Stigma of SEN during 11+ in London

Thank you. WHS head said all the right things about neurodiversity - going well over and above the basic level - at recent open day, so that fits. Also ALL the children we saw were using laptops in lessons, and they screen every child for undiagnosed ND. Plus their entrance assessment is nicely non traditional. Just wish they ran a school bus!

Conversely FYI Reigate Grammar head said some very dispiriting things at a recent online Q&A - in summary, he said they select primarily on school report rather than exam result and they are looking for “resilience” “ability to take coaching” and “peacemakers not troublemakers”, “because we want a happy school”. All of which is not very compatible IMO with welcoming and supporting ND kids who may well struggle with these things. Of course he later said they do welcome/support SEN but he has to say that doesn’t he, and his comments about admissions made it fairly clear he is looking for straightforward kids.

Interesting about Emanuel and Alleyns.

Any comments about Jags?

I've heard positive reports about the GDST schools & Wimbledon High

Trinity, Whitgift, Royal Russell, Northwood Senior (will be called London Park School Clapham) all supportive imho

Emanuel were not supportive but my experience is a few years old and things may have changed

Thank you. It would be very helpful to know which were the supportive schools (and the unsupportive too, but appreciate you may not want to say!)

My child had extra time at 11+ but we were realistic with our school choices. Several schools made the right noises but gave us outright rejections , another was honest and told us not to apply as they couldn’t support the dyslexia and another one, Who has made a point of wheeling out a dyslexic boy at open day to do a speech about how supportive the school were, would not give us the extra time we needed in the exam . However the 3 we liked and got offer from were incredibly supportive. They recognised that you can be bright and dyslexic and my child is flying.
for reference , claremont have taken no SEN children for 2 years as headmaster is ex kings and wants to raise the school academically, ditto radnor (although with A big new site to fill they might be more lenient this year)

I’m interested in this too. I have DDs so would be especially interested in @bashstreetkids experience and which London schools sounded progressive in this respect and which didn’t.

I have noticed that some schools (most?) ask the question “is your DC diagnosed with any condition” or words to that effect. I wouldn’t want to lie. So in these instances the decision is clear, we need to be open.

Re extra time, I have seen a couple of academic schools which say extra time will only be given if the child is below average in something. Well realistically, children who are below average are not going to be applying to these academic schools are they? So in reality that means extra time is unlikely to be available (except for a very spiky profile child I suppose).

Hi, we went through this last year.. some schools were very honest about not being able to support anything but mild dyslexia once we spoke face to face with the SEN. One school refused to give my son extra time and a reader despite his report and some were amazingly supportive . These were schools in west London /Surrey so may not be in your area

Hoping to resurrect this thread as I have the same dilemma and questions as the OP.

Anyone with experience of whether dyslexia diagnosis has a stigma when applying to academic independent schools (London).

How far into w London are you?? We tried some of the less competitive schools for ds who has a spiky profile as the very academic were not really interested unless exceptionally strong in certain areas and DS has processing issues so didn't want to stress him out...Kew were more welcoming but is tiny as were Radnor in Twickenham and st Benedicts in Ealing (but very Catholic and poor history of abuse)

I would get a state back up...there are lots of good state schools in London

Oh and PS if your school don’t consider it a problem for them and give your DS a good reference then that should go a long way. If a potential school is wary of your DS in such a situation it may not be the right place because they may have a culture or systems that have resulted in problems for adhd children in the past.

However, I dont think it is the case that you need to lower your ambitions academically because of adhd. If you have a bright child then aim for schools that are ambitious as well as those that you think he should get into quite easily and see what happens. But the academic ones should be those with good SEN support.

I think it depends on the school. They all have to officially accommodate SEN but those who proactively promote their offering are probably going to be the most supportive. Latymer Upper promotes it well and gave prominence to their SEN department when we went to an open day. They also had one sixth form girl get up and talk about her dyslexia and how supportive the school had been. Hampton also seem to be supportive. My DS got in with an adhd diagnosis (on medication). He got extra time in exams. The school seems to have a good SEN dept and a Good Schools guide report had the head being supportive of SEN pupils.

Some schools recognise that neurodiversity doesnt equal low intelligence and that differences can lead to brilliance in some areas so they will be open to taking those pupils that they can see the potential in. Others may see it as an unnecessary hassle when they can easily fill their places with neurotypical children who achieve highly with no extra input from the school.

I thought Harrodian seemed supportive too, accepting of differences and has an SEN person for the upper school. Dulwich is another that seemed supportive of some neuro differences and from recollection I think it offered extra support to help with organisational skills which is often something ADHD sufferers need. Also the Dulwich registrar seems very supportive of neuroatypical children. Epson College seems to offer a considerable support programme of extra tutoring but it comes at a price and the fees are already higher than the others I have mentioned (but you get a longer school day and Saturday school).

Of the others, I am not sure about Emanuel and Ibstock for SEN. Emanuel has a history of 15% SEN pupils according to old reports I read but that might have changed under the new head. I am not sure what the purpose of their interview was but my son was asked to do origami and they seemed to take it seriously when he tore the paper slightly (I think he has poor fine motor skills). Ibstock does seem to support SEN and give extra time in exams (as does Emanuel) but my impression was they gave less prominence to their offering in this area so you might need someone with more direct experience to give you a view. The one that stood out to me as being less supportive than the others was Alleyns. They put more restrictions on the accommodations they would give my DS in the exams than other schools, they notably didnt seem to have anyone using a laptop in the classrooms as a substitute for handwriting (which is often recommended for children with slow processing problems). Their exam (especially English) is also very ‘wordy’ and the reasoning test needs fast reaction time. However, this is just my experience and others may say they have had fabulous support from their SEN department.

I think it would depend a lot on whether your child will need support for their ADHD from the school or whether it's already well managed from home. If they will need support it would be best to be honest with the school as a school that would discriminate based on that is unlikely to be a good fit. Some schools use the selection procedure to basically collect a group of children who are sufficiently hard working, able and from families who will push them so that without much input from the school they'll acheive great results. Such schools often avoid any child which will require any effort on their side. Other schools are happy to take on children with SEN. There are correlations with gifted children and certain SEN so it makes sense that schools would be open to accepting bright kids who also present with SEN.

@Lucinda76 Do you have personal experience of Northbridge House? If so I’d really appreciate hearing your - or anyone else’s! - thoughts. Feel free to DM me.

Northbridge House school takes lots of SEN children.

@orcadive Perhaps you should look at Fulham School, Kew House, Maida Vale School, which are more open to children with SEN and looking to foster a "whole child" (as opposed to academic results only) approach. I have gone through the West London 11+ exams in 2019 with one DS who is super sporty, bright but not super academic, with no SEN and it took a massive, uphill push (plus regular tutoring) to get him into a decent independent co-ed day school. The competition is fierce.
My other DS, currently in Y5 with mild dyslexia is just starting to look at schools. I have decided not even to bother with the academic schools (Latymer Upper, Hampton, SPBS) for him as the exams are very demanding, the schools are oversubscribed, and they take their pick from the most academic children. Why put him through the stress and hassle of the exams only to find later that the school is a poor fit?

It would be really helpful if people could name schools, I’m going to be going through this with my daughter next year and we are west London too.

Speaking from the other side, I would far rather know about all the SEN than discover it in the third week in September when some poor kid is struggling when a few reasonable adjustments could have been in place. I get a lot of reports. The ones I treat with suspicion are the ones who have not bothered to contact me to discuss needs, see if it is a good fit, what our offer is in terms of provision and just to chat. Neurodiversity is more than dealable with if parents and school work in partnership.

Do declare it. If schools are sniffy then frankly you are better off without them.

I should add that I first joined MN about that time when I was in the depths of despair over 11+. The prep school head, who did not "believe" in dyslexia, said unhelpfully that DD (who had a dreadful CAT score) would not be able to cope in a mainstream London private school. His recommendation was "country boarding". He also refused to have her put into higher sets, even though her exam results and class performance warranted it.

Senior schools were a lot more constructive.

Good luck.

I will disagree slightly. My observation is that non NT kids display a variety of characteristics, and it very common for a child who is, say, dyslexic to have other issues. So DDs processing speeds are astonishingly slow, but it has also been suggested that she is probably on some sort of ADD/ADHD scale. She needs to concentrate a lot so dislikes it when others disrupt classroom teaching. She also cannot sit still.

Set against that are some real advantages. She has developed an astonishing memory and is quick to grasp concepts, so, as long as she can listen in class, has been able to learn and retain.

I guess what I am trying to say is that whilst it is more challenging to be different, it is possible to overcome some of it. My strongest piece of advice would be to encourage your child to develop interests and talents, to help preserve his self esteem. And then to really think about his academic strengths and what might suit him best. For example we looked for a co-ed school as we felt that DD's spikey profile and her disinterest in ever reading a book, was more common with boys. And also coping strategies. Does exercise help, diet? Medication or not, I suspect you can't cure difference, only celebrate it.

Our dyslexic DD went through this a decade ago. I would not call it "stigma" or discrimination, more about fit.

First some questions:

1. What are they good at. DD was sporty, and we wanted her to maintain her self esteem.

1. How bright is he? A friend who was deputy head at a West London girl's school asked if I could see DD going to Oxford. An odd question, but actually DD was already a good mathematician so yes, it was a possibility. Top tier schools (SPGS etc) will want pupils who are good at everything. The next tier down will take kids who are very good at some things, as long as they are not so bad in the things they are weak at (maths or English) that it affects their ability to progress.

1. Where are his friends hoping to go? To some extent friendship groups are formed by academic ability, so DD was friendly with a nice group of purposeful girls. I wanted her to go to the same sort of school they were going to, even if her exam marks tended to be more scattered.

There is no point in trying to get extra time, unless a child is going to use that extra time constructively. Looking back 10/11 was about the toughest point where DD had not really acquired the coping skills that would see her through the rest of her school career. Instead she sat the exams (she did 7, but was generally quite happy to have a day off school) and we wrote letters after, saying that the school would have notice the disparity between her maths and English. If offered a place we would want to meet the SEN department early and work out a strategy to support her, including over the summer before she started.

(Luckily she was in a prep so had the fall back of staying on until 13, so we only really applied to schools she wanted to go to, which kept the pressure off. At 13 we would have tried a wider academic and geographical range.)

She got her first choice which was a co-ed with a good reputation for sports, and a strong reputation for SEN support. She went on Westminster for sixth form which had extremely good SEN support. The aim should be to find the right academic and social fit, and then see which schools are prepared to take on a child with a different profile.

Are you getting any advice from the school?