500,000 out of 1.7 million children with special needs possibly mislabeled.
Is it true and if so why is this happening?
Thousands of pupils are being wrongly labelled as having special educational needs when all they require is better teaching and support, Ofsted has said.
It said up to 25% of the pupils in England with special needs would not be so labelled if schools focused more on teaching for all their children.
The education standards watchdog said the term "special needs" was being used too widely.
From here
For balance, the other side of the story
Could it be a case where by schools can claim extra funding to help teach special needs children?
I am not sure who accesses and labels all these children.
Can't comment on the figure of 500,000 but my experience with my youngest when at primary school makes me think the figure is credible.
After being increasingly concerned about his failure to pick up the basics in his fist 3 years I approached his form tutor, the school assessment teacher and, eventually the headmistress.....on each occasion receiving the same message that he was 'slow' but nothing exceptional.
After a further two and a half years of continuous pressure and to-ing and fro-ing to the various educational departments he was finally assessed as both dyslexic and dispraxic and offered a place at a local special needs school or the option to receive tutoring from an outreach teacher for half a day a week. He chose the later as he wanted to keep contact with his school friends.
A very pleasant and able woman.......within 6 weeks she told us that .....although slightly affected by both conditions.....his real problem was that the standard of teaching he'd received was so poor. Within a further six months with her help and help from ourselves of course....he'd caught up with his peers.
I'm no expert on those conditions.......but find it unbelievable that a child could have been over 2 years behind his peers and have caught up with them within a further 6 months if he'd been correctly taught in the first place .....especially considering he did have some impediment , albeit not particularly severe!!
After going to secondary school he kept pace with his peers and gained a reasonable number of GCSE's.....including 2 in english......further reinforcing my belief that he'd received piss poor tutoring from his primary school.
I'd like to say he was the only child at that primary school that was so far behind.......but discovered that there were an additional 10 kids in his class alone. If you extrapolate those figures the figure of 500,000 may even be low!!!
I'm unable to speak about other schools from personal experience ......but remain convinced that that particular school should have been closed.....or at the very least...the staff re-assessed or retrained.
It's truly frightening that children are at the mercy of untalented or disinterested teachers with little or no means to have things rectified before their futures are destroyed!!
I know of a child that has been labelled with ADHD on the back of which his mother is claiming Carers allowance. His mother was telling me that her husband was abusive towards her and fights would often break out where he would hit her.
They have moved away from the violence but I am worried about this lad in that he I feel has been labelled to having ADHD and put on drugs to help calm him as to not be destructive or disturb others.
But what concerns me is that if I felt unsafe at home as a child, would I be able to focus on schooling or would my mind be in a turmoil as to worried about what is happening at home.
This lad I am sure has other issues going as to why he is reacting in such ways, frustrations that he has no way of controlling and I believe as a society we are turning a blind eye and everyone is letting him down.
I could see him getting older and all these feeling and emotions are being suppressed and unless society are willing to have a deeper understanding, these patterns will continue.
I believe some labels are there for a reason, and once there to deny all responsibility.
Too many chiefs and certainly not enough red indians.
On radio 2 today
New study claims ADHD 'has a genetic link'
This could well be true, I always feel, and of coarse have no real evidence of this, that too many are just labeled.
When one looks a little deeper into this study, what it shows is 15% of the children with ADHD, have this genetic variant. (366 children with ADHD, of which 50 had the jeans believed to be causing ADHD)
So does that mean that the other 85% actually have nothing wrong with them?
In a control group with children not diagnosed with ADHD 7% were found to have this gene
The other side of the coin
Oliver James has another view of this
