This newspaper story has attracted many comments:

http://www.thisisexeter.co.uk/displayNode....&folderPk=79877

I'm hoping for a few comments here as well...

The article has all the usual features of a local special educational needs/special educational provision mismatch with the local education authority emerging as the evil ogre. I wonder, though, whether there are lessons to be learnt beyond the knee-jerk "if funds were released, everything would be fine" response?

After all, would the public at large be prepared to pay the higher taxes required to fund an educational service where every child with individual learning needs could have a choice of one-to-one support in mainstream or a special school placement?

And is there enough guidance for teachers, especially those in mainstream, about meeting the needs of their students with ASD? My impression is that the ASD advice online and in print has little to say about teaching and learning, which is what schools are there for. Therapy rather than education is the focus of such literature. Isn't it time to treat the child with ASD as a learner, not just a patient?

What do you think?

Here in Tasmania children with ASD are mainstreamed unless they are almost completely unmanageable. We have 0.7% of our school population in special schools compared with the OECD average of between 1.5 and 2.0%. We are constantly told by the powers that be that this is a wonderful thing, but many of our teachers think otherwise. While students at the mild to medium end of the spectrum are probably benefiting and learning and not impacting too much on others, those with severe problems create huge stress for teachers, cause disruption to the learning of others and gain little benefit themselves. They often miss out on the skills training which is vital for their condition and often are "babysat" by TAs who have insufficient training and are paid too little to properly support them. Our system often does provide a TA one to one for these students but they are not necessarily the right type of support. And the numbers of these students is growing. A more ideal situation would be to have a special unit on mainstream sites and integrate and separate as necessary for them to learn and progress, as well as give others sufficient attention. But of course this takes a great deal of money and it's easier to come up with a solve-all philosophy of total inclusion than find the money. Cynical, moi??

Cynical? Realistic, perhaps?

Part of the problem is the breadth of the spectrum as well as the changes within an individual over time. Throw in indications that for some an attention to diet makes a difference, for others the difficult behaviours is simply BECAUSE of the mainstreaming as the closeness can be practical torture to some Autistic persons.

Education of carers and those providing the education to carers is essential. It's a developing field and new insights appear regularly.

Unfortunately the onus is on those who are providers to work on this. Better provisions should be possible within current funding levels through better support. Ideally of course a realisation of the importance of treating it as a group of individuals rather than as a grouped disorder and developing responses based on this would help.

My interest in this subject is personal. My now 17 year old son was diagnosed with a "nonspecific learning disability" during preschool, which was eventually classified as an extremely minor autism or aspergers's syndrome when he entered middle school. We still don't know exactly what kind of learning disability he has, but he just doesn't "get" much of the information he should. From the viewpoint of a parent, this is an extremely frustrating thing to deal with. We are always uncertain just how much better our son could do in school (and socially), as opposed to how much is related to his uncertain disorder that he is powerless to combat.

At any rate, here in the United States, especially in the very wealthy county we live in, support for special needs students is quite strong. The issue of inclusion is a complex one, with no easy answers. I can certainly understand how frustrating it must be to the students who don't have any comprehension or learning problems, to deal with their peers who have severe or even relatively minor limitations. It definitely impacts on their ability to learn at a sufficient pace, and imho has fueled the growth of the "gifted and talented" programs, whereby very bright children are steered, at an early age, into classes where learning is accelerated and more challenging, and no special needs students can distract them. There are students in our county schools with downs syndrome and other serious disabilities, who almost certainly cannot follow a normal curriculum. However, as the parent of a child who has very minor limitations, and can easily follow a normal curriculum with reasonable accomodations, I understand parental opposition to placing their child into a "special" school and the pain of seeing them driven away in the "short bus" away from the school the other neighborhood children attend. BTW, here in the States, jokes about the "short bus" and the gratuitous use of the word "retard" are all the rage. It offends me deeply to hear middle-aged adults call someone "retarded." One of daughter's teachers even used the word in her class!

Anyhow, I hope I'm not intruding on this discussion, because my only expertise in this area comes from the personal experiences I've had dealing with my son and the schools. I'm new here, and am very impressed by the range of topics at the Education Forum. If anyone would like me to share some of my personal experiences with special needs teachers, or the social issues that arise with a child who is "different," I'd be happy to do so.

Welcome to the forum. I only post on the educational issues sites as I'm not a JFK devotee.

Here in Tasmania we mainstream almost every child except the most profoundly disabled and it just doesn't work. I fully understand why parents don't want their disabled students in special schools but I think the criteria for mainstreaming has to be that they don't negatively impact on the education of others, which I think is what you are saying. Unfortunately, here, they do. Children who need to be tube fed, nappies changed, severely intellectually disabled are mainsteamed, even if they spend all day screaming, shouting etc to the extent that the other children are unable to hear and/or concentrate. My teachers' union, of which I'm the state president, is pushing for what we have titled, as they do in Canada, responsible inclusion. The trouble is that the irresponsible mainstreaming has been allowed to go on for so long that it is now going to be extremely difficult to alter parental expectations.