Canopus

I agree with this. Small institutions are better at adapting to the needs of individuals than big institutions. That is why I want to see an economy based around small businesses rather than big multinationals. However the trend today is for big companies to get bigger and small companies to go bust or get taken over, and there seems to be no serious opposition to this. Does Britain need a Ralph Nader? I wonder whether certain small schools that have closed could have survived if they had autonomy and operated as co-operatives rather than run by an LEA. When an LEA says that a school is not financially viable do they mean that the school is lossmaking as an individual entity, or do they mean that the cost per kid of running the school is higher than the LEA average? Nobody ever seems to find out whether closed schools were financially lossmaking or whether they were just easy targets for LEA cost cutting. I don't know where the bomb factory fits in with things but they can be set up anywhere. Perhaps there is some trend between the demise of community facilities and the uprising of disreputable industries.

I don't think the school was elitist in any way and some kids came from quite poor backgrounds including council estates. There were a few upper middle class kids whose parents had 5 series BMWs and Mercedes but nobody came from seriously affluent backgrounds. Every kid had previously attended a state school apart from one who was expelled from a small local fee paying school. The school had a uniform but it wasn't any different to typical state school uniforms. Many of the kids were NT with a record of bad behaviour rather than had any SEN. They certainly weren't in the "spastic" category. A few were NT and at the school because of problems with their families rather than themselves.

Sounds like a repeat case of my life at school. I hated PE and suffered from depression as a result of it. I was no problem at home. Unless the school withdraws him from PE lessons or aranges alternative PE activities then home education may be the best route to take.

Isolation was a big problem at my boarding school. The school had no connection with any other schools, businesses, or local organisations. Half a mile down the road was a medium sized secondary school. It baffles me that my school couldn't even organise things like sports and social events between the two schools.

I attended a special needs boarding school during the early 1990s and hated it. I did not think the school catered for my needs and was run along the lines of strict old fashioned discipline. There were no inclusion policies and the individual needs of kids were not met. The headmaster was an arrogant pompous man who I could not communicate with. He did not speak in plain clear english but in similies, metaphors, figures of speech and used all sorts of words that hardly anyone could understand. He was a mental bully whose weapon was fear and intimidation. The kids did not know their legal rights and I am 100% sure he played on this unawareness to force them to do certain things in a way that is illegal. Some of the kids had conditions like AS but others were there because they were excluded from school for things like vandalism, arson, car theft or assault and needed to be kept under surveillance. Many were nasty people with a vindictive attitude. Bullying and victimisation by both kids and carestaff was rife and the headmaster's attitude was fight your own battles and learn to deal with bullying. None of the carestaff were qualified in SEN and many had no qualifications at all. A high proportion were from the armed forces. Quite often the carestaff couldn't understand the behaviour of certain kids and treated them badly as a result. I know this sounds terrible but I think special needs boarding schools have changed beyond recognition now and actually help and support kids rather than trying to emulate public schools from decades gone by with their harsh and tense environment.

The way in which I propose that schools are privatised is to convert them to not for profit workers co-operatives that exist to provide education and all the money the school receives will be shared out amongst its staff. The schools will not be run by greedy profit obsessed managers nor shareholders who care about nothing but how well their investment performs. The funding will continue to come from the state via a voucher system and strict legislation will be put in place concerning activities which the school has the right to charge the parents for in cash. The message I am trying to put across is not simply meeting the need of SEN kids but producing a system where the kids are all treated as individuals and services are provided in a way to meet their needs and requirements. This is also the case for NT kids who may excel in certain areas, require nuturing of talents, or require extra help in certain subjects but do not generally qualify for SEN status under the present system. The privatised state schools will be required by law not to refuse kids with SEN unless there is a damn good reason. In instances where extra funding is required for dealing with certain SEN requirements then it will be made available.

You are right. AQA offers modular exams for a few subjects including maths.

Finance is one thing but support is another. The problem with a centralised system of management is that it results in a cumbersome bureaucratic system where the decision making takes place a long distance from where the services are delivered by people who never meet kids and probably care even less about them. The knowledge of SEN was not as comprehensive 20 years ago as it is today but there was far more autonomy in schools back then in the pre National Curriculum era. Therefore schools had the option to tailor services and facilities to individual needs. Nowadays teachers have to stick to a rigid curriculum and the be all and end all of how well a school performs are its league tables of SATS and GCSE results. I agree that it is more difficult to police an autonomous system, but giving schools more autonomy means that they can adapt themselves more readily to dealing with SEN. The longer term consequences will be that many schools will specialise in handling different disabilities which will give kids a better chance of a high quality education adapted to their requirements than with a centrally planned system. For far too long SEN has been seen as an afterthought to be put in place as sparingly as possible. SEN will become an integral feature of a more autonomous system.

This sounds a bit odd. Most GCSEs require two or three exam papers but they are done all within a few days of each other.

My own verdict on the state education system is that it is a complete no brainer. It does not work, has never worked, and will never work. It is a rigid system that fails to treat kids as individuals and offers a curriculum cut down to the lowest common denominator rather than allows kids to succeed and excel in what they are best at. SEN is tacked on as an afterthought rather than used as an integral part of the system. If kids were all treated as individuals rather than being seen as all the same then in effect SEN will be applied to all. I think the state should finance education but not provide it. Therefore I am in favour of privatising schools, abolishing LEAs and the National Curriculum. That way each school will be autonomous and able to model its curriculum and the way it is run to suit the needs and requirements of individual kids rather than the bureaucrats of LEAs and Whitehall. Vouchers will be issued to parents that can be used to buy education at a school of their choice and will also be accepted by most educational help centres dealing with SEN and private tutors as well.

I had a bad experience with the director of studies at university. He was arrogant, old fashioned, out of date, out of touch, and hell bent on safety regulations and probably took out insurance against being hit by asteroids. His car was a big Volvo that undergrads referred to as a padded cell on wheels. He had done no research since the mid 1970s and taught only two trivial first year courses. The rest of his time was devoted to admin duties such as curriculum development that was best defined as teaching things that had been obsolete and out of date for over 10 years. He also wouldn't take the responsibility for obsolete material and blamed it on the lecturers. The lecturers blamed it on him for setting the curriculum. Worst of all, he was very unhelpful if students had problems and threatened them to study social sciences rather than engineering if they struggled with the course. I handed him a box file containing photographs, newspaper clippings, circuit diagrams, and bits of paper about my involvement in electronics and computers since I was 10 years old to show him that I really took an interest in the subject and he still didn't care less.

Of course schools distort the truth. I secretly tape recorded a meeting at my special needs school and sent a copy to my LEA. They said there were discrepancies between the tape recording and the summary of the meeting written by the headmaster. In other words the headmaster blatantly lied. He was furious when he found out about the tape recording because I outwitted him and exposed him as a liar.

At junior school I had two hopeless teachers both of which were women. One was straight out of teacher training college and I was in her first ever class. She was incompetant, disorganised, preferrred to act as a classroom supervisor rather than teach, and didn't know how to handle me and ny problems. The second was an older teacher with a really old fashioned Victorian attitude and an obsession with silly outdated etiquette and handwriting. She refused to believe that dyslexia existed.

When I was 4 years old I asked my parents if they had a book on electrical things. They didn't but the nearest thing was a Haynes manual for a car. They were really technical back then and actually detailed how things worked unlike the Haynes manuals of today. It was absolutely fascinating and had a chapter on electrical stuff and others on things like the engine, gearbox, suspension, and fuel system. I could read entire sections although I didn't quite correctly pronounce some of the longer technical words. I took the book to school but my teacher wasn't impressed when I wanted to read it instead of story books with short simple sentences written in half inch high letters such as The cat sat on the mat. The teacher was even less amused when all I wanted to talk about during circle time was how carburettors worked and the optimum fuel air ratio. My end of term report stated that I choose unsuitable reading material in lessons.

In other words the thickos. When I was about 1 year old my GP issued my parents with a hard hitting statement not to teach me anything before I started nursery school. The reason was that it would be a disadvantage to be clever at school as the state system offered no facilities and no resources for clever kids and they would be become bored and frustrated with the system. In contrast, thick kids would be given extra help that they needed. My parents ignored the warning and continued teaching me stuff to the point where I knew most of the KS1 curriculum by the time I started nursery school yet half the other kids there couldn't even talk. My parents lived to regret it. At least LEAs don't send kids to residential schools that are run like PoW camps by vindictive staff anymore. I had to endure such a place simply because my mother thought that leaving me at home would be a waste of a good brain. They were unaware of distance learning courses because they were so poorly advertised and I couldn't get any info on how to enter myself in for GCSEs as a private candidate. Two libraries and a citizen's advice bureau had no information on this. A local college wouldn't take private candidates and wouldn't offer its courses to under 16 year olds. There was an exam centre in London for private candidates but I didn't know of its existance until my chemistry teacher at college told me and I was 17 at the time. If was thick then it would have spared me from having to attend a PoW camp and I could have just stayed at home and done as I pleased. Schools rarely ever spot talent unless its sports or music. They are just machines for teaching the National Curriculum. All child prodigies, so called child prodigies, and undiscovered child prodigies did their work outside of the school system. I recently came to the conclusion that the teachers were right. It was all a waste of time. My expertise in computers and electronics got me nowhere really. There are people who attended my school that are younger than me and they have achieved much more despite being totally thick. One has a very successful bulldozer leasing business, and another who didn't even bother taking any exams is now a property developer millionaire.

Talent is only of any use if someone spots it who is in a position to make good use of the talented individual. Sadly my talents have never been spotted by anyone in a position to make good use of them at any time in my life. In the 1980s and early 90s, kids who were talented at music and sports had a lot of opportunities available to them but there was just nothing for kids who excelled at maths, science, and computers. I had exceptional computer skills at the age of 10 and could program in both BASIC and assembly language as well as having a thorough knowledge of computer hardware such as the Von Neumann architecture. I was totally self taught by reading books and magazines and playing around on my own computer. Sadly my school thought I was wasting my time and should focus more on the work I was set. My educational psychologist wrote that I was computer obsessed to the detriment of everything else. Things have changed and there are more opportunities available for kids talented at maths, science, and computers such as national competitions and various clubs they can join. In a way they have come too late for me. I hold an engineering degree yet I hardly know any other engineers so have no idea what really is going on in industry which results in difficulty in finding a career because I can't network with the people who have all the insider knowledge. Engineers also seem to be shy reclusive people who don't hang out on internet discussion forums. I am a member of several electronics and computer forums and most are dominated by amateurs and hobbyists rather than those working in industry. Perhaps if someone from industry had spotted my talents 15 or so years ago then things would be different for me today and I would have a successful career. I am actually thinking about quitting engineering as a result of this. It is naive to think that raw intelligence and good qualifications are the pathway to a successful career. At the end of the day it's not what you know but who you know that really matters. This is particularly so for kids with AS who have high intelligence but few friends or acquaintances and don't know any adults who work in the career field of their dreams.

I mentioned this issue of connections between schools and LEAs and outside agencies in the private sector in another article. It seems as if there is very little connectivity. Absolutely true. My school couldn't understand why I was depressed coming from a stable two parent middle class family in a "nice" area. They tried to contrast me with children abused by their parents on council estates, or Africans who wonder where their next meal is coming from. Quite often I was labelled as ungrateful.

Stuff in statements doesn't have to be put in practice by a school. They see action plans and proposals merely as recommendations in all but the most critical situations. Both my junior and secondary school failed to implement parts of my action plan, as did my special needs school. In some cases I wanted the school to implement proposals but in other cases I didn't want them to. I am interested in what exactly will replace statements. Many schools and teachers still have little understanding of SEN and whatever replaces the statement may not be as hard hitting as a statement and therefore less likely to be taken into account by the school and its teachers. Educational psychologists may have made mistakes and recommended inappropriate action plans, but what evidence is there that teachers understand kids better because they are in contact with them all the time? Many teachers at ever school I attended just couldn't understand my problems or why I acted the way I did. Teacher's minds aren't always as rational as a kid with AS even though it may be obvious that a kid should stay inside during breaktime rather than get bullied in the playground, or that a kid with bad handwriting should be allowed to use a computer rather than struggle with a pen. Money is one issue but support and services are another. That is what matters the most. I suppose parents could always submit a document about their kid, but schools are likely to see problems as whims and excuses for bad behaviour rather than issues that should be dealt with.

Just out of interest, what is your AS kid's future ambition? Also, do you think they will achieve their ambition or not?

Interesting site about depression http://www.engology.com/enghealth.htm

Do kids or staff serve the food at Com's school? A few days before I started at residential school I had asked them if they would provide me with vegetarian food. The headmaster seemed somwhat surprised at my request and told me to write a letter to the school explaining in detail why I wanted vegetarian food and he would consider it. Yes, consider it but not promise anything. I then told him that I had a right to vegetarian food and he replied that I didn't because the school was privately owned and therefore exempt from having to provide special diets unless they were for medical reasons backed up by a doctor's certificate. My request was honoured but the food was served up by kids rather than staff and cross contamination was an issue. The attitude of the carestaff and the prefects was "sit down and shut up" and penalties were harsh for making a fuss in the dining room. One day when I was served cross contaminated food I threw it into the prefect's face!

It must be at a level appropriate to Ben's ability rather than his age. I went through a period of home tuition during Y8 that used material my previous school set for Y8. Most of it was too easy and trivial for me. I wanted more advanced stuff but my LEA wouldn't give it to me. I had the GCSE textbooks and could do most of the stuff that would be taught in Y10 and Y11 and could answer many of the exam board questions. My tutor was well aware of this but nothing materialised because I would soon be attending a special needs residential school. I'm not sure whether state funded home tutors will teach material appropriate to ones ability rather than age but private tutors will.

When I started at residential school I had to battle with a new piece of technology - cutlery. Mealtimes were supervised by carestaff that had no SEN training and tables were headed by prefects who in most cases were nasty thugs. The school was not one bit sympathetic towards kids who were messy eaters and imposed Victorian style etiquette and table manners. It seemed incomprehensible that a 12 year old who could program computers and knew more about nuclear power stations the the physics teacher was unable to use a knife and fork properly. The only rational explanation at the time was bad parenting. On my first day I picked up a piece of food with my fingers that could be eaten using fingers. A prefect blasted me and told me to use the cutlery. I then cut the food into several small pieces before eating it. A member of carestaff then had a go at me for eating like a baby and questioned my upbringing. Barely a mealtime went by during the first term without somebody having a go at me for breaking some poxy stupid rule like how to cut bread properly or putting my elbows on the table.

School dinners have been a national joke for decades. They started out as pig swill and ended up as junk food. Jamie Oliver is a national hero and has sent a shockwave through the system. The question now is whether improvements can be put into practice nationally because some schools and LEAs are locked into contracts with catering companies that serve junk and only take an interest in their profit margin.

At what age are kids supposed to stop playing with toys? That is a question I have never found an answer for. I am in my 20s and still play with Lego, cars, Transformers, puzzle toys, and radio controlled robots. I also play on swings and climbing frames in parks. My family think I can be childish and immature at times. I have a feeling that toys are less popular with kids of today than kids of my generation. They have been overshadowed by game consoles and other electronic hardware.