Main Stream option?

[FionaH]

And how many headteachers say nothing so as not to rock the boat and have their scores reduced and be marked down as a failing school.

Having worked in primary schools I would say very few. They is a huge gap between obtaining the right support for children and going into specials measures!

[Jeanied]

Provision for special needs children is considered in its own right, PaulW: schools are tasked with being successful with them as much as any child, measured by different yardsticks (smaller step progress for example).
If one child is disrupting the whole class because provision is not working - they all suffer and this tends to show up in the results. And it sounds like it is affecting staff morale as well.

[Incy]

Ok Brengirl. Here's something to think about. My son in his last primary school, (unfortunately he went to a number of primaries due to disability and circumstance) became angry and aggressive. He had always been very loving and surprisingly confident despite his disability. He had successfully managed to get rid of the requirement of a standing frame, wheel chair and walking frame and was good enough at football that Manchester United spotters showed an interest in him.
The reason: he was treated as the poor disabled kid who couldn't be held responsible for his behaviour unless heaven forbid someone bullied him and he retalliated. Not being sneaky like his 'normal' peer who had done the bullying, and being in a school where they don't believe bullying exists, he was excluded for standing up for himself. The rest of the time the 'lovely support assistants' didn't let him write for himself as it took too long, or read for himself, as they thought he was too thick.
Now in an excellent high school with fantastic support, he has finally learnt to read and write. he is progressing above average in most subjects and he is being held up as a role model for the other pupils in how to behave. In my opinion, this is because the school didn't tolerate his initial bad behaviour and expected him to behave in an acceptable manner. He finally knew where he stood and is so much happier!
I have had several teachers say to me that if all the kids in the school had his attitude then teaching would be so much easier and better for all the kids.
I suspect the problem lies with the school and possibly with lack of staff training. It seems very poor practise to me to have a parent working full time in the same classroom as her own child.
By putting this childs behaviour down to his disabilities they are doing him a disservice. He needs to be taught the boundaries even if this means tough measures for a while, he will be a lot happier and will start to make friends ( my son has and they are not disabled). By letting him get away with stuff because of his special needs they are implicitly giving him permission to be aggressive and misbehave.
Over supporting a child with additional needs causes more problems than under supporting them.
For the record, my son went initially to a special school were he was banned from the playground because he was too lively and might bump into a fragile child.......There are no easy answers. Disabled kids never asked to be disabled. There usually is no cure. All they want is acceptance and to be allowed to do as much as possible for themselves.

[winnie]

This is such an emotional topic for all, but for any child that may need a little extra support in class to access mainstream, there NEEDS to be the support & expert help provided where necessary so that children can make progress. I teach a mainstream class and have a severely autistic little boy,with epilepsy in it. He has a 1: 1 who is an ex-'parent helper'. Between us we have very little knowledge of how to teach him/support him, there is no money in the budget for training and the so called 'professionals' who turned up for the review saw him for the first time 5 MINS before the meeting-totally unacceptable in my opinion. Planning for him every week is so difficult and I sometimes feel is at the expense of the other equally deserving 29 children. He is a gorgeous little boy but because he is passive, I'm expected to shut up and get on with it. Where is the funding for PROPER support for these children?

[selfraising]

This is such an emotional topic for all, but for any child that may need a little extra support in class to access mainstream, there NEEDS to be the support & expert help provided where necessary so that children can make progress. I teach a mainstream class and have a severely autistic little boy,with epilepsy in it. He has a 1: 1 who is an ex-'parent helper'. Between us we have very little knowledge of how to teach him/support him, there is no money in the budget for training and the so called 'professionals' who turned up for the review saw him for the first time 5 MINS before the meeting-totally unacceptable in my opinion. Planning for him every week is so difficult and I sometimes feel is at the expense of the other equally deserving 29 children. He is a gorgeous little boy but because he is passive, I'm expected to shut up and get on with it. Where is the funding for PROPER support for these children?

I appreciate this must be very difficult for you. I would suggest that your school tries to get in touch with one of the special schools nearest to you and takes advice, they may be able to tap into free support and advice

[Jeanied]

Winnie, the funding question is a bit of an imponderable - head teachers have quite a lot of discretion as to how they spend the budgets they get for special needs - I know a good few parents who would love the chance to find out what they do with it!
It costs the same to employ a teacher who can teach 30 children as it does to
send one child to a specialist autistic residential school for one year.

There has been a big three year training programme for all schools in meeting special needs in mainstream classrooms - we are in the third year this year. Last year was all about meeting the needs of children in the autistic spectrum. Not all schools have bothered with this which is a bit of a pity as the training was excellent.

[organic]

Wow.
Every once in a while a thread comes along and a whole load of people show their true colours.
Incredible. Asbolutely incredible.

The vitriol some of you have been posting in here should have you hanging your heads in shame.

A good while back I got into a bit of a heated one with another member on here and for saying FAR less offensive things than have been hurled around in this thread was contacted by a moderator and asked to stop immediately.

Seriously - some of you seem to have forgotten that you are supposed to be intelligent, thinking adults.

I feel I have some potentially useful thoughts and insight to contribute on this subject; but quite frankly the tone of some posters in the thread so far has completely put me off.

Anyone who's seen just a few of my posts will know I'm not one for shying away from controversy or taking a contrary stance - that I'm doing exactly that should speak volumes about the things some of you have said and the way some of you have said them.

Compared to the usual standards I've seen on this forum in the short time I've been a member - this is low. Very, very low.

[jackie j]

As I see it all children are special, but unfortunatly some are more special than others in the needs that they require, schools do not always have the equipment or trained teachers for their needs, this is what has to be addressed by the powers that be. We do not want to go back to when children were put into institutions and shut away from family and friends. Children with special needs are very often very brainy. They get picked on by other children for being different, my daughter was, and still is in main stream school with a lad who when she was little didnt understand his behaviour, I explained at the time that he couldnt help it and he didnt mean her any harm and they became friends and if she was upset it was always him that asked her if she was ok. Other parents would complain about his behaviour as they neither wanted to nor would take the time to talk to the parents about his needs.
This sadly is something that will always be with us and as adults we need to educate our children that everyone is different whatever their needs.
We need to campaign for better facilitys so that children can intergrate with each other which in turn will make them better adults.
All of you with special needs children hugs.

[janeyo]

It is tricky to find a balance I think. I have taught in schools with very high levels of support needed for lots of students and it can be a challenging place to work, but very rewarding if you even make one tiny breakthrough, which can takes weeks!

But on the other hand my son who was only just 4 when he went to primary school kept coming home in his first term wth bruises all over him. It turns out he was playing with an autistic boy several years above him who had no friends of his own age. He was being pushed and shoved about. Eventually after I made a bit of a fuss about the bruises, they said he wasn't to play with the other boy and now he has no friends again. Sad for him, but in a way I was glad as I was a bit fed up of my son being pushed about. The staff just say 'oh yes he's autistic' like that makes it ok in some way?!

Nobody wins here, not the boy who nobody is allowed to play with or the people who would play with him given a chance with perhaps a bit more supervision. I do worry that this poor lad will go through school with no friends.

In this case it's the school not dealing with it properly. This lad will, through no fault of his own, struggle socially at secondary school because he wasn't allowed to play with anyone at primary school, because the school's answer was to just ban people from playing with him

There is a boy with Down's in my son's class and a girl with cystic fibrosis and all the children take turns to help wheel them to where they have to be. They love doing this as they can see why they are needed to help. I feel if you can 'see' the disability then people are much more accepting of it.

[bobleponge]

I read this thread yesterday evening just as I was leaving work. Was pretty stunned at what I read, but accept totally that all of us are entitled to our own points of view.

The last Mme Leponge was a TA, as a 1:1 for a "special needs" child in a mainstream school. She worked incredibly hard with the young child, and the progress that was seen by all was fantastic. Her work was appreciated and recognised by the parents of the child, as well as by the school. It was only a small school, with smaller than usual class sizes, there were tantrums and bad behaviour, but there was no copying behaviour by the other children nor were they unduly inconvenienced.
In days of yore when I went to school, children who were deemed to be "special needs" were locked away from society in general. I attended one of the largest schools in England, well over 4000 pupils from memory, and we had nobody who today would be deemed as "special." There was bullying, fighting and all of the usual shenanigans that go on in schools all over the world. There were good kids as well as bad kids. To assume that taking "special needs" children out of mainstream schools will turn them into some form of Orwellian eutopia is, imho, wrong.
Society isnt fair, never has been never will be. There will always be the haves and the have nots, however what is changing is our attitudes to other people.
Before Churchill became Prime Minister, he attempted to get a law through parliament that would basically have meant the euthanasia of several thousand mentally and terminally ill adults and children. The very thought of that today is surely abhorrent to most "normal" people? We have evolved as a society even in that short time, to the extent that children who less than 100 years ago would have been put to death, are now integrated into the main stream education system. Surely the sign of a caring society? Sadly, in true Animal Farm stylee, it appears that some of us are deemed to be more "equal" than others.

[janeyo]

My Mum was telling me the other day that her Mum took her to the doctors when she was very little as she used her left hand to do things instead of her right and Nanna thought there was something wrong with her!
When Nan went to school everyone had to use their right hand or they got the cane!

Thank goodness times have moved on so well.

*incidentally my mum can write with both hands at the same time which is a very cool thing to do!

[pigletwillie]

The fact that these children are now in the main, encouraged to attend main stream schools is a wonderful thing. Funding, skills and boundaries for these kids is variable from school to school and needs lots more work but things are indeed progressing.

As per Janeo's post above illustrates, not long ago it was deemed that to be left handed was to be bad, my Gran got the thrashings too. Because of her intervention, despite being left handed myself, I eat right handed,play two handed sports right handed and can write that way if pushed. The correct term for being left handed is "sinistral" to be sinister.

Intolerance like that from the past and the bullying of people who are different (including the Barwell lady who burnt herself and her disabled daughter to death in their car) that is happening now is because society at large finds it difficult to assimilate these individuals as for years they have been out of sight and out of mind. It will take time for these changes to be thoroughly accepted and the logistics ironed out but it will happen.

To answer your point Organic, which has nothing to do with the thread content itself, most of us are indeed intelligent thinking adults, ones that have an opinion. Believe it or not I can actually write this myself!!! There has been very little vitriol to be fair and if to debate against the comments in the very first post is to be very very low, then feel free to call me snake cos I sure am not sat on a sanctamonious high horse.

[smallblueplanet]

...
Infact I would go as far as to say that (in the school I work in as example) most of the disruption is caused by troublemakers and so called 'normal' children.

Perhaps they need more resources to help them?

I agree with organic, there has been a fair amount of 'undercurrent' to what should really be a 'discussion' about how children are educated (and how it is funded).

[Two_Sheds]

In my opinion, this is because the school didn't tolerate his initial bad behaviour and expected him to behave in an acceptable manner.

Absolutely right. We have zero tolerance for bad behaviour in our school, and it jolly well works. The children (all of them) have a "names on the board" system. If your name goes on the board too many times, you're sent to the Headmistress. Nobody knows what she says, but the children come back as white as sheets

I ...have a severely autistic little boy,with epilepsy in it. ..we have very little knowledge of how to teach him/support him

Are you able to educate yourself? There's plenty of info on the Net, forums etc. I had to do emergency cover for an Asperger's boy, and had to crib up overnight on it.

Before Churchill became Prime Minister, he attempted to get a law through parliament that would basically have meant the euthanasia of several thousand mentally and terminally ill adults and children.

I didn't know that. I'm appalled.

I had great news in my class today. One of my girls, who struggles with maths and can't really grasp the concept at all, got 100% in her test this week! That's down to lots of patience and skilled teaching. We are so pleased, this is what makes the job worthwhile

[Brengirl]

I wish to thank you all for your input. As you know the current situation in some schools worried me deeply. I was definitely an innocent abroad by introducing this thread and now realise that I may have inadvertently caused distress to some. I have learned a lot.