Parents pushing for special needs diagnosis for children, survey says

Some parents are lobbying for a special needs diagnosis for their child while genuine sufferers are losing out, according to teachers polled by YouGov.

Educators are warning that middle-class parents who know how to work the system are getting diagnoses for their children, while other children are slipping through the net.

More than half (57%) of teachers polled said there was misdiagnosis among pupils. The same percentage thought pressure from parents has led to some youngsters being categorised as having special educational needs (SEN) unnecessarily.

Nearly two-thirds (64%) thought that some parents who have a child with a learning issue that could be addressed by a teacher are too quick to want a medical or psychological explanation, and 38% agreed that some parents who push for their child to be recognised as having SEN do it to help their youngster gain a competitive edge in tests and exams.

There are about 1 million children with special educational needs in England.

Lorraine Petersen, a special needs expert and former chief executive of the National Association for Special Educational Needs, said the findings did not surprise her.

“Most parents will work on the assumption that the quicker you assess why a child is having difficulties and give him or her a label, the faster you can get extra support,” she said.

“There may also be a sense of relief that comes with being able to ‘blame’ a diagnosed disorder.

“Parents may think people will be a lot less judgmental of a child’s behaviour – and their parenting skills – if they know the child has a label.”

She said that other parents are desperate to avoid special needs labels, as they feared the stigma a learning difficulties label would bring for their child.

But she admitted that for some carers, a label of special needs would benefit the family.

She said: “They feel a label will give the child and perhaps the family additional support that they may not get without it – access to benefits, for instance, or support with exams or a place in a specialist setting.”

Greg Watson, chief executive of GL Assessment, who commissioned the research, said: “Few things are more difficult for a teacher to deal with than a frustrated parent who cannot understand why their child is not doing as well at school as the parent feels they should.

“Parents naturally want to know why. But the fact is that a lot of issues children present are best addressed in the classroom, not in the clinic – they don’t necessarily need a label and their condition may even be temporary.

“An SEN diagnosis is often about finding the one thing that is holding back a child who might otherwise do much better, rather than identifying a child with a broad difficulty in learning,” he added.

“That’s why the classroom solution is so often better. Accurate assessment, personalised teaching and targeted support can often overcome a specific difficulty without the disruption that an external intervention can cause to teacher and pupil.”

Dyslexia expert Holly Swinton said recent government changes to how children are assessed have made it even harder for parents. The new process has seen the introduction of education, health and care plans, which can provide extra help for children with special educational needs.

However, she said the application process for a plan is complicated.

“It is a very difficult process,” Swinton said. “The only applications I know that have been successful have been the ones who got lawyers involved.

“The process is enormously onerous and it is the more tenacious parents that get more.

“Where I live it costs about £450 for an assessment with a private educational psychologist, so parents with more resources are at the front of the queue.”

The research comes after Radio 4’s Today programme earlier this month revealed that there are more children in private education given extra time in exams due to statemented learning difficulties than in state schools.

Their analysis found that extra time was given to more than 27,000 independent school students in last year’s GCSE and A-level exams – nearly 20% of all pupils in the sector.

In contrast, in the state sector, fewer than 12% of students (200,000) received extra time.

Speaking on the Today programme when it revealed its findings, Peter Hamilton, headteacher at the Haberdashers’ Aske’s boys’ school in Hertfordshire said the figures represented a “good news story”.

“For a long period of time, people have been getting better and better at identifying pupils’ special needs,” he said.

“It’s a wonderful thing we’re now noticing some of these problems and beginning to get pupils to get fairness when they sit their examinations.”