Schitzophrenia. Now surely that really is special needs.

That's just it though, on the "entry" level of special needs the schools do not get extra money, however they do get extra allowance for that child in the schools scoring for the league tables.

As I said, too many piss poor parents and teachers hiding behind the "SEN" shield

if that is how you read it, you were wrong...

There is another point to be made here.

League tables. Ever since Labour, the be-all and end-all of measurement as to how well a school is doing. If you get some unfeasably large percentage of kids to pass all their exams, your school goes further up the league tables. Doesn't matter what in, which is why Labour dumped the old curriculum with things like compulsory languages, then called it 'elitist' when the Tories suggested returning to it as the EBacc.

However, it's deemed unfair to include kids with SENs into the school's overall exam statistics. As a result, if the kids are statemented (which doesn't need a doctor's note from the family, it can be done via the school), then hey presto, they don't figure in the exam statistics.

Then they can fail everything to their hearts' content regardless of whether they have genuine medical issues or not, and the school can rest assured that the brighter kids will massage the school's average pass rate upwards.

As a result, it's become covertly standard practice (talked about quite freely among the teachers and TAs in the schools I worked in) to get as many kids in the school statemented as possible.

There's also a financial incentive. Get more statemented kids, get more cash to help them with their problems. If those 'problems' aren't genuine, that money will do nicely towards that new computer suite.

It's all a result of Labour's typical 'govern by statistics while making certain subjects 'untouchable' with spin' approach. They shut down so many special schools and PRUs, then created a statistics-based logistical nightmare in their wake in the name of 'inclusion'. In reality it was all about cost-cutting and fiddling statistics, but if you dared to criticise it, you were seen as criticising the disabled.

As a result, we now get badly-behaved kids being poorly-educated both at home and school because for the sake of the school's reputation they've been deemed to be suffering from such made-up conditions as 'opposition defiant disorder' and the often incorrectly-diagnosed ADHD (seeing a kid with genuine ADHD trying to work and comparing them with someone who clearly uses it as an excuse for poor behaviour reveals a wide gulf between them).

We are failing generations of kids mainly because there just isn't enough discipline in society in general, and the school system is so hopelessly biased towards statistics-generation and academic/scientific skills at the expense of practical/technical skills, largely, I suspect, a result of underfunding and sheer ignorance on the part of politicians.

This change is long overdue.

I have an August child and it is a dilemma of ours. We can hold her back so that she is the oldest in her year as opposed to the youngest. I do think this may be a wise course for her but we will wait to see if she shows signs of intelligence. Depends whether she takes after her mother.

So in all seriousness has the definition of special needs changed?

Because I can't imagine that 20% of the kids I went to school with had special needs and were simply undiagnosed, so unless they've been slipping something in the milk that suggests either the definition has changed, or there is some serious misdiagnosis going on.

Oi !