Secondary school teacher advice needed

Contact the SENCO directly in the morning. If he’s not had any interventions etc and is not on the SEND register this seems an unusual decision. For a low reading age to be cited as a reason for placement in that stream seems odd given no concerns have been raised throughout KS3.

Have the school recently ran Lucid screening on all students? Or have they all done an exam? I think just email the SENDCO though .

What have his reports indicated for English since year 7? On track or below expected? School reports should have some system for indicating this. If nothing there, I would suggest they have got him confused with another child. Unfortunately, some students can blur together. I say this as both a teacher and a parent of a yr 9 whose computer science teacher at our options evening didn’t seem to know who he was!!

Ask for a meeting or phone call with the SENCO urgently. They shouldn't have made that decision without clear communication. It really sounds like a mistake has been made.

Sorry, I've just had a three hour parents evening. I'm a bit wrung out. I just meant this is so school specific there's not much any of us can offer other than speculation.

And if it is a mistake then best to get it cleared up quickly. We have sometimes had mix ups when two students have had the exact same name for example. Not ideal at all, but you can see how it might happen.

For goodness sake? Nice and reassuring.

I'm an English teacher at Secondary School. It would be unusual to get all the way through primary and secondary school without anything being flagged already. When they say low reading ability do you know exactly what they mean? For this to happen at my school it would probably be because the student was not meeting the age-related outcomes for Year 9 and therefore unlikely to achieve a pass at GCSE without substantial intervention (hence giving the extra hours instead of a language.) I would have expected to see this on the previous Year 7 and Year 8 reports. We send graded reports home once a term and this would have shown that they were not meeting the expected levels. We also do a termly reading test which may show a low reading age. The average reading age of a GCSE English Paper is 15 years so if they are substantially behind it may also mean they will struggle to pass.

I would contact the school and ask them to explain why exactly they have selected your child for this pathway. Once you have heard their reasoning I would then consider if you think that it would be better to have the extra time for English/Maths intervention than a language. I think it isn't great that you have no idea that he is not on track to pass--however try and focus on what is the best choice now.

I would still think that a mistake has been made. If it’s never been mentioned in any report or at any parents evening or similar, no communication from the SENCO at all, it must be wrong. I would urgently ask for a meeting with the options teacher and the SENCO to clarify what’s going on.

What have his report grades been like for English to date? Or any interim test results?

Secondary teacher here..for goodness sake, none of us can answer your question. Just call in the morning. Its entirely possible for a mix up to have occurred. There's nothing else anyone here can say. It will get sorted.

I’d ask for a meeting with regards to this and mention all the points you just mentioned here.

Seems very strange.

I would say that’s a mistake and some kind of error has been made. Could he have been mistaken for another boy with the same or similar name?