"Back in July, I queried the valueof the term 'special educational needs' when it was being applied to so many children".
That was how I began a posting here on 14th September, following the publication of an Ofsted report that among other things suggested that the term 'special educational needs' was being too widely applied.
In July I had asked whether it was time to junk the term special educational need, after reading in the parliamentary debate on the Academies Bill that 21% of children "have some form of special educational need".
I wrote then: "It strikes me that if as many as 1 in 5 of our children have 'some form of special educational need' there is something wrong with our perspective on schooling or children or special educational needs or all three".
Now I have not checked the DfE source of the figures reported in today's Daily Mail online, which is where I happened upon them a moment ago online, but take a look anyway:
In primary schools:
489,250 boys (23.4%) are said to have SEN without a statement and
41,620 boys (2%) have statemented SEN.
The figures are 269,890 (13.5 per cent) and 15,660 (0.8 per cent) respectively among primary school girls.
In secondary schools:
386,730 boys (23.6 per cent) are said to have SEN without a statement and
47,090 (2.9 per cent) have statemented SEN.
This compares to 252,470 (15.7 per cent) and 16,540 (one per cent) among secondary girls respectively.
The report goes on to contrast the number of boys (26,170) with educational and behavioural difficulties compared with that of girls (3,590).
I don't know about you, but it strikes me that if as many as 1 in 4 boys have "some form of special educational need' then there is something seriously wrong with our perspective on schooling or on children or on special educational needs or on all three.
Furthermore, the report also says that the number of children getting statements actually fell from 236,750 in 2006 to 220,890 in the latest DfE report. At the same time, the number of children said to have special educational needs but not having a statement actually increased from 1.29m pupils (15.7 %) in 2006 to 1.47m (18.2%) in 2010.
