The latest issues for SEN diagnosis and treatment

Recent reports in the press have suggested that many children are misdiagnosed as having Special Educational Needs, while other parents have to fight to secure the extra help they feel that having an SEN diagnosis will mean for their child. The challenges faced by state schools, public schools or international school central London boarding institutions may vary, but what are the latest key issues in diagnosing SEN and what sort of treatment is appropriate?

Diagnosing SEN

Sarah Teather, children’s minister for the coalition government, believes that ‘there has been an unhelpful tendency in the past to discourage local authorities from giving children aged younger than five a statement of special needs,’ something which her department is currently attempting to address. Some parents would argue that this tendency pervades the school system: Jolanta Lasota, chief executive of TreeHouse, the autism education charity, said families often faced ‘immense barriers’ when trying to access services and support, including obtaining the statement of SEN that qualifies them for this support in the first place.
At the same time, there have been suggestions from Ofsted that as many as half of children placed in some SEN categories are misdiagnosed and simply in need of better teaching or pastoral care. For instance, there appears to be a tendency to place more summer-born children into SEN categories than other children.

In part, there is a suggestion that the diagnosis of SEN may have been seen by schools as a way to help their performance table results. Some critics, including Ofsted, have also suggested that the level of misdiagnoses may have represented an attempt by schools to secure more funding or resources.

Treatment following SEN diagnosis

The reason for this apparent contradiction – a diagnosis that is too eagerly made yet too difficult to get when required – lies in how school SEN departments classify children. There are three categories of SEN care provision in schools: School Action, School Action Plus and Statements. Statements can be hard to obtain, as the process is expensive and complex. School Action Plus may involve the school seeking professional support from a psychologist or youth counsellor (with the local authority’s assistance). School Action simply means the school has identified children as needing special support. This is the category that is diagnosed too readily, according to suggestions.

Effective teaching techniques

The teaching methods, extra support or external help children may need if they have been identified as having a SEN will depend on their needs. Comprehensive suggestions for specific needs, and techniques to meet them, are given by the autism education UK support group Ambitious About Autism, but here are a few effective teaching techniques:

Effective techniques for students with learning disabilities:

* Offer a multi-sensory approach to learning that avoids abstractions and that uses concise and short activities.
* Encourage co-operative learning with others.
* Provide oral instructions for students with reading disabilities. Repeat instructions often.
* Give frequent progress checks and immediate feedback with plenty of praise.

Effective techniques for hearing-impaired students:

* Provide written or pictorial directions, or physically act out the steps for an activity.
* Use concrete objects such as models and diagrams alongside spoken descriptions.
* Ensure they have a good view of the teacher, who should enunciate clearly.
* Be patient – hearing-impaired students may take longer to respond.