Email from school that I probably wasn't supposed to see - f**king livid!

[FidgetyFingers]

I requested a copy of DS2's (secondary) school record when he left there a few months ago. He has quite severe SN, NHS paediatrician diagnosed with his assessments taking place at this school.

Enclosed in the paperwork was an email from his form tutor, his form tutor for 4 years, to the inclusion manager, stating that I had been on the phone to her as I was very unhappy about detentions 'again' for minor transgressions in the scheme of things and 'that I expected special treatment for my son due to his 'SN'.

DS has severe learning difficulties with several other co morbid difficulties and never should have been in mainstream school anyway but there was no choice as I couldn't get him an EHCP.

I am so fucking angry as this proves they never took his SN seriously at all which they proved in the way they treated him!

I also found a copy of an email from said inclusion manager to all his teachers outlining DS's behaviour plan and stating that if he failed to get enough points, he would be excluded.

Same woman sat across from me in a meeting with the Board of Governors insisting that I must have been mistaken when I said that she'd told me this on the phone.

I am absolutely disgusted that such people exist and are in authority of vulnerable children .

AIBU?

Allington

could you drop the predjudice BS, its not helping anyone.

HateIsNotGood
I've been fortunate to avoid the HT Types you mention, but can think of a couple at local schools - the sort of fast track parachuted up the ranks (often in schools who find recruitment difficult), given responsibility well beyond their experience (head of team at 23, no post uni experience), usually on SLT by late 20s early 30s. Seem to think that the world in education is what they've seen in their limited experience.
They're awful. You have my sympathy if you've encountered them.

HateIsNotGood

I understand your frustration. I genuinely do. But it isn't going to help to create a quick "role-reversal" as a neat illustration of the unfairness inherent in the situation. In a system with limited resources available, we are always going to have to demonstrate need. We are always going to have to work with professionals to secure support for addressing that need. It will never be enough just to say we need it and have everyone swing into action, because the resources (money/time) are finite. I get that that makes life hard for lots of people, but blaming me isn't going to sort that out.

My issue is with asserting that in any situation where school and parent are in conflict, the parent is inevitably being unreasonable (ànd entitled, having a 'reputation', etc). Which, if you read the thread, is what those such as pengggwn maintain.

Er, nope. I did not say that at all.

Guienne

As true as that all might be, it doesn't change the fact that teachers' concerns aren't based in prejudice, but in their misunderstanding of the judgement and (genuine) worry about its implications. They are not being nasty or disablist, just worried about their safety.

maisy I think there is a huge difference between parents who are trying to cheat to gain extra time in an exam. I wouldn’t call them ‘over anxious’, I would call them cheats! They do not believe their child has SEN!

Then there are parents who are fighting all year for a diagnosis, identification of needs and support etc. Who when teachers don’t share their view, get labelled.

Blueberry At one point I worked with people with severe physical and learning disabilities - from a very early age it was obvious that they had a disability. I'm not saying that their family had it easy in terms of getting appropriate care and education for them, but they did not battle to have it accepted that they had SN, that it wasn't a case of 'over anxious' parents.

I agree that teachers getting worked up about the C&C case have misunderstood it, but really that is no-one's fault but theirs - even if they don't read the judgment, there's plenty of informed guidance about it available via professional and SEN sources. I don't really understand why you would let yourself get so upset about something based on third, fourth or tenth-hand reports without checking whether there is any need.

Great post here which seems rather relevant to this discussion - mistermikeparker.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-joy-of-learning.html?m=1

Guienne

I'm not commenting on that. I am just saying it has nothing to do with negative attitudes towards children with SN.

Guienne

If you can't see what the problem is then the issue is yours.

What problem is it that I'm not supposed to be seeing, Boney?

You haven't answered my previous question either.

Guienne

The problem that it doesn't solve anything, That it actually makes it more difficult and partially closes off a route to getting pupils support.

and I have no idea what your previous question was.

Just revisited this thread after stepping away after it became the usual teachers trying to justify poor practice (understatement) in regards to SEN.

Let me be clear, that DS had an in depth assessment with various professionals and a lengthy written report detailing his diagnosis and what his difficulties are. There was absolutely no excuse for it to be ignored or even for it not to be read. The excuse 3 years after I had given it to the school was that they couldn't find a copy of it. I was not expecting miracles from his teachers but I absolutely did expect that a child with SLD would not reasonably be expected to behave as his NT peers and given he started secondary school at Yr1 levels for all subjects, that they assist me in applying for an EHCP at the bare minimum. They could then have said they couldn't meet his needs. I was never an 'over anxious' parent until my dealings with so called professionals who had no idea how to cope with students who couldn't conform through no fault of their own.

Just to respond to the outrageous post from BlueberryPud who feels fit to tell me that my DS does not have SLD and she knows better than a whole host of professional medical clinicians from a few of my posts, and not knowing my DS from Adam, that certainly is the term on his written diagnosis report. Are you disbelieving because despite his SLD he managed to stay in mainstream for 10 years with little support (until I got 'over anxious' thoroughly pissed off), with 100% attendance for the first 9 years despite being bullied by his peers and teachers until he could take it no more and developed an anxiety disorder so that he couldn't walk into a classroom? That despite his SLD he is fastidious about hygiene, looks presentable, can hold a conversation in monosyllables without eye contact, can read to a good level and can write messily but reasonably? I can't believe it either and it's a credit to him and to a lesser extent, hard work on our part.

He is not 'mentally retarded'. Your poor daughter labelled like that by her own mother . She didn't stand a chance did she? Hope you're not a teacher as well. People with SLD can still learn with the right support, patience and understanding you know .

You're still being opaque, Boney, but assuming you're talking about the C & C decision, obviously it's not the function of a legal judgment to solve autism. It doesn't prevent someone with autism from being excluded from school in an appropriate case, all that it does is to say that the law on disability discrimination applies to pupils with autism in the same way as it does to other disabilities. So just as, for instance, in the past you couldn't exclude a child with ADHD for being disruptive unless you could show that you had made all necessary reasonable adjustments and that exclusion is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, you now have to follow the same criteria for a child with autism.

Quite how that closes off a route to a child getting support, goodness knows. If the child needs support that they are not getting in school, the school should be applying for them to have an EHCP, or for that support to be included in their EHCP if they already have one. The stats show that permanently excluded children with autism often end up spending months if not years out of education, so clearly if that is designed to help them access support, it isn't working.

Guienne

This won't improve poor SEND provision, It will just make the child's situation worse.
Do you really think that forcing a child to stay in a school where their needs are not being met are a good thing?
Do you think that being in a classroom with a child whose needs aren't being met to the extent that the lash out at other children is good for the either that child or the other children?
Do you think that this will make the teacher's job easier if they can't get the provision for the child with SEND?

Schools that are rubbish at SEND are not going to magically get better because of this ruling.

Councils and LEAs are not going to start giving out EHCPs any easier because of this ruling.

The stats show that permanently excluded children with autism often end up spending months if not years out of education, so clearly if that is designed to help them access support, it isn't working.

I know the stats, but the system that we have in school isn't getting them the support either.

I've said all the way through this thread that the set up is fubar and frankly a clusterfuck.

The ruling isn't intended to achieve any of those things, is it? It's intended to take out an anomaly in the law on disability discrimination. That hardly makes the decision a problem, because obviously those issues existed before.

It's an interesting leap of logic to say that deciding not to exclude a child permanently based on the effects of their unmet SEN equates to forcing them to stay in the school. Based on that logic, why only exclude the autistic children with a tendency to meltdowns whose needs you can't meet? Why not exclude all the others as well?

Of course it isn't good for a child to be in a classroom where their needs are not met to the extent that they go into meltdown so that they lash out at others. The answer to that is not to chuck them out to sit in their bedrooms at home for months or years. Rather than shrugging their shoulders and assuming they can do nothing, the school could go mad and apply for an EHCP, or for better support in an existing EHCP, and help the parent to get support properly specified and therefore enforceable against the LA.

no more "an interesting piece of logic" than to expect a piece of paper to solve all the issues within a classroom.

I don’t think it’s a question of forcing a child to stay in a school who cannot meet needs, it’s more a question of why needs cannot be met.

My sons EHCP is currently being amended, if my son requires more 1:1 support, school have to apply for it. The difficult I’m facing is that school don’t think he does need more 1:1 support as it’s not specified in expert reports and my son is not violent, which equals to them he is coping without it. It’s almost like violence is the only language school/LA understand. Yet if my son was violent, he would be excluded! We can’t win!

For example LA OT has written he needs a daily sensory diet. He needs movement breaks etc. Who is going to deliver OT support?!

LA professionals write reports which are unspecified etc. IF school say we cannot deliver that support without a level of 1:1 and apply for it. LA don’t have a leg to stand on.

If school don’t apply, I then have to pay a private OT to write a report, specifying, for Tribunal so I have a leg to stand on. It’s costly, time consuming for parents and a causes a huge delay in support.