de-registration. But I doubt this will be long enough for the type of situation you describe as it's likely to take a while for parents to realise they have been manipulated in this way. Why can they not use a similar system to that used for appeals against school place decisions? The parent could lodge a complaint and the same appeals panel can adjudicate and force the school to give the child a place if they find the school to be at fault. They can do this when children apply for a school place and are incorrectly refused a place (even when a class is full), so why not extend this provision to these cases?

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  16. nasty anon say-Yeah, I guess I missed a word out in error.
    but hey...how sad is it when your kid says
    'I won't die without friends, but they are nice'

    I cant belive you missed out a word in error are you felling ok?

    It was just an answer to a question i forgoten about it and until you said! i do remember the TV crew not wanting to film Peter with his friend Sam i wonder why? any way do not fear Peter just gone off to meet Sam and later Sam coming back here for dinner! Peter also has had girlfriends something else the TV crew did not want to film i wonder why?

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  17. nice anon says-What's there to be sad about? If he didn't have friends, it would be sad. You've got to remember this was an answer to a question posed by TV interviewer for a program that seemed to be seeking to make these children seem strange and unnatural.

    your are right nice anon! The TV wanted to show children who where bright as strange It would have been to boring a programme to show these children doing to many normal things.

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  18. "Yeah, I guess I missed a word out in error.
    but hey...how sad is it when your kid says
    'I won't die without friends, but they are nice'"

    Are you the same anonymous that said,

    "you're informed by watching Jeremy Kyle?"

    If so, shame on you. At least the other anon was being informed by the original program itself. You appear to be being informed by forum comments about a program!

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  19. I had EXACTLY the experience you describe in your post, although my child is gifted, rather than having SEN in the conventional sense. The school have never informed our local authority of our deregistration, presumably because they're worried about what I'd tell them!

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  20. anon says-The school have never informed our local authority of our deregistration, presumably because they're worried about what I'd tell them!

    then why dont you tell you LA about how bad your daughter was treated by her school you could get your own back o nthe school and any teachers who where nasty to her.

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  21. Is it true that you turned down a chess scholarship at Millfield that was offered to your son?

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  22. A Chess Scholarship at Millfield turned down so as Dad can teach 'get your own back'...

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  23. However, Dad was eagerly supported on the White supremacist VNN forum.

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  24. 'A Chess Scholarship at Millfield turned down '

    Is this true? I remember the first such scholarship because I was involved with the Hale family whose daughter Katy won the scholarship. This is the first I have heard that Peter Williams was offered it. Does anybody have any more information about this?

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  25. nasty anon says-Is it true that you turned down a chess scholarship at Millfield that was offered to your son?

    no scholarship for Millfield school was offered! get your facts right!

    8 years ago a phone call was made to us from a man claiming to be the head of Yatley private school in whic h he said he heard about Peter and MAYBE Peter could go to his school when we siad we needed to think about it and his school was a long way for a 7 year to travel to as i dont drive he appeared to lose interest and we never heard any thing from him again! they is also no direct bus or train service to the school if the school had been nearer and what he said was true we would have taken him up on his offer its got to be almost 20 miles to Yatley school 40 miles a day for a 7 year old i dont think that is good and the cost to travel would be to much.

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  26. Oh that's the web for you...but you could have applied, how come you didn't?

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  27. More to the point, how did Mr Williams come to be giving an interview to the World Net people and is he actually involved with white supremacists?

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  28. Who the hell knows anymore?
    John Taylor Gatto and 'Dumbing Down' is on there too.

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  29. MFW is quoted

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  30. anon says-Oh that's the web for you...but you could have applied, how come you didn't?


    Good question we try and answer you as best we can.

    Millfield school is in Somerset that has got to be over 100 miles away from where we live so you would have to be a boarder and that is something i dont think Peter would have liked and he was only 7 when all this happened I dont like the idea of children being away from they parents for such a long time you would really only see the child in term hoildays as you could not keep driving down on a weekend to see child.also Scholarships are not 100% of the fee at that time we where not so well off so i think we could not have afford it move forward to now and we could!
    one other small point we come from working class family none of our family has ever been to a private school and we knew very little about private schools! On our chess travels Peter has played in some of the best private schools in the UK and that opened our eyes to how good private schools are if Peter could have gone to a private school with out having to stay over night we would have gone for it.
    Alos it was not easy when Peter left school to start home education we had media tv radio keep contacting us over his chess/home education we also had to deal with hostile LA it was not an easy time.
    What we do know is that Peter should have been given real help by his LA not the threats that where made and you could tell by just reading the letters you got form the Local LA that Peter was just seen as a problem and the LA had nothing to offer him!

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  31. is he actually involved with white supremacists?

    no i have nothing to do with white supremacists do you webb?

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  32. Looks like it was a missed opportunity, that slipped through your hands.

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  33. Looks like he considered his child's happiness to be more important than looking good to people like you.

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  34. nice anon says-Looks like he considered his child's happiness to be more important than looking good to people like you.

    yes well said anon they is no way we would send a child of ours to a boarding school at age 7.

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  35. Looks like it was a missed opportunity, that slipped through your hands.

    no it was not a missed opportunity you have no idea what you are talking about! would you send a child age 7 to a boarding school which was over 100 miles away?

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