I have been volunteering at the local special school for a while now, and I've noticed something interesting: there is a much higher proportion of kids with learning disabilities and behavioural problems at our local special school than there was at the one I attended as a kid. I guess well over 90% of the kids at the school round the corner must have a learning disability, compared to, as a rough estimate, 40% to 60% at mine. I think there are more kids just with learning disabilities at the local school too, and fewer wheelchair users. Of course, this can be explained in a number of ways, most simply by pure chance: that's just the way the statistics fell. Yet I suspect there are other factors involved. Bear in mind that I was at school just under 10 years ago, having left in 2001, and much would have happened since.
I think that this may be an effect of inclusion. More and more kids with less complex physical disabilities are being put into mainstream education. I guess that the needs of physically disabled kids are much simpler to meet than those of kids with learning disabilities: often we just need stuff like ramps, large-print books and communication aids, and we're good to go. The needs of those with learning disabilities - especially complex ones - are harder to resolve. And there are children with some very complex LD at the school I volunteer at. Of course I'm overgeneralising here, as all children need a lot of care and support no matter what kind of disability they have.
As a result, the ratio of kids with LD and BED to those with PD has shot up. Of course, you could argue that these kids should be in mainstream too, and they should be, but I now think it's just not that simple. My friend charlotte has told me how rough it can get in mainstream school, and how hard it is for her, as a teacher, to control the kids sometimes. It can be very violent, and rather brutal. It is hard to see how the type of kids I have encountered at the local special school could survive, let alone get anything out of, such a setting. There are kids who are physically able but simply could not mentally handle being in a class of twenty to thirty rambunctious adolescents; and if they said anything their peers would simply rip them apart.
Yet this results in a school like the school I'm volunteering at, with hundreds of students, each with very complex needs. Staff there do their best to teach, and I try to help however I can, but the situation is often so complex that progress becomes very slow indeed. I'm now seeing how very difficult this situation is: as inclusion proceeds, special schools are left with higher and higher concentrations of kids with more and more complex conditions, and the result is that education in such places gets harder and harder. This is nit to say that it's impossible to educate in such places, but I guess inclusion has meant it has become much more difficult since I left school.
[Edited 26/03/2010 at 18:56:50 - removed all school names]
You make some interestng observations - but I would just caution against statements like "all we need is...communication aids and we're good to go"
It is HUGELY complex to properly support a voca user, especially in mainstream school if they are actually to properly access the bulk of the curriculum...almost all the families I know have had and continue to have enormous battles to get the sorts of specialist educational, OT, IT etc support for the child in school, not to mention the right training for TAs and indeed enough time for TAs to prepare and differentiate work in dvance of lessons etc etc.
The majority of kids who have little or no functional speech also have problems with learning to read and spell (not all, but many) mostly because those teaching and supportng them have not themsleves had the appropriate training. This has huge implications for the whole of education and of course leads many people to assume that the kid also has LDs - which usually they do not.. Sorry, this is just a very hot topic at the moment...the idea that all you have to do is give a child a communication aid and they will get on with it!
(I know you probably realise this - but poeple reading the blog will not...!)
Posted 26/03/2010 at 16:32:34 by JEH
I was of course massively oversimplifying and overgeneralising things when I wrote that. In my defence, I did say 'often', hich isn't always. Every child with any kind of disability will need a lot of care aand support. I was just reflecting on what I've seen.
what do you think of the est of my observations. is it true that kids with more severe disabilities are being left in special schools?
Posted 26/03/2010 at 18:40:01 by
Yes i think that is almost certainly the case - but I am also aware (locally anyway) of kids with quite moderate LDs/disabilities who are in special school...why, who knows!
We looked round an independent special school some years ago and it is one that was originally defintely a physical disability school - however it was obvious that most of the kids were actually mildly to moderately LD as well and I actually asked the senco what proportion of their kids did not have LDs (don;t mean to sound anti-LD in any way - but we needed to know if the school would in any way be the right environment for our academically able disabled son) and she said that out of about 50 kids she could only think of 2 who did not have LDs - and she readiy agreed that in the past that was not the case but that now all the more academically able/phys disabled kids were being placed in mainstream (with varying results I would guess, depending on the level of appropriate support actually being put in place for them)
Posted 26/03/2010 at 20:12:30 by JEH
I agree with many of JEH points,as a parent you have got to be very well informed to get a child using AAC with complex needs properely supported and i would say that is the case in both mainstream and special schools.
Its not just the move to more inclusion that has changed the population in special schools.Improved medical care has increased the numbers of children with profound dificulties surviving to school age quite substantially.
Posted 26/03/2010 at 21:47:19 by Liza
Perhaps I can clarify what I mean. It isn't that kids with physical disabilities need any less care, or that their problems can be solved easily; its just that the solutions to the problems they face are more often obvious, concrete things like equipmetn (I know getting things like assesments from an OT and cutting through beurocracy isn't that simple). Behavioural problems etc have less concrete, physical solutions which are more likely to be concerned with actions, behavour, relationships. Or am I overgeneralising again?
Posted 26/03/2010 at 23:42:32 by
"Charlotte has told me how rough it can get in mainstream school, and how hard it is for her, as a teacher, to control the kids sometimes. It can be very violent, and rather brutal."
Ha. Charlotte should come and teach where I word. She doesn't know she's BORN!
Posted 29/03/2010 at 09:39:53 by Ricardio
should say 'work'
Posted 29/03/2010 at 09:40:12 by Ricardio
care to elaborate ricardio?
Posted 29/03/2010 at 10:43:39 by
On Monday this week, one of our students punched a complete stranger in the face in Morrisons.
This is not unusual.
Posted 31/03/2010 at 09:32:58 by Ricardio
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