To complain to school

[hartytype]

My son, 10 is a happy, easy going little boy, who doesn't get into any trouble, but I think is a little bit bored at school. He's always on the move, playing football, running, rugby, ruining his shoes and the knees of his trousers. He makes us laugh and is kind and loving.
We had his parent's night end of September ( Scotland, so earlier than other parts of Uk). The teacher was running late, and the door was wide open. Large queue of parents, and potential to overhear other conversations.

The first five minutes of the meeting was spent reassuring us that he was doing well, and keeping up with the rest of the class.
Then they threw a bit of a bombshell. It was very vague, but along the lines of " I think you should get your son referred by gp as we think he might have some issues. He lacks concentration, doesn't listen to instructions, and can't sit still for long"...

They asked if we had any personal concerns of that nature, or noticed any traits at home, and honestly it doesn't really resonate.
The meeting wound up and we had to leave. With a million questions not answered.

We contacted gp, but did t really know what to say, as the school were vague. We presumed they think he should get tested for ADHD, but this phrase was never specifically mentioned.

The gp was a bit meh. She asked what was the school doing to support him already?
She asked for specific examples. We felt a bit foolish and didn't really know how to respond. The gp concluded that if the school were concerned they should be doing the referral, and further reminded us that CAHMs (sp?) has a four year waiting list...

So we are a bit in limbo. We aren't entirely convinced. We feel that it's odd to wait until the child is in p6 before they bring this up? Has no one noticed anything before then?
Why bring it up at the end if a parents meeting? When they are running late,? Should they not have arranged a separate private meeting instead?

Furthermore, tomorrow is the last day of term. Not once have any of the teachers in the school approached us and asked how we got on with the referral. Not once have we had an update on our son's behaviour.

I feel this was badly handled. I also feel that maybe we could have handled it better.

Are we unreasonable to just leave this? Fwiw our son is leaving the school in June, and transferring elsewhere for unrelated reasons.

Would be grateful for any opinions

Ps we could get him assessed privately at a local cost of about £1700, however we don't instinctively feel the need, but at same time don't want to disadvantage him in any way.

Be proactive with school - make an appt for January to discuss.

why are you considering listening to the views (that would cost £1700) of some random teacher about your child? Unless you have personal doubt, then why would you consider doing this? Even if he does have ADHD, how and why does that cost £1700?

I notice that you said your son is leaving the school for unrelated reasons. I'm now wondering if they are deliberately trying to distress you because of that by making things up?

Honestly, it was your responsibility to request a meeting with the teacher/school to get the answers to those questions before you went to the doctor.

I mean they probably should've offered a different appointment with the school, but as they didn't, you need to.

Start with that and take it from there.

Arrange a meeting with the head teacher in January, ask them to explain the behaviours which are causing concern and ask why you’ve not heard anything about it before now. If they do have concerns he has additional support needs, what have they done about it before now?

I’d also ask for a referral to Ed Psych to assess how he is in school just now and to start preparing for his change of school in august and presumably his transition to high school the following year.

I notice that you said your son is leaving the school for unrelated reasons. I'm now wondering if they are deliberately trying to distress you because of that by making things up?

What? Why would they bother doing something that ridiculous?

Do you think they do it to every child that leaves the school for whatever reason?

I have a son with ADHD. He asked to be assessed when in S1. I’d half wondered in primary school but it took him to ask for me to pursue an assessment. It was only during lockdown that we really understood how difficult it was for him to concentrate.

I’m sure the school are seeing behaviour or traits that they think are neuro diverse otherwise why mention it. Especially with funding challenges.

I suggest you ask your DS if he notices that some things are harder or different for him compared to others.

We ended up paying for a private assessment. It took 3 years for Camhs to take over his care. But the transformation since his diagnosis has been remarkable. The drugs work brilliantly.

not at all surprising for the school to (a) be this crap and (b) wait till y6 before raising issues.

if your DS is bright and able they will be confident he will do well enough not to pull down their statistics. beyond that, it's not in the school's interests to highlight neurodiversity issues for a generally bright and able child. for low-level support needs, the school gets zero extra funding. but once a child is in y6 they can be confident that the child will be Someone Else's Responsibility by the time any diagnosis comes through so they can safely alert you to the issues knowing that they won have to put much effort in to the action plan.

I think you should get your son referred by gp as we think he might have some issues. He lacks concentration, doesn't listen to instructions, and can't sit still for long"...

If the school thought there were any issues then they should have arranged a meeting with you and if they were concerned should have considered Staged Intervention or consultations with other relevant professionals. I would email the HT and query why the teacher said your son needed referred to a GP. I wouldn’t look at it as making a complaint, I’d be asking for more information on the comments made.

Personally I don’t see why a school would try to distress you due to your son leaving at the start of the summer break as previously suggested.

It's not a random teacher. It's his class teacher who knows him well and can draw on experience. It takes a lot to discuss concerns such as these.

Please make an appointment to discuss her specific concerns.

I highly doubt there's a personal vendetta. Teachers don't have time to go to the toilet let alone plan and implement personal witch-hunts against individual children.

omg ! i could've written this post about my ds! exact same scenario.. he's in p7.. but i did flag up some issues in p3.. was fobbed up with we need to wait till p5.. then lockdown happened .. then at his p7 meeting.. "he's not meeting his targets" etc.. teacher promised to keep an eye out and did call me back a week later ..

i think they must be doing assessments to pass on to secondary now.. and have to cover their backs to make sure they at a certain academic level.

other thing is ds was jan born ( biggest mistake ever).. so he's constantly going to be playing catch up unfortunately

I don’t really understand why this comment was made to you in September and you haven’t followed it up with the school before now?
I get that you’ve seen the GP in the interim, but I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t have followed up with the teacher to get more details/an explanation of their comments.
Complaining to the school in January, when you’ll have had three months to get more information from them, but haven’t done so, seems a bit mad.

Thanks for all your comments so far. I'll respond properly tomorrow. But to clarify, the school don't know that he's leaving yet.

We don't personally see any issues tbh. This came as a shock. We have two other older boys and don't really instinctively feel that our youngest son has any issues. However, we aren't observing him in his classroom.

As we don't personally feel there are any major concerns, on our end at least, we wouldn't want to consider medicating him.

And we haven't taken it back up with the school yet because, well, as above, don't have any strong parental instincts that there is a major problem. And we were, I suppose just waiting this out to see if the school would bite first. I wonder do they have a policy or protocol as to how they should be approaching these situations?

We will however, contact them early next year for a meeting. A private one. Not a 5 minute add on at the end of a parents meeting.

Make an appointment I’m the new year to speak to his teacher.

Being bored at school? What exactly do you mean by this? Do you think the teachers are there to entertain him or to educate him?

Being bored at school?

It's maybe just a fly away comment. He's mentioned it a few times. He's got older brothers and loves hearing what they get up to in high school. He says he doesn't feel challenged enough a as no wants to try new things.

He gets good school reports and is keeping up with all the work set. There have been no behavioural concerns to date. The parent's night comments really came out of the blue for us. I think we are still trying to process it really.

Yes. We will arrange a meeting for January.

Most children will be bored at some point at school. Unfortunately they do just have to learn to get on with it. Perhaps his lack of concentration wasn’t an issue before or perhaps the previous teachers weren’t very honest . Some teachers don’t want to rock the boat so aren’t completely honest with parents. Make an appointment to speak to the teacher and ask for their honest advice.

Do you think they do it to every child that leaves the school for whatever reason?

No I don't, that's why I said I wondered if they were deliberately trying to distress the OP.

i think they must be doing assessments to pass on to secondary now.. and have to cover their backs to make sure they at a certain academic level.

They will have an eye to high school but not necessarily from an academic point of view.

They’ll have wanted to see if his lack of concentration etc are a maturity issue - teachers can hold quite a lot in the smaller, more nurturing environment of primary school but will now be having an eye to him coping in high school.

Thinking about what he might need in high school is common early in P6 because they have two years to get an assessment done and have a CSP in place, if needed, for starting high school. It’s no bad thing they’ve started to talk about him possibly needing assessment because, if there is an issue they can get plans in place for high school and if there isn’t, you have your mind set at rest.

*No I don't, that's why I said I wondered if they were deliberately trying to distress the O

Why would they do that? Logically?

I was about that age when I was diagonsed ADHD, before that they just called me a active child who was a daydreamer

The headteacher will bounce you back to the teacher, depending on school size The head teacher won't know the ins and outs.

OP was the teacher young? When I was a young nervous teacher sometimes at parents evening after talking for hours on end some things would come out wrong. Just ask for a meeting to clarify. When you ask for yhe meeting say you wanted some examples of behaviours to give to the GP and to know what strategies have been tried and failed.

FYI doctors can do this referral, they like to bounce it back to schools (they are stretched too so fair enough, but man it's annoying!)

I’d be wanting to have another meeting with the class teacher to get more details on what exactly their concerns are.

We had a similar parents evening early in primary school with DC1. Teacher said that we should have DC1 referred for assessment but refused to name which condition(s) they suspected - we asked the teacher this directly, and they just said that they weren’t going to say because they weren’t qualified to make a diagnosis.

However, DC1’s teacher did write a letter for us to take to the GP, which contained details of the specific behaviours and traits that the teacher had noticed, and details of some of the extra interventions the school had been trying with DC1.
This letter was extremely helpful when it came to us talking to the GP about getting DC1 assessed.

What are the issues you are thinking of complaining about?

You reference the parent meeting in Sept and the door being open- why didn’t you close it or mention this to the school straight after?

The issues raised by the teacher could have been monitored by previous staff. At year handovers is can be noted “Johnny struggles with XYZ, continue to monitor” then this is revisited throughout the year at tracking/monitoring meetings to assess change or the need to inform patents. This is more common than parents realise.

Now school have raised it I would push for Ed Psych ideally with an initial consultation before you move schools. Although, in all honestly once they know you are moving you won’t be a priority.

There are some really really good books on ADHD, ADD and executive functioning in general. Get hold of some and have a read so you are more prepared and informed when decisions have to be made.

I don’t think a complaint is the right response. The school we’re passing on a concern though it may be a mild concern at the present time.
Make an appointment in January to talk to your child’s main teacher and think of it as you are both on his side.

We had a teacher who once mentioned "traits" at parents evening like being obsessed with topics before moving on (to the point of secondary level at age 6 for certain subjects etc).
Next day we made an appointment with school SEN lead, head and teacher. Rang CAHMS and the doctor.

You need to manage this and push yourself.

Transpired this was a young teacher who was unused to gifted kids and the SEN lead (a previous class teacher) said absolutely not. But point is, push it yourself.