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mainstream v special

george

My son matthew is 6 years old and is in mainstream school. he has a Statement and gets lots of support from a very nice teaching assistant who is with him most of the time. He seems reasonably happy, however he does not really play with his peers and is falling further and further behind his classmates academically. I recently visited a Special Needs school and was very impressed. I am now beginning to reconsider my earlier decision to keep him in a mainstream school. Although he gets lots of support is he been taught in the correct way, self esteem etc etc does anyone have any views?

Parents

  • I think your dilemma is a common problem because although mainstream teachers are becoming more skilled at recognising autism and have better basic understanding of autism they do not get training in how to set and deliver programmes eg social skills programmes or indeed how to teach children with autism fullstop. Also that much of the day to day 'teaching' is delivered by TAs not teachers. Teaching children with autism is difficult, intensive, specialist work and that is not really recognised with mainstream schools encouraged to say they can meet needs when they rarely have the training to do so. We have managed (via tribunal) to overcome this problem by getting an ABA programme that is partly delivered in mainstream. This is an alternative if you do not have an option of dual placement / ASD unit locally. This way we get specialist autism staff to go into mainstream and basically bring the skills of special school to him. Our ABA staff are very skilled at social skills but have had alot of training - to teach social skills properly requires several weeks of training, not a 1 day course. There is also an issue about how much time mainstream teachers have to work on social skills - to be effective this has to be all day everyday; but in reality social skills in mainstream is a 1/2 hour group held once a week.

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  • I think your dilemma is a common problem because although mainstream teachers are becoming more skilled at recognising autism and have better basic understanding of autism they do not get training in how to set and deliver programmes eg social skills programmes or indeed how to teach children with autism fullstop. Also that much of the day to day 'teaching' is delivered by TAs not teachers. Teaching children with autism is difficult, intensive, specialist work and that is not really recognised with mainstream schools encouraged to say they can meet needs when they rarely have the training to do so. We have managed (via tribunal) to overcome this problem by getting an ABA programme that is partly delivered in mainstream. This is an alternative if you do not have an option of dual placement / ASD unit locally. This way we get specialist autism staff to go into mainstream and basically bring the skills of special school to him. Our ABA staff are very skilled at social skills but have had alot of training - to teach social skills properly requires several weeks of training, not a 1 day course. There is also an issue about how much time mainstream teachers have to work on social skills - to be effective this has to be all day everyday; but in reality social skills in mainstream is a 1/2 hour group held once a week.

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