Autism / Asperger / ASC awareness in OFSTED

Dear Office for Standards in Education,

Currently children with autism / Asperger syndrome / ASCs suffer
because of a lack of understanding and support in school,
particularly senior mainstream schools.

It boils down to a sort of formula:-

mainstream school + autism + lack of understanding + lack of
support (+ lack of diagnosis?) + bullying = mental health problems,
thoughts of suicide from very early age = referral to / job
creation for CAMHS

What autism / Asperger / autistic spectrum condition awareness
training do OFSTED staff, particularly inspectors, receive?

Do all inspectors receive this training?

What form does it take?

Who provides it?

How often is such training rolled out?

Whatever it is currently, OFSTED is clearly failing to ensure
standards of autism / Asperger / ASC awareness and support in
mainstream schools. I hear of unhappy traumatised such children /
young people (and traumatised and stressed parents / carers) again
and again. Parents often still have to take their children out of
school, and their children have a delayed or very patchy education.

How does OFSTED attempt to ensure that SEN / autism provision in
mainstream schools, both primary and senior, is adequate and
effective?

What checklist / criteria do OFSTED Inspectors use when inspecting
schools, to ensure autism awareness and support is adequate in each
school?

Do you have any measures (to remedy the current misery of many such
children in mainstream schools) in the pipeline?

Thank you,

Yours faithfully,

[P. Smith]

Dear Richard Green,

Many thanks for your response.

Re: "This training includes reference to a range of needs and
disabilities including Autism and is updated annually."

"Reference to" is not enough. It should comprise a proper grounding
in autism.

Please could you be more specific about the autism training? Autism
is a very particular, hidden, and much misunderstood condition /
disability.
It requires separate and appropriately informed consideration. What
sort of autism training, facilitated by whom? What materials?
By the NAS for example?

Please see the National Autistic Society's campaign pages re
education. If the training of Ofsted inspectors were adequete,
there wouldn't be so much misery around for children with Aspergers
/ HF autism in mainstream schools.

A mainstream school can get a good Ofsted report, even for SEN
provision, yet a child with Aspergers can be suffering all through
their education years there.

Yours sincerely,

[P. Smith]