Where were all the special needs students when we were at school?

I should have said there was a “Special” school in the neighbouring town for children with more serious learning difficulties and my friend’s Mum’s job was to escort them to and from the school on a public service bus each day.

We did have one obvious SEN pupil in my last year at primary school. She was a poor thing, always dirty and dribbling. I think she lived with her aunt. Most of the children were horrible to her and she got the blame for everything. Sadly the staff bullied her as much as the children did.

One of my grandsons is ASD and ADHD. We are sure one of the others is but he has not had a diagnosis yet. Both my children have some mild ASD traits which didn't affect them while they were at school, but their father was the archetypal naughty boy ASD child. Always in trouble and ending up in a very poor secondary modern school when he could have done so much better. Once I started learning about autism it was as if a veil had lifted and I understood why he did the things he did. His mother who would have been at school in the 30s was also affected and went through life acting as if she was following a text book when dealing with people. So yes, these conditions have always been around, they just haven't been recognised.

adaunas

*Gagajo*, you need to report to the school governing body, or LEA, any school you are personally aware of, or even by hearsay, where children with SEND get no help.
A blanket statement like, “Although with all the financial cuts to education, the children still get no help.” is simply not true in my current, and fairly wide experience.

Lip service is paid to it. But the reality is, little is done. It has been the same in every UK school I have worked in.

I am being realistic. It is terrible, but it is how it is. The most recent UK school I worked in had around 1200 students. Three part-time teaching assistants. No SENCO. A very nice woman (not sure of her exact title, but definitely not a qualified teacher) who had a small room that some students could utilize at times when they couldn't cope in class.

The previous UK school I was in had no SENCO. One teaching assistant who was very good, and who had previously run a support unit, which had been disbanded. He was wheeled out when Ofsted came in. But the rest of the time he either worked as support in classrooms and was pulled during exams to work as an invigilator.

None of this is right, but it is how things are. If I were to report every school I knew of that existed this way, it would be most of my local schools.

We have got the educational system the majority voted for.

ElaineI

In my primaries these children were barely taught much - not like now when each child has their own development and progression planned and assessed. In secondary there was an A stream which most children were in - 1A1, 1A2 etc, a B stream 1B1, 1B2 and 1C. If you were put there there was little hope of moving from it and sitting exams! This was comprehensive education!

I don't really understand the reference to comprehensive education. Maybe I've misunderstood, but are you saying that special needs children learned less in a comprehensive system?

I confess that I don't know what special needs children were taught at the time because I don't remember any children with special needs in any of the schools I attended. How do you know what they learned?

They were very much hidden from view in my long ago schooldays. I don’t remember any so called ‘special’ schools, either. I would go as far as to say I don’t think there were any within a bull’s roar of where I was brought up in central London. I guess everyone was too busy coping with the immediate post war era and survival.

Many were considered ineducable and didnt go to school. Many were kept quietly out of sight at home as their parents were ashamed that they had a learning disabled child.

A friend's Downes Syndrome brother was kept at home and rarely went out and then in his late teens was placed in an institution and his parents moved so that no one in the area they moved to knew he existed.

nanna8 I worked in an ILEA special school in mid-1970s which was set up in 1960s. The kids came from both north and south of the river. The school bus would drop some off at Euston and others at Waterloo.

1907 first open-air school was in Woolwich (LCC) for sick and disabled children
1918 Act made schooling for disabled pupils compulsory
1921 There were 300 UK schools for "blind, deaf, 'crippled', tubercular and epileptic children"

historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/disability-history/1914-1945/the-right-to-education/

Another article about the cuts to special needs funding:

www.theguardian.com/education/2021/may/15/councils-in-england-facing-funding-gaps-plan-to-cut-special-needs-support

Growstuff you have a lot to say on this stream. I just said what happened in my schools when I was there. It was called comprehensive education at that time in Scotland. No streaming they said but there was a bit hence the difference between A,B and C. That was in MY school. No idea about anywhere else. No idea what children in these classes were taught as I wasn't in these classes. A lot of the children in them came from homes suffering from poverty, poor housing, and unemployment. Some of them didn't wash and smelled and a lot were bullied. Some in other classes had similar home lives. Once a boy tried to sexually assault me and my friend had to run to find an adult. His family and him in the not so distant future were in and out jail. I don't remember anyone in my classes that seemed to have special educational needs. It was a long time ago. Yes I am saying that in the 60's and 70's children with any needs learned less in any educational setting.

Well, I'm sorry you think I have a lot to say. I was a teacher for most of my working life, so it would be surprising if I didn't have experiences and opinions.

I genuinely didn't understand your reference to comprehensive education - and I still don't. Why is it relevant to pupils with special needs? Are you saying there were more children with special needs in comprehensive schools than other forms of schools? Sorry, but I'm baffled.

You're reading something I haven't written anywhere. I didn't dispute your experience, but I'm confused about whether you think children with special needs are the same as those from deprived families.

I was interested to know how you know that children with "needs" learned less than others.

We know a child psychologist who , in the 1960s ,refused to believe this condition existed it was dyslexia . My husband remembers two sister in his class at primary school who wet themselves in class most days . I went to a free paying primary school and have to admit we were all pretty normal apart from one boy who must have been autistic. He was hopeless at lessons but he could sit down at the piano and play anything we asked him to play . He went on to be a church organist .. My mother was a health visitor and when I asked her about abused and chalened children she said they were just ignored when she was young .

Floradora That attitude was only too common then. I had a close friend, whose child had had a full assessment by a local education authority psychologist, who only recognised dyslexia if the child wrote letters back to front and had, what most people usually identify as dyslexia. he said he wasnt dyslexic.

His parentsthen had him assessed by a well-regarded privat educational psychologist, who diagnosed problems with the transfer of information from short to long term memory and classed him as otherwise exceptionally able. The haedmaster at the school he and DS attended told his parents that he didn't accept dyslexia as other than an excuse for a child who was just not very bright.

Thankfully they then moved to another part of the country to a more enlighted Local Authority, who gave him all the help he needed to get 6 O levels and the top level electronics aprenticeship with a major aerospace company in the area. Not bad for a dyslexic child described by a teacher as 'not very bright'

He is now 50, has a high level technical position in the same company - and still struggles to read.

I remember special needs pupils at my primary school back in the early sixties, only no-one referred to them as that. We still knew though. They got special help because they struggled.

Mind you, clever kids got special help too: encouragement to do the bit extra, develop their talents a bit more.

Every child mattered. Where there are good teachers (and a good head; ours knew every kid) this is still the case.

Floradora we encountered the problem in the 1990s - twice!
The first when DD was at junior school - parents evenings were a nightmare (DD 1 if come out glowing with pride) DD2 I was told to do all the things I was already doing read to / with her, do art, help with writing etc - didn't they ever talk to the child herself?
I asked was it possible she was dyslexic?
"No, that's not the problem" they said. I asked for her to be assessed.
the test came back - marked by the Special needs teacher. I was told it showed DD was not dyslexic. I asked to see the assessment - to my horror it was marked wrong! We had DD assessed privately. He found she was dyslexic and dyspraxic & cross lateral -(right handed / left footed).
Second incident was at an open day for entry to DD2 senior school.
I asked the English teacher what provisions there were for dyslexic pupils.
"There's no such thing as dyslexia."
It wasn't until she went to university that she received any help.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000w81h/subnormal-a-british-scandal
This programme is relevant, a sad story. However when I spent a couple of years in the early 60s "teaching" in a London Secondary ESN school I can't remember any coloured children in my class. or in the school. Clapham Junction.
Most of them were locals, budding criminals.

ps just remembered the story that the previous year the pupils had run riot and the Police were called in to restore order.
It was an all girls school - the boys were downstairs.