Heartbroken and totally let down by education system

[Amatueuragonyaunt]

I'm after advice (and a bit of a vent). Ever since the start of the COVID fiasco, my two children (then 5 and 8 years old) have been totally failed by the state sector. My daughter is bright, but was not being pushed and was losing self confidence because of a lack of feedback and attention, so we moved her to a selective independent school where she is now thriving. The finances were (and are) a stretch, so we left our DS in the state system with the plan to see how things went and then move him at the same age as we moved our daughter (10). However, his needs are at the other end of the spectrum. It became apparent to us during pandemic home learning that there was some issue going on, but it took a further year before the school took it seriously enough to commission an assessment and another year after that before we got the report. It turns out he has severe dyslexia. This came as a both a surprise and not because we had suspected something, but generally his school reports were good with just a few weaker areas. Anyway, fast forward a few months when a load of interventions have supposedly been put in place - we don't feel confident that he's making much progress and we're aware of other children in the class with severe behavioural issues which were taking up the TAs time in entirety (so no support for anyone else). As such, we brought forward our quest to go independent and arranged taster days at a local non-selective school with good SENCO provision. Our boy loved it. However - here's the rub - the school won't offer him a place because he is more than two years behind the other children in that class. Needless to say, he's feeling pretty despondent about it, but what I'm fuming about is how his current school let it get that bad and not even tell us. Everything that has been put in place for him has only come about because we forced the issue and, when we were doing it, we were made to feel like we were overreacting and we're even told that actually our son was a bit lazy. This was before the report came out. This is an 8 year old who has been turned down for entry at a non-selective school that we are prepared to pay for because he is too far behind his peers. How is it that we have to send him in taster days just to find out how bad things are? The fact it's all come to light in a way which has left our son utterly gutted is the final straw. We didn't see it coming so couldn't manage expectations. We now have a situation where one child is flying and getting tons of opportunities while the other is completely shafted and there seems to be nothing we can do about it except give the current school a rocket (and what difference will that make?). To say I am fuming is an understatement. Anyone had similar or have any words of comfort or advice?

PS - the current school is supposedly 'outstanding' according to Ofsted, but it's not worked at all for our kids.

Imagine the type of state school education ALL children could receive and be supported according to their needs if the parents who pay fees for independent schools were willing to pay that in taxes…

I pay a lot more in taxes than I do in school fees.

Thanks all. There are some really helpful pointers in here and it's great to hear from those who have gone through similar or even been that child. We have a plan - not doing private for now and not going to pursue EHCP. We're just going to educate ourselves to become experts in supporting dyslexia, plan around that and keep trying until something works. We've come up with a timetable to do extra sessions at home, interspersed with lots of fun things and stuff we know he's good at, and will take him out of school for an hour each week for 1:1 private tuition. It's going to be tough to balance the attention between siblings, but we'll do what we can yo get him caught up and then review the private school situation for year 7. One of the things about putting him in the year below is the if we had to revert to state (e.g. if VAT gets whacked onto fees) he would have to revert to his original year group, so he'd have to change schools having missed a year of the curriculum. That's just not a risk we want to take.

What do you mean on this?

Fee paying parents do pay taxes for state school they just don’t take the place.

Sounds good op. Below I mentioned a pre prep school that had upset parents on finding out at an point. I think they felt similarly let down and frustrated.

It was a shock but since gaining the diagnosis the support has really helped their dc and they’re now in private due to it

No, but as a parent of a ND son, I don’t take anything anyone says as the gospel, especially when they’re telling me I have to wait 6 years for something. Usually answer crops up on google pretty quickly!

1. Senior school fees for us, per kid, would be around 20k per year (we'd not be paying double fees due to the age gap). DH and I pay over four times more than 20k per year in taxes.
2. If we freely volunteered yet another 20k, per year, to the government, how are you so sure the government would actually use the cash effectively, or as intended?

Simply what I said. The current education system is underfunded. It can only be funded from taxes. People balk at paying higher taxes but don’t think twice at paying between £10-50,000 a year for their children to receive a ‘better education’. Your point about paying taxes but not taking a place is rather short sighted; how do you think the teachers in the independent schools got their education to become teachers? Invariably from the state sector.

It’s not about “freely volunteering” money. It’s about ensuring that every child - irrespective of parental wealth - has access to the same quality of education. This ensures parity in a capitalistic society. But people don’t want to do that - they don’t want their Charles or Georgina to be playing with Bobby Snotnose. Look at the current system we have and look how that spawns the leadership of this country and look what has happened to education in the last 13 years. We should be prepared to fund schools to give the highest quality of education to all children.

I'm going to get slated, but here goes ......
If you can I would strongly recommend you try and send your son to an independent/private school. 10% of the Gov budget goes to the education system, (significantly less than Health 23% and Welfare 20%) but its broken and needs a major overhaul to prevent it going the way of the US.

Investing in your child's education is the best thing you can do. Independent education chews up a lot of money (35% of my take home) but worth it in the long run to at least give your DC a fighting chance. They may drop him a few years to his appropriate level but in the long run if your DS stabilises its far better then him falling further and further behind his peers.

To be fair if you go with the independent school and your son drops a year he will probably find a number of other students in his year group that are older than him, especially overseas students. The fact that he's a summer child also means he will only be a few months older than many of his peers born at the front end of the school year. The school is also likely to offer him far more choices than he would find in the state system and so may find subjects in which he thrives.

My daughter is a year 2 primary school teacher and has 8 children with SEN in her class and only a part time TA. There isn't the money available to supply enough TA's for schools anymore. The recent teacher pay rise the gov announced, is to come out of schools existing budgets. When they do this year after year what do think the effect has been?.

You could have gone to your local authority to ask that they carry out an assessment

It isn’t as simple as that I’m afraid…* *usually school has to refer and waiting lists are long…. To go private costa thousands

It is.

You are meant to ask your education setting but if you don’t feel you can for some reason. - you can go straight to Lea

You honestly think people paying extra taxes would actually benefit the education sector ?? 😂😂

The waiting list is really long!…

I’ve had friends give up Waiting and pay privately…. Not everyone can financially do that.

For an EHCNA which is what that post was talking about it is as simple as that. Parents can request an EHCNA themselves, they don’t need school to do it or agree. On their websites IPSEA and SOSSEN both have model letters parents can use. The process is governed by statutory timescales that can be enforced if necessary.

Again… a 30 second google

What does google say the waiting time for assessment is? I’ve known people wait years!

I think are talking about the wrong thing. @Bamboozleme was talking about EHCNAs which do not have a waiting list of years. The process takes 20 weeks if you don’t have to appeal, although I appreciate many do to have to.

Awful sadly, no escaping that 😞

Given that a large proportion of private school parents earn a higher than average salary, they are often paying tax and NIC at 47%. They are paying school fees out of taxed income. Those earners aren’t benefiting from child benefit or even a personal allowance. Every single penny of their income is taxed, unlike lower earners. There are also a lot of parents scraping fees together on lower salaries. Again though, they are paying those fees out of taxed income. On top of that, they are not costing the state a single penny for their children’s education.

The proposed VAT on school fees will raise little over 1% of the state education budget, and that’s being optimistic. It’s hardly going to make any meaningful difference to the state sector. The problems with the state system as outlined by the OP would still exist.

I have experience of both sides. The education system is over stretched and under funded. There are more and more SEN children and less and less TAs to support them. In the last few years, my school has lost nearly £500 per pupil in funding. The first cuts are always not replacing TAs. Lockdown also made it hard. All children were behind by years coming out of lockdown so that wouldn't have helped either.

Dyslexia is also a tricky one to flag in primary. Are they behind because of lack of effort or a genuine issue?

My DS3 is now an adult. The school child was quiet and didn't express himself much. The home child was the opposite. Loud and expressed opinions, feelings etc easily. (Incredibly common to have 2 very different sides to a child). I flagged him in Y3 but his reluctance to talk made it difficult for the school to see my side. In Y6 we were still fighting. By October ½ term in Y7 he was diagnosed dyslexic and he had a whole new attitude. "I have a problem. Now I can sort it". He achieved 6 GCSEs grade 4 or above.

As for an EHCP, you can apply yourself if the school won't do it. My DS3 was about 18m-2y behind when we got an EHCP for him. Not saying the LA made it easy, because they don't but we got it.

Let me correct you on a couple of points:

1. budget for state schools is 58 BILLION. So 1% is 570 million and you don’t think that would make any significant difference.
2. every single person in the UK has a tax free earnings allowance. I suggest you read up on how taxation works. They only pay tax and NI at that rate over the allowances at the lower rates.
3. I refer you back to my previous comment - who do you think educates the majority of teachers in the private sector? There are no private ITT providers in the UK so all the quality assurance and training and awarding of QTS comes from government funding to which independent schools pay not one penny towards. Want teachers in private schools? Then pay for the whole shabang - stop creaming off what every tax payer in the UK has contributed to.

1. No, I don’t think 1% will make a big difference, especially in light of the fact that education leaders are saying that a 3-4% increase is inadequate this year (and I have no reason not to believe them).

2. I’m fully aware of how taxation works thank you. From the government website

“Your Personal Allowance goes down by £1 for every £2 that your adjusted net income is above £100,000. This means your allowance is zero if your income is £125,140 or above.”

Yes that only applies to higher earners, but not every single person gets a personal allowance. Perhaps you might want to read and understand the tax system in this country before you make sweeping statements that are factually incorrect.

3). You only have to read Mumsnet threads to see people accusing private school teachers of often being “unqualified”. Some move from industry and the private sector and haven’t necessarily been through the same process. Even if they have used state funding for their education (as the vast majority of the population do), they are paying back into the state through their earnings. By that logic though, what about doctors and nurses working in the private health sector? They’ve often gained qualifications in the NHS system. Are you suggesting that the private health system funds their training in the same way?