Published on 12, July, 2020
In today's news:
The thousands of children missing out on key support for diagnosed special educational needs in England is a "national scandal", Ofsted has said.
Chief inspector of England's schools, Amanda Spielman, reveals 2,060 children with official education, health and care plans (EHCs) setting out their needs receive no support at all.She also raises the issue of children disappearing from education.Some parents said a child is only assessed when they are excluded.
Ms Spielman says: "Too often, children who have been assessed still do not receive the services they need."She uses her annual report to expose what she describes as a "bleak picture" of too many children "failed by the education system".
Link to article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-46400397
Do you have more information about this?
All I know is the mainstream school I work in they get practically no additional funding for sen children the staff have been cut and the extras they are expected to provide in school is more than should be happening. But I'm lucky the staff there put in there own time so the children don't miss out but it's not sustainable. I agree parents are the first people responsible for caring for children but it is not good enough when you go to the NHS for help with your childs needs and they send you back to the school as you are not qualified to decide whether your child has a problem this then puts more strain on the school especially when the child seems to function in class. Ofsted are the ones that keep piling pressure on schools and to me it looks like they are playing teachers and parents against each other which helps no one.
I might be way off for other areas but this is what I see in my kids school and our local NHS trust
What exactly would the money be spent on?
GP's rarely have a good knowledge of psychology as their training has been for the body rather than the mind. They tend to view matters that aren't life threatening or everyday medicine as little more than a whim. One area the NHS is weak are muscles and joints which is why there are so many private podiatrists and sports / RTA injury places.
Round my way it's almost a case of find me a GP who isn't Indian.
I don't think it's fair to say most GPs are a complete waste of space. You have to remember that they are the *level 1* human support engineer, so they can see people potentially presenting with absolutely anything. What you can expect is that they will have the most common stuff "off pat". The chances are, each one may have an area or two where they have a bit more specialised knowledge. But there's too much to know for every GP to have in-depth knowledge about everything.
A large part of their job is keeping the pressure off the more specialist support engineers by dealing with stuff that doesn't need to go their way, so that the specialist support engineers can concentrate on dealing with the people who really need their speciality. Specialists cost more and take longer to train, and there are less of them, so you need to try and make the most efficient use of their time that you can.
Also, diagnosis of humans is not just a case of plugging in your car diagnostic tool and reading out what the faults reported are. A lot of problem have very similar symptoms, and often you can only narrow down what the problem is by a process of elimination. To try and maximise their chances of finding the right things first, they have procedures that sort things by commonality, likelihood severity and they try and rule out the most common/most likely/most severe first. I believe the maxim is "When you hear hooves, look for horses first not zebras."
So yes, if you have something rare/uncommon/not very likely and with relatively common symptoms, then it can take a while to rule out the most common/likely things first. That's the diagnostic process for you and it's true for pretty much any product - human or otherwise...