StatCounter

Tuesday 14 September 2010

The ninety-sixth weekly "No shit Sherlock" award

This weeks award goes to Ofsted for reporting (per the BBC that 'Thousands of pupils in England are being wrongly labelled as having special needs when all they require is better teaching'.

"No shit, Sherlock"

And in case you are wondering why schools might artificially boost the numbers of 'special needs' pupils, the answer is simple - MONEY.

1 comment:

Jon of Kent said...

I just don't believe it. It is very very difficult indeed to get a child on the SEN register. When I was training to teach (about three years ago) there was a boy in my year 1 class, just turned 5, who was refused a place on the SEN register because he could spell his name - sometimes. He didn't recognise reliably any letters that weren't part of his name, which there were only seven of, and had many many other problems that couldn't possibly be the result of poor teaching. One particularly odd one was that he would rarely be able to remember a story after having heard it, even if you asked him immediately after finishing reading.

Not to mention the girl elsewhere in the school who was still wearing nappies at the age of 6, and couldn't read anything, but was likewise refused a place on the register.

The idea that it's too easy to get a child registered as SEN is just preposterous, at least in my part of the world - and I think it's done nationally, not by the local LEA? I might be wrong though.