to think the school are at fault?

[Marie0]

My DS 13 (year 9) has really bad behavioural problems.

He's in a vicious cycle in school. He doesn't learn anything due to him being sent out class due to his behaviour and then when he doesn't understand his work he starts to misbehave again due to frustration of not understanding.

He hates most of his teachers as they don't have the time of day for him and are seemingly waiting for him to make a wrong move to send him out. As a result school have put him on a different time table to his friends so he attends lessons with teachers he gets along with who will 'tolerate' him and hopefully he will learn something.

We regularly meet with his head of year (once a term) and the content of the meetings are just about his behaviour. (Disrespectful, truancy no motivation). It didn't really occur to me that there may be a learning difficulty as I presumed teachers would be able to pick up on this?

We've just been told they did a test and he has the reading age of 8!

AIBU to think the vast majority of his behavioural problems are probably down to the fact he most likely has a learning difficulty and that school should have been on this a lot sooner?

Yes, it's the school's fault. Everything is their fault and the teachers are rubbish. The fact he doesn't want to engage and they haven't done your parenting for you is also completely their fault.

FFS.

@Firesuit

Well, if it were me, because:-

1. I have zero other 8-year-olds to compare him with, everyone at the school has experience of hundreds
2. It's literally 100% the schools job to,

a) teach him read b) perform quality control on a)

This is the most disturbing thing I have read on mumsnet today. No it isn't. Parental input is absolutely required. And if anyone was taking an interest in their child, they would read with their child and help them to improve. Along with any other life skill

What level did he get in his SATS.? IT is a bit of a chicken and egg situation but you need to work with school so he can learn at his level. Is he similarly behind in maths?

As a parent to a child with SEN, I think fault is on both sides here.

My DS's diagnosis are a mix of the school noticing some issues and me spotting others, and the two of us working together to get to the bottom of them to get him the correct support.

You and the school have both dropped a bollock, but pointing and blaming isn't going to fix anything. What needs to happen now is a proper referral from some proper testing to find out if this is a Learning Difficulty, or a deficit because of other Special Needs (like ADHD, Autism...etc)

Oh and btw the OP is a parent, not a SENDCO or teacher. She has come on here seeking advice and understanding about a situation that is really difficult and heartbreaking for her and instead she gets told that she has failed her child.

OP if you are still reading, not all,primary schools are amazing at supporting lower achieving children. Some are, some are a bit crap and just coast along until they get rid of the child. I have no idea which type your son was in, but it's irrelevant now as he's year 9. It is possible that he has ADHD - I work with a lot of teenagers with ADHD and whatever some people might think, it is real.

The thing is, you now know that there is a problem with your sons reading age and it's obvious he is not coping in school. Ideally that should have been identified a lot earlier, but it wasn't and now you are going to have to work with the school to ensure that he gets the help he needs. Good luck and don't let the judgemental people on here get your down. All is not lost.

Gosh, back off MN bullies. Talk about piling in to kick someone when they're down.

She has come on here seeking advice and understanding about a situation

Where does she seek advice or understanding? She is asking for validation of her opinion that the school is completely at fault for the entire situation. Maybe to absolve her guilt?

Personally, I really feel for this boy and feel that although blame lies on both sides, what he really needs are some adults who will fight his corner and get him the support he needs. OP won’t achieve that by playing the blame game.

My adopted dds, who have very complex issues due to a very difficult start in life, were a nightmare at school for the last year or two. Oldest hung on by some miracle despite a number of temporary exclusions, but youngest finally got a permanent exclusion in the spring.
After six months out of education, she’s just started at a small independent special school for kids with emotional, behavioural and social problems. It’s early days but she seems much happier, and says the teachers are more informal and seem to really understand her. Her place is funded by the LEA as is travel by taxi there and back.
We went through much of what you’re going through - the truanting, the reduced timetable etc.
Your first step should be to get an EHCP if he hasn’t got one (apologies if he has and I missed it), which will get him help from TAs, and be the first step towards a move to a school which might suit him better.
Sometimes vocational training will suit a kid better than sitting in a classroom, and some places offer this from 14. Might be worth a chat with Connexions to see what’s available.

it's literally 100% the schools job to, a) teach him read

Wtf? No. No it isn't. At 13, he should already be reading. Teaching a child to read begins at home, not in secondary school. I cannot understand in any way how the OP didn't notice he had a reading age of 8. Year 3. Sorry, there's no excuse there.

The school are at fault for not sorting his reading but so are you as a parent! It’s a fundamental life skill!

OP I understand you might not want to post on here again but I have tonnes of resources that might help you get your son back
On track and reaching his potential. Feel free to Dm me

I think the ‘I am not his teacher’ comment is incredibly sad. Parents are the most important teachers a child has. It is not 100% the job of the school to teach a child to read, parents should be a big part of education. It reminds me of a 14 year old I taught who told me she wasn’t doing any revision for a test as it was my job to teach her in her 3 hours of maths a week and if she hadn’t learnt it then I wasn’t doing my job properly . There has been a real shift to all the responsibility being with the school and not the child/ family.

Ps some people are being rather judgmental on here, keen to point the finger at the Op.
I knew my dds were behind academically, despite presenting at quite bright. Even so, at every set of tests done I’ve been shocked at how many years behind the average they are.
Youngest dd, for example, scored not too badly at Reading (can’t seem to stop the Ipad capping up the word) but her comprehension was very poor.

I ask again, what is a reading age of 8? I'm an involved parent who values education but I literally have no idea. As far as I'm concerned my DD has been able to read fluently for a while now but you're saying that she should be getting better at it. Better how?

Of course parents are teachers . But they don't necessarily teach to the school curriculum.

AS little chronology would be useful here.

When he was in primary, what was his behaviour like? And how was his attainment - e.g. SATs results - at the end of KS1 and KS2?

If he didn't reach age related expectations in reading at primary, what did the school do to help, and how did you support that at home (daily reading to an adult is a normally-accepted aspect of homework for all primary pupils, up to at least mid-KS2)?

If there was a pre-existing issue with learning or behaviour in primary, what communication was there between primary and secondary? Is your DS on the SEN list at his secondary, and was he at primary?

the thing is, this can work 2 ways round. A child who has very poor behaviour will tend to progress more slowly than their peers, simply because they spend less time listening to the teacher and focusing hard on their work, and may in more extreme cases spend time outside the classroom in order to manage behaviour. As behaviour may also be poor at home, the parent spends less time than average (or may omit altogether) doing the daily homework tasks - reading, times tables etc - as they spend more time managing behaviour, and thus a key opportunity to reinforce school learning at home is lost.

That would be 'behavioural needs having an impact on learning' - and so for the school, sorting the behaviour would be the priority.

Or it could happen the other way round. A compliant, well-behaved child finds learning very hard, much harder than their peers. This makes them feel upset and frustrated, and they may (depending on age) feel embarrassed or want to hide it. Help offered by school may make it worse, by emphasizing 'difference', or it may be that a child's learning needs are missed. The child starts to misbehave, and the frustration and anger means that the learning difficulty isn't addressed, either because the behaviour makes this very hard to do effectively (e.g. extra work at home) or because it hasn't been recognised.

This would be 'learning difficulty having an impact on behaviour'.

Understanding the early chronology of this - previously compliant until school work became 'hard', or always showing challenging behaviour, for example, alongside attainment at different ages - would indicate 'which came first' and might suggest the right place to intervene to stop the current spiral.

He sounds really hard work tbh, I think its great the school have kept him away from friends and put him with teachers who can tolerate him.

You should have picked his struggles with reading up yourself. Or even he should have noticed?!

At least now it's been picked up, it can be dealt with.

longestlurkerever it means he is reading at the level of an 'average' 8 year old, or perhaps what level is to be expected from someone of that age

It must be so difficult and I totally understand the feeling to want someone to blame. You must be exhausted from dealing with the behaviour as well!

I would have hoped something like this would have been picked up much sooner, but I would gently suggest that looking backwards to blame is just going to make you angry and feel guilty, and looking forward to now how you and the school are going to meet his needs will be a better use of your energy. Try and think of you and the school as a team, who can work together to give your son what he so clearly needs and probably deep down wants!

Perhaps meeting with the pastoral care lead at the school to discuss next steps would help? Struggling for so long would have such an effect on his self esteem, I would target that for a while and give him some success so he understands it's possible for him to be successful!

#pinkyyy. Yes I know, but what I mean is that surely 8 year olds can read so what you are saying is that a 13 yo should be able to comprehend better, understand more nuance, have a wider vocabulary and so on. I'm not sure how a parent who only has one child and no training is supposed to judge what level their child is at in terms of these things. If he had a reading level of 4 maybe she would have noticed.

A year 9 child would read a sentence in full flow-you wouldn’t expect lots of pauses. An 8 year old may well be reading word by word specifically still. You don’t have to know the curriculum but it is obvious if a 13 or 14 year old is not reading a sentence all in one go, easily, out loud. Alarm bells should be ringing.

I don’t think OP is fully to blame here at all but neither do I think schools should teach 100% of all reading. This thread does highlight the importance of parents to regularly read to or with their child, in addition to schools. Sadly, it doesn’t happen widely enough.

I feel so sorry for your son , imagine being a 13 boy surrounded by your peers and trying to hide the fact that you cannot read the text in front of you.

I think it’s really poor that you didn’t notice his reading is so weak. That is a failing on your part, not any of his teachers.

Actually, as a teacher I agree with the op. But the culprit is the system rather than any one teacher although sadly many teachers are complicit in this.

OP, it sounds very likely that your son is behaving badly because school is difficult, even traumatic for him. I’ve seen this over and over and over.

And to everyone blaming the op; take a step back. Not all parents have either the time or the confidence to read with their children regularly or at all. I heard mine read every night until they were about 8 or 9 then sporadically until about 12. I’ve taught in schools where 80%+ of the children are never, ever heard read at home by anyone. That’s the reality of things. Therefore, it’s our job as teachers to ensure as much as possible that none of these children fall through the cracks. We won’t always succeed as there simply isn’t enough hours in the day. But when it does happen, and it will then we’ve got to hold our hands up and say we failed that child and that his behaviour is our (collective) fault.

Oh and to those who suggested it, there is no way that this 13yr old child has a reading age of 8 due to bad behaviour. No way. Apart from the fact that bad behaviour is usually a symptom, it would not in itself lead to a child without LD becoming so far behind. Behind, yes. 8yrs behind, no, absolutely not.

OP, you need to ensure he gets an EHCP asap. Best tip would be to go in without blaming school and assesstivrly ask that now you have all discovered why school is so difficult for your son, what measures can you all put in place to support him. You’ll get more out of them if you come across as wanting to work together. Also, he’s 13. Talk to him. It will make such a difference to him to hear that you now understand why school has always been so difficult for him. Also that you don’t blame him and you’re all going to help. Get him on board long enough for any new measures to help. Very best of luck.

@longestlurkerever I ask again, what is a reading age of 8?

You can use Google to get an idea, you can discuss with the class teacher, you can also look at books themselves as many have suggested reading age. I know in my local Waterstones they band books into age groups, so you can visit there and get an idea. Or look on Amazon as there are in groups there too.