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?

Bloody hell. Who would be a teacher now eh?

‘Inclusion’ in mainstream was pushed as a cheaper way to provide education. There are no winners. Not the pupils who need additional support, not the teachers, not the other pupils, not the parents who are being left to pick up the pieces and fight to get adequate support.

For sure, ideally pupils would have the supper they need but schools do not have the money or small class sizes to provide that.

No winners all round.

This might not be popular, but why should mainstream teachers be forced to deal with sever additional educational needs or behaviour? If they had wanted to deal with that they would have gone into SEN provision or a PRN.

Parents often say teachers don’t understand their child’s needs. Well, I’m secondary they could be teaching 200 or more children a week... so yeah, they probably don’t really know your child as well as you do!

Clairetree, perhaps you would be less flabbergasted by Allington's post if you had taken the trouble to read it properly and were less selective in your quotes. You missed out literally the last sentence before the bit you quoted: "she has a chance to get to know that teacher a little before hand." Self-evidently, she wasn't suggesting that she be given the chance to get to know the teacher before next term, but that her child would. That is precisely within the realms of reasonable adjustments.

How would you mark the essay of a child which missed the point so spectacularly due to a failure to read or quote the source material properly? F minus, perhaps?

I once had "X needs a quiet calm environment with no distractions and routine" in the same classroom as "X benefits from interactive and noisy lessons". I literally could not win.

Unfortunately for the parents of X, the use of the term "benefits from" means that the provision is unenforceable because it is so vague and woolly. Local authorities know this perfectly well, which is why they keep using it despite knowing equally well that it is unlawful. In that situation surely the obvious answer would in any event have been to move one child to another class, or to tell the LA that the school was unable to meet the child's needs.

Clairetree, your claim that the school was sued has become one that the school was subject to a complaint. Which was it?

the problem is that a lot of SEN schools were shut down and kids who shouldnt be in mainstream are shoe horned in and their are no winners, but the answer cant be making hard slogging parents feel guilty for fighting for an education their kids are legally entitled to.

*there are no winners

I do genuinely think people forget that their child is usually not the only one with SN in a classroom.

I don't think they do. However, that child is their only child with SN in that classroom, and they are entitled to expect that the local authority and the school will comply with their legal obligations to that child. It is not their fault that the system is underfunded. The problem is that historically LAs and schools have got round the difficulty by trying to avoid their duties to the child. It is significant that it is only very recently that LAs have begun to direct their efforts towards challenging the government instead, and it appears clear that that is because of the rising number of successful tribunal appeals and, in particular, challenges brought against LA funding policies such as the recent successful Bristol case.

MissSusanSays my child's funding is about 5 times what it was before I took the legal route.

Unfortunately the request to get to know the new teachers (all of them, I assume) before the end of the previous school year would be, quite simply, unworkable in many schools without putting the child into a whole set of new lessons. I can think of multiple problems that would arise. Parents need to discuss what 'reasonable' means, not make demands.

I do genuinely think people forget that their child is usually not the only one with SN in a classroom.

I definitely do think this. Unfortunately, however many times a parent repeats the school's legal obligation at me (as the teacher) it doesn't increase my ability to be in three places at the same time or do contradictory things at the same time. If I have children who need (and don't have) constant one-to-one monitoring (for example, I have been told before that I have to check students' output every five minutes) that means I don't physically have the capability to do certain other things I have to do in my lessons. I do my best. I am not a robot.

I do my best.

Sadly, some don't. And don't care that they don't.

Nanny0gg

That may well be true. But some parents, I find, don't care that I do my best. They genuinely expect me to leap tall buildings with a single bound.

Should be possible in primary though Pengggwn, unless a new member of staff is joining the school.

Secondary is impossible though.

Fuck me clairetrees, you do sound dreadful.

idonthaveatattoo

It might be possible. It depends when timetables are finalised.
It depends on the needs of the other children in the class.

Yeah, but it’s not a totally unreasonable out there request either, at primary anyway. At secondary it would be.

It might be the school have to reply with ‘sorry but it isn’t possible to accommodate this because ...’ but she shouldn’t be made to feel it’s an unreasonable request either.

Special treatment, good grief. How about every child being treated as an individual?

I do agree with that but it can be logistically impossible, with the best will in the world.

idonthaveatattoo

I don't think it is an unreasonable request. But, all things being equal - as in, if we assume it is the only current request, not part of a long litany of them, and the student in question is manageable and not going to double the workload of the member of staff in question, or put other children at risk - there must be a reason we are not appreciating here for them saying no, this isn't feasible. It does start to become unreasonable when someone won't listen to you when you say something isn't possible.

some of the ignorance displayed on here is shocking, and the assumption that the parent knows fuck all.and the teachers know better is a dangerous assumption to make and leads to children with SN being failed. why do we do this in our country? why do we treat parents of SEN kids so,so badly??

The assumption that the parents are idiots is my absolute fucking pet hate when I go to appointments related to my daughter's SN. You get professional after professional talking down to you like you're a complete moron - and then it comes up in conversation "oh what did you do for work before kids" and they find out I was a teacher... and the whole absolute demeanour changes. It is absolutely infuriating to see - no wonder people get pissed off about it. With that, with schools ignoring really really reasonable requests (not "moon on the stick" type ones but very reasonable ones) and heads riding roughshod over parents saying "oh X doesn't have autism" and refusing stupid little things like home-school communication books, and then having appointments dropped on you at short notice and changed at the last minute with the threat that if you reschedule you'll get discharged from the service... no wonder the average SN parent gets bloody frustrated, snippy and immediately poised for battle - it's bloody well understandable with the shit that goes along with the territory!

The requests I make for school generally are granted (despite our head having a bit of a reputation for trying to block as much SN related stuff as she can I, so far, seem to be doing OK with things) but that's because I basically request things that I know are easily implementable in class, and I've resorted to just resourcing equipment myself because it's a hell of a lot easier to get things implemented if I just say "look - here's the stuff, all set up and sorted out for you - can we get it in place please" than actually making any requests that require action... but my child's placid, compliant, no bother in class so comes so far down the school radar (despite being on course to fail quite badly if her needs aren't addressed - she'll fail quietly though) that they barely register unless I'm on the ball. I make things as workable as I can for the teaching staff though - shouldn't be having to devote hours and hours of my time trying to work out how I can make the multitude of recommendations from reports from endless professionals viable to have a cat in hell's chance of having them implemented within school - but the system's so bloody broken I'm having to do that. You are so at the mercy of having an obliging teacher who'll listen to you, a head who actually believes in the existence of special needs and isn't just going to block things to prove they're in charge and having parents with the time, tenacity and confidence to navigate the whole maze of bullshit that it's wrong in a realm beyond wrong.

actualpuffins

It isn't possible to have a separate set of rules for every child. You can have reasonable adjustments and exceptions, but most children are going to need to be dealt with under a fair framework of expectations. The fact that a child has SN does not automatically exempt them from that. It may do at times, or to a certain extent depending on their individual circumstances.

Pen what you say is absolutely true about the situation in schools. But I can say as a parent saying "ds needs this" and his EHCP states this that I'm not expecting the teacher to be superhuman but rather hoping they'll support me in getting higher authorities within the school to give them this. And if they can't then the communication between us serves as evidence for me to show what ds needs isn't usually available in MS school.

Unfortunately teachers are caught in the middle of an unjust system and are expected to do more and more on a low wage - which won't increase unless they reach targets they can't reach because workload is increasing.

There are teachers who don't do or even attempt to do the basics but likewise I know from send forums I'm on there are parents who's expectations of teachers and attitude towards them that don't help the situation.

But I know that the system is adversarial and parents have to fight every minor thing in some situations or end up fighting minor things they probably should let go because the overall picture is dire and they feel if they let one thing go everything else will slowly dwindle.

Unfortunately, however many times a parent repeats the school's legal obligation at me (as the teacher) it doesn't increase my ability to be in three places at the same time or do contradictory things at the same time. If I have children who need (and don't have) constant one-to-one monitoring (for example, I have been told before that I have to check students' output every five minutes) that means I don't physically have the capability to do certain other things I have to do in my lessons.

Therefore you need to apply for EHCPs for the children concerned, or call early annual reviews where you support the need for extra dedicated support for those children and the funding that follows it when it is properly specified in the EHCP. If the LA refuses, you support parents by giving evidence for tribunal appeals. What you don't do is ignore those children's needs.

youarenotkiddingme

I completely understand the predicament. As a teacher, however, you have both the parent (who wants the child to be supported in X way) and the senior leadership (who want to be able to say the child is being supported in X way) pressuring you from both sides. All you can do is continue to state, calmly, that you are following as many of the strategies as you can, but it isn't working. People will pretend that it is possible to plan and deliver seven different lessons, to give one child out of 30 constant attention whilst teaching and assessing 29 others, to always speak in a soft tone for one child and to always speak in an assertive tone for another (at the same time as giving whole class instruction), to keep the classroom simultaneously dark and light, hot and cool, because it suits them and their agenda. Doesn't make it true.

I find it hard to believe that in a primary school setting the previous poster's daughter couldn't spend a couple of hours at the end of the summer term (maybe while the rest of the kids [in my experience] are watching Gnomio and Juliet?) helping her new teacher to sort out the pencils, take down artwork, etc. How is that not a reasonable adjustment for an abused child?

5000 ds original secondary school told me in his 6th week there they have 'expertise in asd' and basically they know what's best for him and neither need or want my input. They ignored everything I said repeating it's a home issue (ds was self harming at home due to school anxiety). When he eventually attempted suicide the school said "but it was at home and nothing to do with school" totally ignoring it was because "he'd rather be dead than have to go to school ever again" and Camhs referred to cbt for school related anxiety.

The lack of working with parents and in some cases working against them is astounding.

But there are many many excellent schools and teachers out there who genuinely want the best and do all they realistically can. The reality is that they are taking on more and more send pupils and eventually I fear they'll struggle to cope too.