School lateness punishments, neurodiversity and the law

Yes, sorry, I omitted to state this is the case in England.
Otherwise, my points stand and are correct.
👍

Sorry - but people leave classes early all the time - for music lessons and other peripatetic teaching. At the end of the class is less disruptive than arriving late because usually the class is winding up, packing away, being given homework reminders. They aren’t interrupting the start of a lesson, when a teacher is usually delivering content. You simply tell child A they can head off while people are packing up and then the rest of the class leave a minute or so later.

Haven’t read the full thread but this from one of your posts rang so familiar to me: “She thrived in primary but it all fell apart once we got to secondary.” This is true of our son, too, and we were told it is a very common presentation of ND in girls and more intelligent boys. Our school is supporting without formal diagnosis with lots of accommodations (ear defenders, 5-minute pass, wellbeing pass) and they make attendance possible some of the time. But at other times he is just too overwhelmed to take part.

What some posters are not understanding on your thread is that it’s not a choice at the point he is overwhelmed, it is literally impossible form him to go into the noisy, boisterous hallways. As someone who knows him well and knows how much he wants to be doing his lessons and socialising ‘normally’, I can see the true disability - his brain stops functioning normally, he goes into fight or flight mode, and he can’t do the things he wants to.

Suggesting kids just push through at that stage is counterproductive and just extends the overwhelm and leads to further problems (like school refusal). Your school should know all this, should have seen it many, many times, and should be helping you.

It sounds like your daughter’s problem could be solved with a simple 5-minute pass. Something like this must be available for diagnosed ND kids and the school must know the wait for formal diagnosis is forever. I’d challenge them - firmly but without anger - that their approach is not helping, nor would it be expected to if you daughter turns out to be ND. I’d suggest a trial of a 5-minute pass and ear defenders to see if that improves outcomes for your child. If not, there is nothing lost. But if so, you get an anppropriate accommodation in place before her learning is further impacted. I can’t see how they can argue against this?

I’d also - firmly again, but without anger - make the suggestion of a trial in writing and quote relevant legislation. You can get a good summary by googling this string “send support before diagnosis what are schools legally required to provide” - the AI content has text you can use directly as well as links to the appropriate primary sources. You are in the right here and can push this firmly from a position of strength.

If the trial doesn’t help and/or your daughter turns out not to be ND, you will see that and then you must try other things. But this is an obvious first step they really must agree to - especially as you’ve already been to the GP and are awaiting assessment.

Does your dr suspect she has ADHD & have they made a referral? If so the school should be directing you to their SEN team - one thing they could do is provide her with a pass to leave lessons 2-3 mins early to miss the crowds and rush to prevent overwhelm. If the school / SEN department refuse to make reasonable adjustments until she has a formal diagnosis then they may inadvertently be discriminating. But you shouldn’t approach it from that angle. You should try to work with the school, try to arrange a meeting with the head of SEN to discuss, if you don’t get anywhere speak with the Head. If your dr hasn’t made a referral you probably don’t have a leg to stand on.

You do realise it depends on area don’t you?
and waiting lists boomerang between a few months to over a year quite quickly depending on demand. I find it so strange when people extrapolate from their experience to confidently announce the norm to other people.

why Is this a “major safeguarding concern”? Exactly what is the risk here?

I disagree. It's the school who has the professionals and links to other professionals and THEY should be suggesting strategies that the OP can support.

The OP's DD needs to get to lessons on time, and there need to be carrots and sticks to get her to do that. But in what world is a "punishment room" reasonable?

All that said, I agree with other people who've said she should simply walk with her friends/classmates to the lessons. Unfortunately the world is crowded and she needs to get used to it.

I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit (inattentive subtype) as it was called in 2006 when I was amongst the first few adults to be diagnosed. All of my acquaintances within the cohort were there having realised their own behaviour had a name - due to their own child’s diagnosis.

So I went through school without diagnosis yet still had all the symptoms including huge issues with timekeeping and organisation. So I needed to get myself to lessons on time as a priority or I would be in trouble. It was ingrained in me that this was non negotiable.

you need to get this message over to your child instead of giving her an ‘out’ . If you are telling her that being lat is not her fault, it’s how she’s wired .. I - as a child would have grabbed that excuse as the perfect answer to indulge my inattention .
Luckily my parents had no idea about ADHD and would have given me an extremely hard time for persistent lateness.

You need to enforce the need to prioritise timely lesson attendance @VividDenimTiger not give her reasons to think that diagnosis with a neurological diversity is some kind of magic armour that prevents her from having to conform with normal school requirements and discipline.

There isn't a massive wait via RTC; that's simply not true.
You just need to request an out of area ADHD provider via RTC.
My daughter had her (out of area) in person ADHD assessment in April.
The wait was 4 months, from GP referral to being seen.
You're welcome to PM me for more info.

Question - I've seen a lot of people mention "leave early" passes where the child gets to leave the classroom before the end of the lesson so they can avoid the crowds in the corridors.
How does that affect the lesson for the rest of the class?
Either the child who leaves early misses the last five minutes of teaching, possibly including what the class will be doing next, books and preparation for the next lesson and what homework they have to do or (and I assume more likely) the teacher has to finish the lesson when the child with the "leave early" pass goes and the rest of the class have to sit there for five minutes twiddling their thumbs and waiting for the "official" end of the class?

No the school isn’t. OP says the school already has in place a 5-min buffer for lateness to class - punishment kicks in after that. So her DD is taking habitually longer than that.

Speaking from a school safeguarding perspective, a child not in class and hiding outside is a major concern. Perhaps you could ask from this perspective?

As an ongoing issue, you will need to teach her ways she can get places on time. Lateness due to ADHD wont stop a train from leaving, or a plane taking off without her. It will compromise her at job interviews and in the workplace, so she needs some strategies to overcome this.

These full school crackdowns like everything must work well for some kids - but the fallout for the other kids doesn't seem to be considered important. My ds's school had a crackdown on presentation of exercise books with standard punishments dished out. The joy of geography was successfully knocked out of him. I fed back the outcome to his teacher - so maybe they'd improve too and do something different the next time - probably not though, no one likes to hear constant negative feedback.🤔

We had issues like this when one of our DC had then undiagnosed neurodiversity.

It helped not having a diagnosis tbh because then we just put in place the kind of strict boundaries that teenagers really do need.

The strategy that worked came from a book called Divas and Doorslammers.

Teens always want money.
I put a £1 coin in a place that DC had to get out of bed to access (in another room). Once DC was out of bed, then everything flowed from there and wasn't late getting to school. It took about 3 weeks to break the habit.

I agree with you - teachers know who genuinely needs the loo and who is planning to skive / muck around and when I was at school would apply their discretion. However, the problem now is that the parents of the kid who will be going into the loo to cause havoc will come in and complain that their precious little sod is not being allowed to use the loos during lessons when other children are, and that said little sod is being discriminated against. Schools are in an impossible position where essentially the good kids lose out because the badly behaved kids can’t be trusted.

It's not willy nilly though. It is disruptive and rude to show up late. It is disruptive and rude to persistently ignore rules. It's disruptive and rude to constantly talk over teachers. The kids who actually want to make something of their lives deserve better. Whatever your additional needs are school is a community. If you don't have any interest in supporting it as such then you have no business disrupting the learning and experience of the other children that do.

Years ago I was often late for school. The reason was that I stopped caring about it. It was only when a teacher pointed out an employer would not tolerate it and I would be sacked I realised I needed to change what I was doing. So I did. A reality check can sometimes work.

If I was late to lesson as a kid, my parents would have told me off. However your DD knows you will make excuses for her, so why would she bother to be on time because mummy will say it’s not her fault.

I was a SENCO in a large secondary school and leaving lessons a little early to move in a quieter time is a measure I would put in place for a pupil with an ADHD diagnosis if it helped. I would need to see that she had significant ADHD traits though if there was no formal diagnosis and understand what was delaying her getting to the next lesson. It could be a lack of using her timetable to know where to go, problems with knowing the best routes around the school or getting distracted on her way to the next lesson. I might suggest that she went with a friend to make sure she went straight to the next classroom initially. I would give her a map of the school with classrooms clearly marked, maybe the teachers could check with her at the end of the previous lesson that she knows the best route?

Its very difficult to put measures in place without a diagnosis as unfortunately lots of parents self diagnose ADHD or ASD in their children and ask for support measures to be put in place which are not practical for large numbers of pupils.

Does the school have access to an Ed Psych who could do an informal assessment of your daughter’s problems in school? I assume you have asked your daughter exactly what are her problems getting to the next lesson on time ie unpick why she gets over whelmed? Could you go through her timetable each morning to make sure she knows ahead where she needs to go?

I think the issue I schools take punitive approaches to manage things that just need an alternative approach. My child in primary cannot go to the toilet when he needs to. When I was young it was never an issue, we were trusted to do simple things. I just think schools have gone down the high discipline route and have lost their ability to apply discretion and common sense to a situation. Not really the teacher's fault, needs better leadership really.

School is helping prepare kids for the big wide world. Your DD will need to be at work on time.

i think it’s about you supporting DD to be on time rather than blaming the school. From their POV if every kid is late they could just say “well I’m waiting for an ADHD assessment” - they can only really deal with actual diagnoses.

We get it rammed down our throats 24/7 about attendance yet schools chuck kids in isolation where they miss proper teaching for entire lessons willy nilly all the time. It's so hypocritical it's unreal. How is missing an entire lesson a suitable punishment for anyone?

Aside from which the other 25 kids to consider does not mean it's okay for schools to refuse reasonable adjustments. If they made some, ops dd would be on time and then NO ONE would miss out. How wild!

I don't understand your point though? Surely your impressive father's experiences and successes were the result of him developing the necessary resilience to succeed notwithstanding any issues he faced?

Are we not in agreement?!

We are an AuDHD family and all have different presentations - ironically I have a lifetime history of chronic earliness to offset the fear of lateness and the social awkwardness of arriving after things start. My DS couldn’t care less and wanders in to classes seemingly unhurried [he is masking, but it can tick some staff off if they are unaware of his diagnosis].

So, it isn’t really helpful when people for whom their ADHD/Autism does not impact them like this to be commenting the way some have. The issue is that it impacts your DD in this way and her social anxiety means overwhelm creates a fright/flight response and she possibly hides in the loo or somewhere quiet until the mass lesson change over has receded. Asking for her to leave early is actually a completely reasonable adjustment request - they would allow a physically disabled person to leave early to avoid the rush, so why the material difference in offering this solution for a person with an invisible disability (albeit, yet to be confirmed by diagnosis). Therefore, given they are aware of the fact DD is on the waitlist for formal assessment, I would argue that implementing a punishment for her disability related behaviour rather than offering an adjustment is actually discriminatory and has the potential to be escalated to the Board of Governors or the LEA.

However, in the first instance you could reach out to ipsea.org? They advocate for children and families with SEN - whether it be pushing for ECHPs or reasonable adjustments. I believe they have a helpline and could possibly give initial advice today? I think having the support of someone there - to write to the school and remind them of their legal responsibilities under discrimination law etc may help.

Ok. So I’m ADHD but wasn’t diagnosed until almost 40. It was misdiagnosed as anxiety since I was a child. I spent all of that time masking hard! A big part of that was strategies to make sure I got through the days unscathed! I did well at school and have a professional career now but I do think it was hard work with poor executive function and it led to crippling anxiety and burn out.

A diagnosis isn’t a magic cure. Neither is medication. I’d work with her to focus on what’s actually going wrong and strategies for this. I used to mirror other people to mask - can she not follow class mates to the next lesson, over plan etc. I would, and still do, feel such anxiety about getting things wrong that if anything I’m too early and lose focus on what I’m doing so I’m not late or don’t miss something completely. I know that if I don’t have a number of reminders then I will not turn up to a dentist appointment for example.

I know this isn’t ideal and I don’t know the answers on accommodations etc. But I have always found I’ve just had to find ways of being responsible for things myself. I’ve never had halo. I over plan until I cannot relax - knowing that day to day things won’t happen for me the way they will for others. I feel deep shame about lots of my failings because of ADHD and I do hope it gets better for younger generations but I’m still not sure where in the place where we can hand over these issues to schools and workplaces to solve. I think it will improve her self esteem to have some of her own strategies.

There’s also a lot written on ND. So as a family you could do a deep dive if the school aren’t experts.