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.

This was my question you. Given op has an older child, how did she not know roughly where he should be? Why is it entirely up to school? 2years is a massive amount of time to be behind so how did you not notice for 2 years?

Unfortunately the private school system is horribly elitist and unfair. They don't want your son to ruin their impeccable records of pupil achievement - and private schools can do whatever they like. You have one child who has benefitted from the EXACT same unfair system that is discriminating against your other child.

The private school have the same attitude to your son as you do to the children with equally valid and difficult additional needs in your son's current class who "take up all the TA time".

The education system is in complete crisis. I'm sorry that your son has been failed by the system, he is one of thousands of children in the same boat - or worse because many parents can't just throw money at the problem.

If you've got money to spend on private school, use it to get your son a private dyslexia tutor.

Very few mainstream state schools are able to pay for a dyslexia diagnosis. In our area they cost £800. Instead, where we suspect dyslexia, we support and adapt as if they did have a diagnosis.

If you suspected dyslexia why didn't you have a private diagnosis? If you didn't, why be so cross that school didn't either? We are not experts but generalists. If your son did not present with the classic traits but instead, say, has a poor working memory and sequential skills, this could be missed. Many people get to university or adulthood before securing a diagnosis.

He will not be the only child in the class with additional needs. You mention the behavioural issues but there will be other children with dyslexia too, safeguarding issues, medical issues, SEN. This is the nature of mainstream schools, as in life.

They have now put adjustments in place but you are unlikely to see the progress you seem to expect after just 'a few months.' There are no magic bullets but small steps of progress.

How good is the SENCO and SEN support at the private school really if your son is being turned away? If a child with dyslexia is turned away for being two years behind, I can't even imagine why they need a SENCO. They are results driven. Two years behind the private school cohort does not necessarily mean he's two years behind at his current school. Not every private school will be like this. Find one that will want him and support him.

The only thing that surprises me is that you didn't know that he was struggling at school. If he is not working at the expected level for his age and you genuinely didn't know then that's poor.

When Dd was 7yo she was a year behind at state primary. We paid for a private diagnostic and sure enough she had dyslexia (but mild). We moved her to a state primary with smaller class sizes (we are very rural so fairly easy). Some private tutoring. went to a terrible state secondary so needed some tutoring just before GCSEs.

Anyway she’s just got a 1st class degree in Architecture …..so don’t think the future has to be bleak. It doesn’t.

I'm sorry but I too can't grasp how you didn't know he was 2 years behind. So take responsibility for that. Now you will have to do 2 years of double effort. Hire a tutor. And fight to get school to do more. But mainly this will come down to you. Look up the dyslexia way of teaching, and fo it yourself : spend 1 hour every afternoon helping him. For 2 years. Maybe for the rest of his school life. No one is going to do it for you. It's on your head only.

Thanks to everyone for your responses. In answer to some of the questions:

1. Money - we don't have endless resources. Going independent only became a choice in the last year or so because of a change in job. Affording it is/will be hand to mouth, but we feel that if we can make it happen we need to.
2. Why didn't we know he was behind? We did. It became very apparent to us in lockdown he had struggled more than we would have expected. However, we were told by the school that it was a lockdown/personality/not to be worried about things. We were therefore led to believe a few minor interventions would put him back on track and that he was a couple of months, rather than years, behind. I could have researched the national curriculum and tried to understand age-related expectations, etc but, call me lazy, stupid, or both, the teachers already know all this so I would have expected them to be frank in the face of the questions we were asking. When the initial interventions didn't work and we felt like we weren't getting reliable feedback we got a private specialist dyslexic tutor. Only after this, when she confirmed our concerns (albeit not a formal diagnosis) did we persuade the school to refer for a proper assessment. That was when we were made to feel like we were just being pushy parents with a lazy child. After this conversation, I did feel like I was perhaps fussing about nothing and, in spite of my gut feeling, half expected the report to come back saying nothing was wrong. I was naive, perhaps, but certainly not paying no attention.
3. We have tried working with him at home, but he fights us, tries avoidance tactics, lots and lots of deflection, tears, tantrums. He finds schoolwork hard and wants home to be a refuge. It's not through a lack of willingness to do work with him ourselves, but we don't feel equipped to provide the specialist input he needs. It's a very fine balance to strike between encouraging him to focus and work hard, without it damaging his self-esteem or the more emotionally supportive side of home life. I don't want to force him - (a) you actually can't make a child do academic work when they refuse and (b) I want home to be a safe space for him. In school he is quiet, polite and tries really hard. I totally take the point that schools are broken for a whole range of reasons and it may not be their fault, but I do find the constant criticism of parents difficult too - the assumption that we haven't fought for him or tried to help is just not correct. Schools are there to teach the academic side of things. I am here to wipe tears, provide decent meals, boost them up, arrange a social life... Yes, supporting academic studies is part of that, but I am not a teacher and not equipped to compensate for his SEN and being two years behind without significant support myself.
4. ECHP - we don't have one. We've been told by the dyslexia tutor (who also does work for the council) the LA won't consider putting this in place until a child is at least six years behind his expected level. We are not prepared to just wait until things are worse.
5. Tutoring - yes we are looking into this, particularly given the challenges of trying to work with our son ourselves.
6. The independent school - they were complimentary about how articulate, polite and hardworking he is. They did offer him a place in the year below. We would have taken this option, but when we presented it to our son, quiet tears started and he buried his head on my shoulder and wouldn't speak. He has former and existing classmates either at or joining the school in September and is worried about what they would think. The SENCO spent over an hour on the phone to us after the taster day so it didn't feel dismissive, despite being gutting. We were really impressed with her and the school have quite a lot of SEN children already. The provision does seem excellent, which is why we wanted him to go there, but although they see potential, he's too far behind for them to catch him up in time for year 6 with the resources they have.
7. TA support - our child is one of the children they are supposed to be supporting. However, there are two other children - one who can't talk and needs constant 1:1 and another who until very recently was aggressive and violent in class and towards the teacher- who commandeer all of the time.

Sorry this is so long.

I’m cynical about the private school. I was a private tutor for years and the bulk of requests came from parents being threatened their child would be kicked out at year 2, yr 5 or ur 9 because of being behind. They were told to get tutors or leave. These schools are great if you will do well anyway, but not if you need support, individual learning style etc.
Obviously not every private school is like this, but a hell of a lot are. The fact they’ve refused an 8 yr old a space after a taster day is pretty horrible. A test or teacher report is less soul crushing. Plus it seems a bit artificial. At 8 the learning gaps in a class are vast. At that age my high flying dc were certainly writing like 5/6 yr olds.
I think it sounds like both schools aren’t great.

Private assessments are worth the money and can be done in weeks , not years. I’d not waste your time with his current school- they just don’t have the resources. Look for a specialist school or school with specialist unit.

Having read your last post- take the younger space and remind him it’s possible to move up. The bigger picture is more important than a wobble now. Tell him he can make friends etc. Support him with how to deal with it and give him words to say. I know a number of super confident popular teens with significant dyslexia working away from their peers

I remember the tantrums when I tried to help Dd myself at the dining room table. She was very resistant! However she was fine with tutors so we paid.

Now the shock is over try talking to your so again about going in year below. Ask school if he can do a day with year below might show him its not so bad.

Life after levels is also to blame for this. Being told your child is Working Towards doesn't really help, nor is there really a way to measure if they are two years behind. Often dyslexic children are at the expected level in many areas of, say, writing because they have the maturity of their chronological age, but their spelling is below expected. A dyslexic Y4's spelling can't really be compared to a Y2's spelling - they are very different. I'd also point out you are putting the private school's assessment ahead of the state school's - how do you know which is accurate? Have you looked at the National Curriculum 2014 yourself? Best of luck to you and your son.

You said your only option was to give the current school a rocket, and yet it's not, your other option is to accept the place at the private school.

It is interesting that the private school would not be able to even cope with your son who is two years behind, but you are expecting the mainstream school to not only cope, but give him specialist input that would enable him to make much faster progress in a class with several other extremely challenging pupils, while being starved of funding. That doesn't sound like a realistic prospect.

I managed to get through my entire education to degree level without anyone picking up that I'm very, very dyslexic. That was 20-30 yrs ago though, and you'd think things would have moved on, right?

However I used to help out a lot at my DD's primary and I was really saddened to see the impact of funding cuts on that particular area. There were kids I worked with who were obviously dyslexic but not as bad as others, so they missed out on getting assessment/support because others were suffering more. It still makes me angry.

For your son, please be aware that the biggest impact of dyslexia is the effect it has on your self belief and self confidence. Thats the aspect that makes it affect people so much more than it needs to. I can read, write, spell, was always top of the class in the things I don't have difficulty with but when I come up against the areas I can't do I'm quite stuck. But it was the "why don't you try harder" and "you're just not as good as you should be at that", the impatience from teachers that left a lasting impression that's taken decades to get over That's what I always concentrated on with the young kids, helping them understand they aren't the only one and giving them a boost to their confidence. If you can get your son a specialist tutor that will help him no end - just having someone in that kind of role to help give him a boost, and maybe help him catch up to the point where he can go to the independent and be better supported.

ECHP - we don't have one. We've been told by the dyslexia tutor (who also does work for the council) the LA won't consider putting this in place until a child is at least six years behind his expected level.

This is rubbish and has no legal basis. The LA are bound by the SEND Code of Practice.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/398815/SEND_Code_of_Practice_January_2015.pdf

I’m afraid as a parent you have to fight to get an EHCP yourself. The school / LA will tell you all sort of things that aren’t true. To get a statutory assessment for SEN, the bar is actually set quite low. You just have to show the child has or may have SEN and whether they may need provision to be made through an EHCP. I think something like 98% of appeals which have been turned down by the LA for statutory assessment (SA) are successful. You can request a SA yourself. It sounds like you have plenty of evidence to back up that your child has SEN.

If you have the money, find a good private Educational Psychologist, paediatric Occupational Therapist and Speech and Language therapist and have them assess your child for specific difficulties your DS is facing. Look at SEN forums for recommendations. Their reports should evidence your son’s difficulties and should highlight how your son is not reaching the expected milestones for his age as well as making recommendations for the interventions he needs. You can use these to evidence need for the provisions set out in an EHCP. You will have to do all this yourself and may have to go to tribunal.

Please look at the ipsea website for help with applying for an EHCP.

https://www.ipsea.org.uk/asking-for-an-ehc-needs-assessment

https://www.ipsea.org.uk/ehc-needs-assessments

My DD has severe dyslexia and I would love it if she could repeat a year. To have the pressure lifted and the chance to go back over concepts etc that she didn't grasp the first time.

Please please please contact your MP. I honestly despair at how bad things are within the education sector but your anger is misplaced. I'm frankly amazed the school ever did the dyslexia assessment. Many schools would not be able to afford to and would have told you to get it privately. This year alone we have lost half our support staff to redundancy because of budget cuts. We have lost over 85% of our SEN funding meaning even children with EHCPs have no funding for adult support or extra resources. Teachers are on their knees trying to keep the system afloat.
Parents need to be aware of what is happening beyond the bloody government spin doctors diatribe.
Basic resources like pens and glues are being bought from teachers own money or not at all.
Trips and extra curricular are being cut left right and centre.
Science, Art, DT resources are scarce. Where children used to do the experiments themselves, they now do it in table groups of 6/8 if they are lucky. Many experiments are just watched on a video or demonstrated by the teacher if we don't have the resources.
Due to redundancy, work load has increased again. Yet OFSTED still loom expecting schools to run as they did before our budgets were decimated.
Gillian Keegan likes to spout that school funding is the highest since 2015. Its an outright lie. Numbers of children in state education have increased dramatically since 2015 so actually, funding per child which is what matters, has dropped significantly.
I'm so frightened for state education and for the children as to where all this is going. Teachers are leaving because they are exhausted, burnt out, and frankly despondent at trying to prop everything up and give the children what they deserve amidst all this.
Interventions that used to run to support children like your son, are another casualty of budget cuts. With no support staff to run them, or no cover to free up Teachers to run them, they can't happen. SEN children are increasingly left in mainstream schools as its cheaper than funding SEN provision and there aren't enough places in SEN provision anyway (certainly in my area of the UK). This means very high needs children are being left in mainstream, often with little to no funding. We have to put adults with them to keep them and everyone else safe, but then it takes another adult away from the rest of the children who are well behaved but struggling.
With class sizes increasing all the time (33/34 in a class is not uncommon in many primary schools now, certainly the 3 I've worked in), the teacher has less and less time to spend with each child, supporting them. With less staff to support behaviour, illness, emotional upset, injuries, that all falls to the teacher. Again, taking away from learning time.

You are not wrong to be angry and disappointed but it is misplaced. Please be angry at the government. Write to them. We want and need your help.

@Amatueuragonyaunt

I completely agree and had very similar with one of my dc.

I thought a system would click into place and assess her and help her. I then found out that the pgce has no sen training.
So how could any teacher understand that a child isn't learning with phonics say because their brain just won't allow them too?

How would any teacher know to use a different technique with that child?
Let's say.... A ta does know how to help the child, they actually are not allowed to do anything different because again the teacher doesn't understand sen?

(true ^^). I actually know of a highly trained ta with sen specialalism who had to sneak techniques in.

So who then can help the child, give them a basic assessment and offer someone tips? The Senco?
Well they don't need to know about sen either they just coordinate. But how can they when they don't know what specialists a child needs because they don't know anything about sen??

It's easy to see the barriers isn't it.

When no one in a school knows why a child might be falling behind and how to stop it or flag it up.

Op, my dd was utterly failed and it was harming her self confidence.
A miracle happened to me and this amazing lady saved my dd giving us tips strategy etc and really helped us.

Then over lock down we ditched phonics and got her reading the old fashioned way. I educated her over lock down and got her two tutors who educate her.
It made me laugh how we do so much at home and then school says "we put her up a book level and have seen an amazing improvement in her vocabulary".

When we are literally doing every stragety we can at home to teach her.

But we shouldn't have too and what's really frightening is that my dd needs are slight. She's only needed very slightly adjustments.

It's beyond shocking and teachers must have to do sen in their training and Senco shoud by law have to actually know sen and have tips!

Throwing money at a school won't increase the teachers knowledge.

Oh and our school is part of an academy with deep pockets.

I've found the state system is ok, but we've had to supplement my DC's learning (same age) with a lot of home learning. Largely because the feedback from school is so sparse so we feel we need to run through the curriculum for maths and english to check where they are and if there is anything they don't understand. Even with a tutor I think you'll have to start doing that. A once a week run through a page or two of English/maths.

The system is well and truly broken. My own son made it all the way through his "outstanding" (with a very small "o", mind) before any of his learning difficulties came to light, all because his school deemed him "not bad enough" for assessment--at least until SATS rolled around. All of the sudden, to self flags popped up about slow processing speed, reading and focus difficulties, etc. Concerns that I myself had voiced many times over but were always minimised and dismissed.

We considered moving him to a private school for secondary, but options are limited to literally ONE place locally, and he could not pass the entrance exam. So, yes, I do get irrationally irritated when the debate between private and state comes up, especially when it comes to serving children with special needs. Even with the right financial resources, private schools only want to pick of the cream of the crop, those that will bring them the best results, the Oxbridge entries, and the bragging rights, without much fuss. It sucks, but that is the nature of private schools.

I also advocate getting a really good private tutor. The primary school kept saying that our DS was ´lazy’ and ´immature’. We had a private educational psychologist assessment that identified that he was dyslexic. We found an excellent tutor and here we are decades later: he has a first class degree from Oxford and a senior level role in a major industry.

One more thing op, I volunteer higher up the education chain and I'm sorry to say that dc who have got an ehcp or a dyslexic assement are still being failed by ignorant teachers because they just don't understand dyslexia.

So they think it's just about coloured paper, they don't understand any other aspect of it so be prepared to try and educate anyone who will be teaching your child about what it actually means eg perhaps slower processing and working memory issues.

Absolutely gutting, and in a way this is the “best” case scenario because you are an attentive and pushy parent (you have to be pushy in a failing system). Think about the kids with these kind of profiles who just fly completely under the radar for even longer.

I wouldn’t despair, OP. Not sure what your finances are like but there are some specialist independent schools for kids (predominantly boys actually) with dyslexia. Some of them are boarding if there’s not one near you. You could look at weekly boarding from year 7 at a school where he will really get his confidence back and they will meet his needs. Or you may be lucky and there could be one quite near you?

@MrsMariaReynolds

Same. I wish I could afford private and get my dd out of this ridiculous orwlellian nightmare.

I mean I know someone with sen specialism who had a huge range of techniques to help dc and she wasn't allowed to use them. She was viewed as some strange witchcraft lady using odd practises and she had to sneak her expertise in.

Isn't that absolutely shocking.