A frustrating and jargon-ridden year was enough for me to know that the school was not serving the needs of the pupils in my unit. "Inclusion" seemed to consist of pushing many children into an unadapted and unsuitable environment with too little support. To ask a five-year-old with autism and moderate learning difficulties to join in with a mainstream literacy hour was ridiculous.We were discouraged from using visual symbols around the school and the system we used in our classroom to support and structure the learning environment for children with autism was not accepted or understood by some of the teachers in the mainstream classes into which our pupils were meant to integrate. Often, inclusion without the best structure in place is dooming children to failure before they even begin. Name and address suppliedSir: Ian Birrell has captured very well the concerns felt by many professionals responsible for the education of children with special educational needs, as well as by parents.Most pupils with special needs can function effectively in a mainstream school, provided they and the school are given appropriate support.
However, we have to address the needs of the child and give them the opportunities to succeed.
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It is also important for mainstream children to grow up accepting people with varying disabilities. I have experience of working in a unit for children with an ASD diagnosis that was attached to a mainstream school and I was upset by the lack of adequate provision for the pupils in the unit. The staff did a fantastic job despite the system they were up against and a fundamental lack of understanding of autism by the management.There is a myth that all children can and should be included in mainstream education. Heaven help Harry Potter if he fails to recycle his copy of The Daily Prophet. And I worry for James Bond and the petrol consumption of his Aston Martin. As for Bridget Jones's failure to challenge the glass ceiling at both the publishing house and TV studio that employed her ...well, the BBFC could be in semi-permanent emergency session.It's ironic that at the same time that it is becoming a lifestyle guardian, the board is considering relaxing its rules on swearing in films. Now that's something which really can irritate film-goers, and parents in particular, not least because it is so often inserted gratuitously to gain a higher age certificate. But now that it is smoking in movies that is of greater concern to the censors, we film-goers must take note.Henceforth, I shall do my best to avoid any showings of Marx Brothers movies Groucho was never without that fat cigar. How often, for goodness sake, is Bond in Cuba? Is he allowed to smoke only in Cuba? Is he allowed to smoke cigars but not cigarettes?And why stop at smoking? Now that the board has decided to go in for some serious nannying, there's no end of possibilities.
