Well this is going to be a bumper news month.

So first continuing with the discussion on Harlowfields becoming an NMSS school in 2007

Potential problems.

  1. As finding Special Needs Teachers is so difficult  (always has been), it is difficult to see where the expertise is going to come from in reality rather than just on paper. One current member of staff confided that they were only there because they couldn't cope with mainstream! Scary
  2. Teachers with 25  plus pupils in mainstream can only divide their attention so far. Will statemented pupils have 25 hours of LSA support?....Like the boy at Burnt Mill for 2 years, with full LSA support who still couldn't cope and ended up where he should have been first, at HF.
  3. As we all know mainstream schools of 600-1000 pupils are  brutal, insensitive places. How do you get around that with SEN pupils?
  4. "NMSS schools are highly innovative... this will be a very positive environnment to recruit and retain quality staff" Hmm, well you will only get top quality staff when there is sufficient competion for these jobs, and teachers are appointed mainly for their ability to teach well. Tim has hardly had any chance to make inroads with this.
  5. We suspect the statementing process will be further massaged to get the desired number of pupils in Special schools and mainsteam
  6. In The special school ...a recent NMSS document says "LSA's may substitute for teachers when required" So the pupils left in the NMSS school will not get the benefit of these super-duper teachers. Why not? Because " teachers will be shifting between DIRECT TEACHING, CONSULTANCY WORK   and OUTREACH SUPPORT "
Would anyone like to guess how much time those teachers will be spending in their classroom. Very little I suspect.
This is already what has been happening behind closed doors at HF Many pupils do not get a teacher for a large proportion of the day. And the only parents allowed in have been metaphorically blind,deaf and dumb.
NMSS teachers will provide outreach support for
a) Parents Carers at home  (so they can vet you, to see if you are good parents)
b) Staff in Pre school settings
c) Staff in Mainstream
d) Staff in F.E. Colleges ie Harlow College
e) Staff running Community sports and leisure facilities
f) Employers and businesses
g) School centred In service training for Teachers.......

Hands up if you STILL believe your child is going to see much of their teacher!!!

Now I'm not opposed to some appropriate  inclusion where it works, but let's not deprive the children of their teachers.
So how does NMSS work. Well it is divided into 8 Ps
PUPILS, PLANS,PRACTICE,PERSONNEL, PERFORMANCE, PREMISES, PARENTS/CARERS and PARTNERSHIPS.
Several of these are cause for concern, not least proposed partnerships with HEALTH and SOCIAL SERVICES.
It is actually important that these sevices should remain separate, particularly in view of the numbers of parents who have been persecuted over the last few years. Fine if the parents ask for cordinated help, but together this are dangerously over powerful. We've had enough of education staff looking at private medical notes and social service files and acting on them.
The NHS knows all about being sued and has far more stringent rules and regulations to abide by.
They've already had their fingers badly burned at HF believing staff gossip, not protecting patient confidentiality, and they've temporarily drawn back from the school.
Social Services have amalgamated with Learning Services, which is very worrying, because they can no longer deal with any complaints by parents about school staff, and god knows there were plenty of them with past regimes.
This is VERY UNSAFE.  The proportion of parents picked on and accused (like Debbie Storey who sadly died last week)
is totally disproportionate  to the % in the general population. Why? There is absolutely no good reason at all.
The reason is probably because the Education authorities like to use it as a lever to get the child placement that they want!  So these disproportionate attacks on parents need to be investigated and parents need to keep their guard up and use their own judgement
PREMISES get this " Premises are accessible during out of school hours all year round to enable community participation" Wow.  Does that mean that the community will be allowed in when the parents will continue to be discouraged from meeting?
PHILOSOPHY -  Holistic whole-Life Learning (SCHOOL till 25 -make sure you press for this)
PRINCIPLES   - Relevant Content (if only) and meaningful contexts
PARENTS AND CARERS "Working closely with parents is at the core of the NMSS" !!
It's a pity they aren't bothering to talk to parents BEFORE the event. It does't bode well does it?
"....in order to build parents' capacity to support their children"  Well that's bloody patronising isn't it , considering parents have a 4-5 year start ahead of the schooling
There will be support at home (more nosiness) and HELP obtaining SHARED CARE and/or RESPITE (more control)

Anyway that's just a taste of things to come or in some cases what's already being tried out on our children
Some good things, some very bad ideas, but notice parents are NOT BEING INFORMED yet again, and are certainly not being included in discussions.
The above quotes are taken from LEA documents!!!

SO NOW COMES THE SPANNER IN THE WORKS FOR THE LEA
Baroness Mary Warnock, architect of the Specail Needs System as it is will be publishing a report condeming how it operates. INCLUSIVENESS ideally springs from hearts in the right place, but its implementation has a disastrous legacy She describes Special Needs Schools as "regarded as little more than places of containment, hospitals or day-centres"
She sees Special schools as small enough to provide an environment for emotionally vunerable children, socially deprived children, as well as physical disability
She says children can feel excluded even if they are in a mainsteam school. (she must have just read our web-site!!)

The system of STATEMENTING which she helped devise has turned out  "to be not a very bright idea"
Originally it was expected to apply to 2% of pupils but is now 20%. The Staementing process has become too bureaucratic  and unresponsive to parents
ACE (a parent support org) points out that statements are the gateway to scarce resources. Even scarcer if the the LEA has its way. How many pupils get the proper Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Physio, Music Therapy
Interestingly the NASUWT union says the priciple of Inclusion was correct  but was  UNDERMINED AND DISCREDITED when pursued in a dogmatic, ideological and unqualified manner  (Exactly - bravo that union)
"It had often masked an agenda in some LEAs which had more to do with finance "  (So true)
Baroness Warnock HAS CALLED FOR A FUNDAMENTAL RETHINK OF SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION  - wow
It must have been a very interesting week in LEA offices . Back to the drawing board???
The National Newspapers reported all this.  Maria Hutchings was asked for her opinion. She said she'd visited a school where  an autistic boy was in a classroom sitting behind a 4 ft screen. Well we've got news for you Maria they do that at Harlowfields; yes exclude from a class within a Special school!!!

Us parents must stick together to make sure the school doesn't get away with any more atrocities to children, or to parents and that we get the very best education possible for our children; inclusion where it suits the child, and common sense. Fancy NMSS shemes that look good on paper don't necessarily translate into good practical ideas.

DEBBIE STOREY -  Thanks for your comments, I realise in the form it was grafted onto the screen made it difficult for some of you to read. Briefly  her 2 sons had Aspergers, social services branded her wrongly as an Attention- seeker , which made her afraid to go to her Doctor when she became  ill and has consequently died of cancer last week
In 2001 Essex LEAagreed to pay for a Neuro Lingustic programme in their home (Doesn't sound like Essex does it , or was it just a way of getting into the home setting which they are always trying to do. The treatment failed and the company, Inner Resources reported that the parents were using the boys for their own needs. This triggered Education and Social sevices, case conferences and children went on the at-risk register (Does this ring any bells??), followed by barely concealed threats to have the children removed. The company had no right to make such claims as they weren't qualified to say so, but it took a year to get the children's names off the register. Imagine what that does to a parent's health.
We parents must be allowed to get together, encouraged and facilitated by the school to support each other, and the longer we are excluded  as a group the harder it will be to heal the rift. My greatest wish is that this happens, so it is no longer necessary to have this website. Parents and children have been trampled on.