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Perspectives on special needs

longman

I was not surprised that Michael Gove, in an interview with the Financial Times, has attacked the proportion of Mr Cameron's cabinet that went to one particular public school, the highest such presence since Lord Salisbury's Government over a hundred years ago.

It has been talked about at great length in the media that the country is being run by public schoolboys.

So I thought I'd look up the web pages of a certain public school to find out what was said about special needs education and disability. Most public schools have a section on their websites that gives at least some idea of the support available, and public sector schools are required to do so.

I found a paragraph under "Facilities" that said "there are qualified staff in our Learning Centre who help those few Etonians with a diagnosed learning disability". FEW?

I had trouble finding the Learning Centre. It wasn't with other resources like IT. Using their search facility I did find a section on special education needs.You get to it via Home - School Life -Curriculum - Teaching and Learning -Special Education Needs according to the search history on the page that came up, but I didn't manage to track back to it that way.

"The school has a well-established department, the Learning Centre, for boys with special education needs or learning difficulties, for example dyslexia and dyspraxia. The Learning Centre is staffed by the Head of the Learning Centre and three part-time teachers, all of whom have specialist experience and qualifications. The Head of the Learning Centre is the school's Special Needs Coordinator (SENCO).

At present about 8% of the boys in the school receives such assistance, which continues as long as they need it. A high degree of success is achieved in ensuring they can do full justice to their abilities."

I'll bet - we'll have no shirkers in this school!

I tried searching "disability" but got no results. I tried searching "wheelchair access" and got a section on "Disabled Visitors". The school "welcomes disabled visitors, but many of our buildings are old, so access is not as easy as we would wish".

I wonder how many public sector schools have got away with that line on disability access?

This level of ignorance and indifference to disability comes as no surprise. We've known for a long time that the privileged put their less advantaged relatives in secure institutions and never see them again!

But it does shed some light on the Government's current attitude to the disabled, and to autism in particular, judging by their designation of dyspraxia.

Parents

  • My personal experience of private ed and disability was that as soon as my son started showing behavioural problems that required more of the teachers time, I started to find myself being more and more isolated from the other parents.  

    As it was a fee paying school, the parents had high demands and expectations and resented these resources being diluted because of my child needing additional help.

    In the end I removed him as parents started to say nasty things about him, but in a way that sounds as if they are being kind, such as "don't you think he would be happier if he went to a school for children liked him"

    Private schools are at the end of the day a business and sadly,  in order to stay in business,  they have to provide what their customers want, so schools discriminate in order to ensure their product is what the market wants, customer driven.

    I am now seeing this mentality creeping into state university's.  Now that fees are being charged students are starting to complain about the service they are getting, their expectations are going to drive uni's to become more selective, just like private schools.

    I predict that the outcomes for our disabled children going to a good uni is going to get harder and not easier because uni's will have to discriminate in order to survive, the only exception being those student's who bring more to the table than the average student and can therefore used as "advertising"

    Are there any other species that turn on each other like this, can't think of  any.

Reply

  • My personal experience of private ed and disability was that as soon as my son started showing behavioural problems that required more of the teachers time, I started to find myself being more and more isolated from the other parents.  

    As it was a fee paying school, the parents had high demands and expectations and resented these resources being diluted because of my child needing additional help.

    In the end I removed him as parents started to say nasty things about him, but in a way that sounds as if they are being kind, such as "don't you think he would be happier if he went to a school for children liked him"

    Private schools are at the end of the day a business and sadly,  in order to stay in business,  they have to provide what their customers want, so schools discriminate in order to ensure their product is what the market wants, customer driven.

    I am now seeing this mentality creeping into state university's.  Now that fees are being charged students are starting to complain about the service they are getting, their expectations are going to drive uni's to become more selective, just like private schools.

    I predict that the outcomes for our disabled children going to a good uni is going to get harder and not easier because uni's will have to discriminate in order to survive, the only exception being those student's who bring more to the table than the average student and can therefore used as "advertising"

    Are there any other species that turn on each other like this, can't think of  any.

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