Yesterday, my son was discharged from regular check ups with his nurse practitioner at his specialist clinic, a cause for celebration. She has been a wonderful support to us along the way to getting the best we can for him but now he has started at an appropriate school for his needs, he no longer needs medication to help him focus because there are only nine boys in a class and he is taught in the way he learns best (imagine!).
His nurse said there's nothing she can now offer that he isn't getting at school and she's right; it's all about the school. A paediatrician at the centre said the same thing: one size doesn't fit all and the right school can make the difference between a life of underachievement and a fighting chance of success.
What chance does an ASD child, even with TA support, have in a class of thirty (several of whom probably have behavioural difficulties or other issues) when that child has sensory integration problems and needs a quiet environment to be able to put pen to paper at all? What chance for success does a bright child have who reads several years ahead of his age but can barely write, when he's left to fester in a remedial English group where he refuses to work because he feels his intelligence is being insulted?
This is the conundrum faced by mainstream schools when trying to educate children with complex needs. It's just not possible to put him in a group with his intellectual peers because he thinks so differently and can't keep up with writing speed. But putting him in a group with children who write as slowly as he does means he's frustrated and not challenged. The same is true for many bright dyslexic children; where do you put them if they're clever enough to be in the 'top' stream, but whose reading or writing difficulties mean they can't present their work as well or whose thought processes don't follow 'the norm'?
Can mainstream provide sufficient expertise and support for these children? Politicians pushing the 'inclusive' agenda say it is perfectly possible and perhaps in a very few schools that have sufficient specialist staff and resources, this may be the case but for the majority, it just isn't.
I was told when my son was in mainstream that there were five accepted methods for doing maths at his level. My son had his own, sixth, very complicated method and even though he would get the right answer, I was told he had to conform to one of the methods laid out in the national curriculum. Good luck with that, I thought, because you'll have a job on your hands.
I have spoken to many highly experienced teachers, special needs Teaching Assistants, Outreach staff and Clinicians in the past few years. NOT A SINGLE ONE believes inclusion for children with complex learning styles or difficulties in the answer. Not one. Why are their views being ignored in the relentless push for everyone to be taught in one setting? Please, if you know, make a comment and enlighten me. It's possible that I and they are all misguided souls. But somehow, I don't think so.
Tania is an experienced broadcast and print journalist & author. She also runs a PR, web & social media consultancy, SocialOro Media.
Tania is a rare disease & chronic pain patient advocate with Ehlers Danlos syndrome.
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