Autism and Education - One size doesn't fit all.

Click on the link to our Mar/Apr issue at the bottom of the page for more education articles.

Autism and Education One Size Doesn’t Fit All

By Jane Constantine

Today I cried with happiness at an email. It contained a glowing report of my 11 year old autistic daughter’s progress at school in recent days. We’re in lockdown and it’s her first year at a specialist secondary school. I’m so proud of how far she has come.

Being the parent of an autistic child requires you to make hard decisions on all aspects of their life; their educational path being one of the most important. The official diagnosis of autism, just before Alexa’s fourth birthday, was massively timely, with school looming. Empowered, our next application was for an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). This is a legal document that describes a child or young person's special educational, health and social care needs, stating the extra help that will be given to meet them and how it will support the child or young person to achieve what they want to in life. It can be issued to a child or young person between the ages of 0 and 25 years. This has proven to be a crucial document in getting Alexa the right education. We decided to start Alexa at our local mainstream infant school, as, despite her lack of speech and communication abilities, our care plan gave her a 1:1 classroom assistant, and we felt she would be supported academically. For more than two years, this was the case. Her 1:1 assistant adapted the work to suit Alexa, presenting it to her visually, rather than expecting her to listen to long verbal instructions. Makaton sign language and PECS (picture exchange communication system) were used to support her learning. PECs allows people with little or no communication ability to communicate using pictures, to communicate a request, a thought, or anything that can reasonably be displayed or symbolised on a picture card. During Alexa’s final year in infant school, she became unhappy at school, crying, and not wanting to do her work. The classroom was very small and noisy; it made her anxious and affected her concentration. It was obvious we needed to reconsider her educational path and move her to a specialist school. You can only apply for a place at a specialist SEN school if your child has an EHC and places are extremely limited. The school setting must also be able to meet the needs of your child. We looked at five different SEN schools for Alexa to determine which would be most suitable. An educational psychologist visited her at school to help us put a case together that showed that mainstream schooling wasn’t going to support her needs going forward. Thankfully the report did recommend a specialist provision. After an agonising wait, we were delighted (and relieved) to receive the news that she had got a place at an SEN school twelve miles away, with transport provided. Despite knowing it was going to be the right decision for her, I clearly remember breaking down in tears after placing her on the bus for the first time. Had I done the right thing? The SEN school provided a quieter, calmer environment and a class of only nine children. Alexa had better qualified SEN teachers who understood her needs and had a variety of different teaching practices and greater resources available at the school. She also had access to a calming hydro pool and to activities to help her sensory issues, like occupational therapy and even horse riding! Alexa is now a quarter way through her first year at an SEN secondary school. She’s happy and has progressed greatly academically. She has a varied, individualised curriculum that meets all her needs and has an important focus on attaining practical life skills; she can work at her own pace in a calm environment. Having a child with autism means taking some very hard decisions about their education. Some parents may find a mainstream school with specialist autism provision to be adequate for their child; for others, an SEN place may be essential. The traditional "one size fits all" teaching approach is rightly controversial. Curriculums should be different; we don't all learn the same way. All parents of autistic children, whatever path they take, ultimately just want them to be happy. Jane Constantine is a working mother of two children, living in Hampshire.