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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

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Original poster

working with school to accommodate EBSA

59 replies

KeepingTrying · 17/12/2023 14:41

Hi,

I wondered if I could ask for advice to help me work collaboratively with our secondary school?

DS is ASD and is in crisis and has dropped out of school. It's a long story, but he can't cope with screen-based learning any more, and the school learning is entirely screen based. DS can't cope with emotional material, or pictures or videos except very bland ones, and only if I personally check them first for triggers. Basically he would have been fine in a 1980s school before they had screens and the internet, but 2023 school with screens has finished him.

We're working from CGP textbooks and he is happy with that. DH and I between us have university level education in all the subects he needs except French and Music, in which we are educated to AS level. I don't work and am happy to home school him. DH can teach him physics, maths and computer science by doing lessons before and after work.

The thing is, we would like DS to stay on roll at the school so he can sit his exams there, but the school feel they need to have control of his education in order to allow that. But they can't have control of his education because he is so sensitive, that outside tutors just can't work with his level of need, and he can't engage with online learning.

The person we're talking to at school says she's certain that we can find a way to make it work, and I just wish I could figure out what the options are, so I could talk positively with her about how to do it.

What we need is:

An idea of how fast to go in order to cover 7 GCSEs in 2.5 years. For this, it would work for us just to have access to the school powerpoint files so I can cover the same topics at home. (We already have this).
Access to school tests on paper to do at home, so DS can have his progress monitored by the school. (They are already giving us this).
The knowledge organisers that the school use so we can be sure of covering the right material when we have to diverge from the school lessons a long way, as with reading different books in English.
Weekly safeguarding teams meeting (We already have this)
An undertaking from school that DS will be allowed to sit his exams in school without being forced to return. (We do not have this because they say DS can't stay on unless they control the teaching. They also acknowledge that they can't and won't offroll him, so we and the school are in a bind.)

I wondered if anybody might know what the way forward is? I know the school want more control. I'm not sure what more they have when DS cannot currently tolerate being taught by adults other than us, and can't engage with screen-based learning.

We have both school and home ECHP applications submitted. One was turned down and sent to tribunal and one is yet to come to panel. We have a good private MH person working with DS over zoom and he is great. He says DS needs to home school until his GCSEs and ideally we need to stay on roll at the school to get support and access to exams.

I looked into King's interhigh and Wolsley Hall and neither is suitable. King's is screen-based and and the Wolsley is Cambridge exam board. The Cambridge books would not work for DS as they are full of the wrong kind of pictures (it is that bad).

I thought about private access exams but it is hard as DS wants to study two languages and the exam centre that does that is far away. Ds doesn't travel well and going to a completely strange place far away to sit exams would be very hard.

The main thing we need to do is get DS better, and the golden road to that is having a peaceful collaborative relationship with school so we can't get on with helping DS heal.

I would be grateful for any thoughts on it.

Thanks!

OP posts:

Original poster

KeepingTrying · 17/12/2023 20:47

Thank you all for listening and thinking about this. It's helping me a lot to just talk it over.

OP posts:

Original poster

KeepingTrying · 17/12/2023 20:47

Thanks @missy111. Actually my Mum did this too for years. She used to go to people's houses to teach then they were out of school. It's only tricky because DS won't see anyone. He might in time though. I think he needs a long time to just recover and get his mojo back, or possibly to try and find it in the first place.

I don't think I could stop teaching him like @Soontobe60 says because he's very smart and he'd be climbing the walls with boredom. I do think we need to ease off though, so he can have time to concentrate on getting well. I really wouldn't mind at all if we just wrote this year off entirely from an academic point of view. He was very young in his year and I always thought he should have gone in to school a year later. I think it would help a lot to take a year to recover and possibly go into a small private school a year down from where he is now.

OP posts:

KeepGoingThomas · 17/12/2023 20:17

hiredandsqueak · 17/12/2023 20:16

@KeepGoingThomas I think that message is for @ArseInTheCoOpWindow as I know LA are going to be funding dd's. She did some OCAD's in her last school.

Ah, yes wrong name, sorry.

hiredandsqueak · 17/12/2023 20:16

@KeepGoingThomas I think that message is for @ArseInTheCoOpWindow as I know LA are going to be funding dd's. She did some OCAD's in her last school.

missy111 · 17/12/2023 20:15

Try asking the LA if the have a virtual school. They can provide teachers/tutors who come out to you. I am one!
We are well used to meeting a wide variety of needs..this may be accessed by EOTAS, but with an ask...

Get on some of the Facebook groups for SEN support/EOTAS there are lots of parents in your shoes..

KeepGoingThomas · 17/12/2023 20:12

@hiredandsqueak with EOTAS you don’t have to worry about funding.

Just so you know, not all of OCAD’s course require an exam centre.

hiredandsqueak · 17/12/2023 20:06

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow I found her because I was so fed up of the dithering from LA. They tried to persuade me to ask dd to reconsider her choice so I went on Tutorful, by chance she lives reasonably nearby, so I contacted her outside of Tutorful and gave LA her details. They then commissioned her directly.

ArseInTheCoOpWindow · 17/12/2023 20:05

Thank you.

Not keen on OCAD. Seems to be hugely expensive and you have to find your own exam centre

KeepGoingThomas · 17/12/2023 19:59

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow if a BTEC isn’t suitable the School of Stitched Textiles has a City and Guild’s textiles course and the British Academy of Fashion Design have accredited courses. OCAD has general level 3 Art and Design courses, but OCAD has a mixed reputation. Ultimately, with EOTAS it is the responsibility of the LA to ensure provision in the EHCP is provided. Sometimes this can be done by the LA convincing bribing a school to allow them to use them as a provider.

hiredandsqueak · 17/12/2023 19:58

@Soontobe60 The EHCP can fund an education to meet needs completely outside of school It's called education other than at school. Dd has tutors,TA, mentor,support worker,SALT, OT,specialist careers adviser, all tech,materials,resources and exams funded through hers. She has no school or college named they come to her here. In time LA will fund a room in the community centre and they will see her there.

KeepGoingThomas · 17/12/2023 19:56

Soontobe60 · 17/12/2023 19:50

He sounds far too ill to take all this on. I would take him out of school, put GCSEs to the back of your minds and focus on getting him well. An EHCP would only be able to provide support within a school setting I believe.

Show quote history

This isn’t correct. A growing number of pupils have EOTAS packages. Deregistering would be the wrong thing to do. If OP EHE the LA will say she is making suitable alternative arrangements thereby relieving the LA of their duties.

ArseInTheCoOpWindow · 17/12/2023 19:55

Interesting. Thank you. Did they find her or did you?

hiredandsqueak · 17/12/2023 19:53

She's actually independent because LA couldn't find anybody from all their approved providers. They have since commissioned her for another EOTAS student.

Soontobe60 · 17/12/2023 19:50

KeepingTrying · 17/12/2023 16:57

I did wonder about EOTAS but our MH professional says it would take another year at the minimum to get him to that and no guarantee that he will get an EHCP at all. He is at core a pretty well child, and just the school environment seems to be wrong for him.

Do you know what I need to do to enable the school to keep him on roll while we await an EHCP?

The private exam thing is difficult. Ds's chosen GCSE options are Japanese, music, french and computer science. None of these can be done locally as a private candidate.

We can do music via ABRSM/Trinity and french via Alliance Francaise.

We can do most of the other exams at a local school but not computer science, or japanese. Those exams would both be a long journey and an overnight stay. Ds currently cannot reliably manage 20 minutes in the car and a lunch out. Also eating away from home is hard due to dietary issues.

DS is very good academically and would be a credit to the school if they let him sit the exams. I just can't work out how to meet the school's needs and DSs at the same time.

I think they need us to accept home tutors, and I would be happy to be coached myself by home tutors, but they want the tutors to see DS directly and he can't manage that.

Thank you for all the advice. It's so fiddly to get this to work. I found Naomi Fisher's online courses very helpful. https://www.naomifisher.co.uk/

ArseInTheCoOpWindow · 17/12/2023 19:49

@hiredandsqueak who’s the provider/organiser?

Soontobe60 · 17/12/2023 19:47

What you’re asking for is to be able to home school your child but for an actual school to provide you with all the materials to do so. That’s a big ask.

hiredandsqueak · 17/12/2023 19:43

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow She's going to be doing Btec level 3.

Original poster

KeepingTrying · 17/12/2023 19:37

@hiredandsqueak Thank you very much for explaining about your DDs experience. She really sounds very much like my DS. He is thriving on 1-2-1 teaching at home just he did during the lockdowns and it sounds as though the steiner schooling was very similar for your DD.

It sounds as though I really need to try hard on the EHCP route.

OP posts:

ArseInTheCoOpWindow · 17/12/2023 19:04

@hiredandsqueak what Textiles course is she doing? My Dd wants to do it, but you can’t do A level Textiles at home..

hiredandsqueak · 17/12/2023 18:14

Your ds sounds a lot like my dd who crashed out of school at the start of year ten but tbf we had limped through year nine. She found school traumatising because she is really hyper sensitive and hyper empath. She couldn't cope with many of the topics covered in secondary and her anxiety around what might be covered added to her difficulty attending.
Dd has always had SSEN then EHCP since she started nursery. She is really intelligent and has never been behind at any point. When she crashed out of school the LA provided a tutor as is their responsibility under section 19 and I searched for a school that could meet her needs and appealed to SENDIST.
She then attended an independent specialist school which was a Steiner school. It suited her down to the ground. The crafts helped her relax and they were able to teach the subjects that were of interest in a way that didn't trigger her anxiety because she was taught 1 to 1 or 1 to 2. She passed the six GCSEs and now has an EOTAS programme where she is studying Textiles,French and Art. She also has OT and SALT and a support worker for life and independence skills and accessing the community and a specialist careers adviser alongside tutors and TAs. The LA funds everything through the EHCP including all resources and exams.
You should appeal any refusals and ask the LA to commission SALT and OT assessments. Dd's sensory difficulties contribute greatly to her anxiety.

Original poster

KeepingTrying · 17/12/2023 18:02

It's these that we're using:
https://tinyurl.com/yph737md

I'm just doing what we did when we were under lockdown and it's working fine.

OP posts:

Original poster

KeepingTrying · 17/12/2023 17:48

@KeepGoingThomas thank you for that, but we're honestly doing just fine with CGP textbooks. The science and maths books are brilliant and the information in them is really accurate and beautifully presented, and DS is loving them. In that respect we're really doing fine. It's just that the school can't get their head around the idea that a child living in this century can learn from a textbook. Which I find a bit bonkers tbh.

For English we're doing Pride and Prejudice, which DS loves. He's only read the book and not seen the film and he atill gets it completely. We have two textbooks about it and they are really very interesting and give us lots to talk about. He's also read The Importance of Being Earnest. He loves that too, and constantly compares the two texts, and has the quotes memorised, so he's all good there.

We follow the school lessons on Geography, because so much of it is updated minute by minute practically because of climate change, and that is going really well. We don't use the powerpoint files, but just the knowledge organisers, which are all text and no pictures. They are fine though.

History is good because the teacher just tells me "do WWI" and I do that from the textbook and it is fine.

Music we are doing at the moment from the ABRSM musicianship curriculum because DS has some gaps that are best addressed by that set of work. That is also going really well.

Japanese we are doing from textbooks, and manga books and a dictionary and online resources, with a little help from DHs Japanese friend at work.

The actual learning is going extraordinarily well. It's just knowing how to fit into the administrative world that is hard. And finding out how to access exams.

OP posts:

KeepGoingThomas · 17/12/2023 17:30

Have a look at Spectrum Space boxes. They work quite well for DC who can’t manage traditional tuition.

Original poster

KeepingTrying · 17/12/2023 17:15

Thanks @KeepGoingThomas. I suppose I just need to keep saying that what they are offering is not suitable and gradually they will come to understand what needs to happen. It's a very strange process.

OP posts:

KeepGoingThomas · 17/12/2023 17:09

It may take appealing, potentially more than once, but you will get an EHCP if DS’s SEN means he can’t attend school. And in the meantime, the LA has a duty to ensure DS receives a suitable, full-time education under section 19 of the Education Act 1996. If having tutors doesn’t meet DS’s needs then it isn’t suitable.

You don’t need to do anything to keep DS on roll whilst awaiting an EHCP. The school must not off-roll.

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