School lateness punishments, neurodiversity and the law

I think its a fair point and I dont know the answer but I do know they would not expect a teacher to remind them. I was a teacher woth ADHD and there is no way I would have remembered to remind a pupil of that. It wasnt my duty. I guess when the teacher says pack up that's her prompt to quickly leave while everyone else takes their time and stands behind their desks etc.

Easy - preprogrammed timer on a wrist-warn device. Silent/vibrating alarm and a ‘leave early’ lanyard.

If someone has poor executive function , I am just wondering HOW she would be able to organise herself to leave lesdons 5 minutes early? Is it on the teacher to remind them?

But that stat conflates children with actual SEN needs with children who have ASN due to socio-economic factors [parents who have never read a book with their child and send them to school in nappies because they have never bothered to toilet train them.].

It’s important not to muddy a real social issue over parenting quality (what used to be called neglect and abuse, but we’re too afraid to use those terms now) and interventions and programmes that need to be put into place in areas of deprivation with actually organic/neurologically proven SEN needs.

How are ear defenders costing the LA money?

Parents provide these so there isn't a cost?

How does ear defenders disrupt other children's learning?

This is where we are heading, Our L.A has just announced that in our schools 54% of primary aged children and 48% of secondary aged children now have ASN. The situation is out of hand, costing a fortune and impacting on the other 50% that have their education interrupted every hour of the day. The impact is huge.

I think this was building on the narrative running through some PPs that kids who cannot survive school will not be able to function in the work place and that workplaces/businesses can’t be as accommodating as people expect of schools? Ie, that we do them a disservice to pander to their SEN needs. This is obviously very disingenuous, as many businesses are excellent at offering support and many people who struggle at school go on to be successful in the workplace (due to having had the correct support in school and due to the natural progression of maturing neurological and nervous systems) - so I think @Scamworried was pushing back at this?

You literally posted about businesses yourself

No-one was suggesting school is a business, people were discussing how it works in business.

You know this, so what point were you trying to make here?

Yes, the worrying thing from the "suck it up buttercup" school of thought in the comments is that there could well be teachers and senior leaders at the OP's DD's school which is why the comms and support are rubbish. My own kids aren't ND but I've seen the difference that our primary has made to children who benefit from flexibility, understanding, creativity, and a child/person centred approach. What are the barriers to learning/attending school/engaging and how can we best remove those? What does this person need in place so that they can access the experience? How can we as a school meet this child/teenager/learner where they're at? And the huge importance of positive relationships with families.

Was about to say the same.

Plus, as mentioned above, work environments bear little relationship to huge secondary settings - it’s the reason - prior to VAT - many parents opted to send their kids to small independent schools. They’d have less overwhelming environments, get their GCSEs, have more time for their nervous systems to adapt and mature so that they are better able to cope with busier noisier environments at a later date. They aren’t incapable, but their development follows a different pathway to NT children. Most get there in the end.

50 years ago, this would not have had to be expressly catered for by parents because the local schools were much smaller. You moved from a tiny pond (infants) into a less tiny one (juniors) and then into a slightly bigger one (secondary) before going into the real world (uni or work). Most places of work are not dissimilar in size/human occupancy than an infant school. Few work places have 2000 people onsite transitioning across the rooms and buildings every 50 mins en masse. Secondary school settings are the issue here.

Well that may be the outcome when school continues to fail her over and over again.

Parents can and do support their children to access situations outside of school but it makes no difference to school experience if the school refused Reasonable adjustments (like in OPs case).

In the spider example imagine being able to cope with 10 spiders for an hour providing you had a squishy but school is not happy about this progress they want you to get rid of the squishy and manage 30.spiders straight away. Even through you have made huge progress and are clear that you need that squishy they have decided to punish you instead of recognising the progress.

Not only are school refusing any reasonable adjustments. They are punishing pupil for their unmet needs and withholding her access to education

This is not right. This will never be right

Oh come on! The OP and others are suggesting minor adjustments which will make her capable of accessing the curriculum and getting her GCDEs and oiving a full life. Benefits have never been mentioned. You are being ignorant.

What they do at home and what the OP has already tried are not the subject of the thread but it's equally important to note that you cannot gradually teach a disabled person to grow out of their disability. You can teach them to manage it the best way possible over time with the right support but they will always have the disability.

So let's not even try them, she can always live on benefits.

Also exposure therapy tends to make ND anxiety worse as ND brains are different to NT brains

Bloody hell

These situations are not like school.

A busy platform is for a short period of time where the child can have loops, fidgets other accommodations that they need and then leave

The school won't allow these accommodations and it isn't for.a.short time it is all bloody day, everyday

To use you spider analogy it would be the equivalent of the train station being a short 10 minutes with a little spider compared to school thousands of huge spiders that will be with you forever with just a couple of hours we you can move away from the spiders..if and these spiders are poisonous

School.is not a business

School.is legally meant to meet.needs after SEN and disabilities

School of failing to meet needs

With needs met a child will be able to learn and develop but failing to meet needs will limit / prevent learning, impact development and cause mental health issues.

A child given the support they need is more likely to develop and be able to work as an adult than a child who has been failed, with gaps in learning and developed mental health issues and poor self esteem is less likely to be able to function productivity as an adult..

Early support is crucial..lack of early support is building problems.. adequate funding and support will.save money in the long term

I do agree. Phillipson could achieve her wish of having fewer children with SEN in special schools simply by having many more smaller mainstream schools, particularly in the secondary sector. For quite a lot of children with SEND, what they principally need is a quiet, calm environment, and they simply cannot cope with one where there are 1000 or more children milling around the corridors at class changeover times and breaks.

In fact Phillipson has a golden opportunity currently to reduce school sizes with primary schools closing down due to falling rolls: not only does that mean that school buildings are available, but those falling rolls will soon feed through into the secondary sector. So if she insisted, say, that maximum class size goes down to around 24, chances are it wouldn't be a massive expense and actually would save money on special school places.

What strategies do you suggest practising at home that will magic away the overwhelm of noisy, crowded corridors in school?

It has already been suggested way up thread, but the same sort of graduated exposure strategy that we use to teach people to take flights or tolerate spiders? Only much easier for most people who live anywhere near a town of any size than flight or spider training. Start with a shopping mall at a quiet time and finish on a mainline railway platform at peak hour, for example?

I know that wouldn't be easy, but like others on the thread I'm frustrated by the low expectations of some of the more mildly affected ND children. I'm not talking about the ones incapable of such learning.

OP has tried that, they've refused.

Well yes, but there are people suggesting that all businesses should be accommodative of issues such as poor timekeeping.

There are myriad ones which can’t be.

What if tomorrow the power went off and never came back on?

What ifs are pointless because that may not even happen

If the school offered a short term trial.of.x/y/z

They could.them.discuss the outcome of each and plan accordingly

It may not work and they would have to look for alternatives but it may resolve the issue..

If bob is planting seeds in shade and then not getting them to grow

Does he
A. Do nothing and hope that the stupid seeds will just learn to grow.
B. Try a alternative location in the garden to see if the seeds grow better

I just can't understand schools like this. My child's school assumes the child has the diagnosis the moment they go on the wait list and makes allowances. It's better for the school and the child. It helps everyone. There is so much there could do. My child was allowed to wear loop ear plugs in certain high volume lessons. Your child should be allowed a place to go when over whelmed and to walk the corridors before the rest of the school. They could be excused from registration and just have to make it to first lesson. They could have someone help them get to lessons for a while and gradually wean them off that. Put her on the waiting list for another school and contact your Sendco whilst CCing the governors.

Ask the school to send her out of each lesson five minutes early so she avoids the corridor crush.

I think this is the point many in the ‘what has changed since I was at school’ camp are missing. When I was at school, secondary classes were about 20-22 children and there were usually 3 classes per year. Occasionally in a large birth year there might be a fourth year as an exception.

My local secondary (I am not in a city, just a market town in commuter belt) has just under 1700 students across 5 year groups (ie yr 7-11). This is 330 students per year and average class sizes of 33. At lesson change over this means there are 1650 students, and nearly 100 teaching staff transitioning between rooms. All lugging bags, PE kit, art portfolio cases, boxes of marking, etc. It feels like the departure lounge of an airport with the noise, chaos and movement. The teacher don’t form individual relationships with children because they may see as many as 300 different children a week, so they cannot respond thoughtfully to those amongst them who need a little more support. Of course this feels different to a 2 form entry village primary school. Of course the transition from one to the other is overwhelming.

It isn’t the children who are broken, really - it’s a state school system that has opted for a mass delivery model under financial rationales of economies of scale. It a system that revolves arounds costs and often intangible and undefinable performance measures, not child centred teaching and development.

And no, these types of educational settings do NOT prepare children for the real word - unless they all go to work in airports (actually, and ironically, my school was a feeder for Heathrow airport) or the stock exchange/trading floor. They traumatise even NON ND children, children from troubled homes, with MH issues, with complex social needs. The system is what needs changing so that every child, ND or not, feels safe and seen and, thus, able to flourish within their own abilities.