That school should do something to help my son.

[Listentothat]

My son is now in Year 7. Last year, when he was in primary school, his teacher had concerns as he was scoring very poorly in the school’s assessments. He was given a dyslexia screening test by the school SENCO, which suggested there might be issues, so we paid for a full dyslexia assessment, completed in March 2025.

The assessor didn’t diagnose dyslexia because DS’s reading, spelling and comprehension scores were mostly age-appropriate, and he hadn’t had any previous specific interventions for reading or spelling. However, she did say he has clear difficulties with phonological awareness and phonological memory, and recommended 25% extra time in exams, plus other support strategies. This is all detailed in her report.

His primary school took this on board and gave him some support, including 25% extra time in tests, and he passed his Year 6 SATs (meeting expectations). They also added him to the SEN register.

During his transition to secondary school, I spoke to a member of the SENCO team and highlighted that my son would need additional support. I was told the secondary school had received all of the relevant information about him from his primary school.

He has been enjoying secondary school and on the surface he seemed to be doing well. However in his end-of-term assessment results he was scoring in the low 30% range for Maths, English, Spanish and Science, but scoring very highly in other subjects (History, Geography, Computer Science).

I then had an online meeting with his form tutor in December. The tutor was very happy with DS’s behaviour and attendance, but he flagged that DS had scored very poorly in Maths and English and stressed that he needed to work on these subjects. I mentioned that my son had been marked as SEN in primary and had an assessment recommending extra time, and the form tutor seemed to have no idea about any of this.

I found this really odd, because as his form tutor I would have expected him to at least be aware that DS has additional needs.

I’m now wondering what I need to do to ensure my son gets the additional help he needs. Do I need to push for a meeting with the SENCO, or email his form tutor first or should I back off because the school with sort it out without my interferance.

What sort of help can they give?

What do i need to do?

I am feeling completely lost because I don’t know what to ask for or who exactly to approach.

Thanks for any help.

Sadly, even with a diagnosis, our experience is that schools have a tendency to default to it's a behaviour choice ("must work harder") rather than a difference in how the brain functions. Unless he's disruptive in class, he won't be a priority for the school. That's not a judgement of schools/ teachers, it's a judgement of a SEND system that still fails to help many achieve their potential because of its insistence on mainstream inclusivity for all.

To get the support your son needs, you will need the patience of a saint, the determination of Hillary and Tenzing and the planning and organisational skills of a small country's army. Start with a meeting with the senco, including as much evidence of need as you can lay your hands on and take it from there. Good luck.

Well in secondary there are a number of forms of help they can give.

in some schools students who are significantly under performing in maths or English drop a foreign language to have extra lessons in maths and English often in small groups

many secondaries have mixed ability groups for year 7 similar to a primary school class but some secondaries will have a nurture group which is much smaller and has students in who are usually either significant SEN or significantly behind so that teaching in most subjects can be adapted for them. In my secondary this nurture group joins the mainstream classes for things like PE and music but is separate for science, humanities etc.

your secondary might set for some subjects - so have classes that are split by ability. If so it can be helpful to look at whether he is in the right place.

in primary children’s reports are based on whether they are reaching age related expectations and these are the same for every child.

at secondary children get individual targets. So a child who gets top marks in all their sats will have high targets. A child who gets low marks in their sats will have low targets.

the secondary will then report whether your child is achieving their individual targets. So a child who did very well in the sats often gets a report home saying that they didn’t hit their targets, while a child who has lower sats scores will often hit their targets because their targets are much much lower.

from school’s point of view he does not have a diagnosis. Phonological issues generally cause problems with the teaching of phonics which in state schools is pretty much done by year 4 or so. It might cause issues with any foreign language he does as well.

you could ask for him to drop a foreign language to do extra maths and English if it is available. They may also have homework clubs where he can do his homework and get help doing it as it sounds like he is having difficulties with it.

how did he do in his sats? What else did his primary put in place?

@Bobiverse I would say head of year / house or senco would be much better placed with an enquiry like this than the form tutor. I am a form tutor and even if I was full time I’d only see my form for around an hour a week. I wouldn’t be able to help with this problem.

Ah ok, that’s just different from Scotland then (at least my kid’s school). Were told quite clearly not to email random people in the school but to alway contact their pupil support teacher as first port of call and they deal with whatever is it, including getting us in touch with the right people.

Same for us! Form Teacher is supposed to be the first point of call for any parent to contact, even if it is specific to something else;

• eg child with a broken non-dominant arm which would only affect PE lessons, it'd still be the form teacher you'd be expected to contact to let them know, and the general process is then they'd be the one who'd let the PE teacher and Head of Year etc know.
• eg If a child's grandparent had died recently, you'd let form teacher know, and they'd cascade to relevant members of teaching staff and potentially to pastoral staff for some ad-hoc emotional support if needed.

I've suggested emailing Form Tutor and SENCO and copying in Head of Year as those would be the relevant people to meet and agree the support with here, and other teachers would generally be expected to just put those things into action. The idea of a form tutor here is that they're the teacher who would provide the most support, see the child every day, could check in about 'did this happen' etc. Head of Year here doesn't really know many pupils, only those who're on report, have challenging behaviour, who've got significant additional needs, have been identified as in need of additional support for one reason or another. They're the next level up from a form teacher for us, and don't really do the small scale day to day, first meeting sorta stuff (outside of exceptional things).

I think ideally that’s what the form tutor role should be @potenial (although most of those things I would pass on to the HOY tbh) but for SEN related enquires that does need to be the SENCO: it’s over my head.

If you can afford it have him assessed for a leaning need eg dyslexia. There is a lot of information out there to help with this.
If you can get him a specialist dyslexia tutor for his areas of weakness. As school and life gets more complicated and as kids get older their old coping strategies (which they don’t even realise they use) don’t work as well anymore. This is likely what you are seeing.

I wouldn't assume that any of the teachers are aware of your sons needs, DS was diagnosed with ASD and dyspraxia at primary school and his Secondary school teachers seemed to be generally unaware at parents evening. In fact it took me years just to get him sat at the front of his classes because he couldn't filter out distractions. He managed to get adjustments made for his GCSE's and A-level exams though.

You can be sure though that nothing will be sorted out without your input. I also would have very low expectations as to what they will be able to put in place for him, adjustments beyond just those for official exams - unless behaviour is very bad - are hard to get IME.

She’s already done this and the conclusion was he isn’t dyslexic.

The OP says He was given a dyslexia screening test by the school SENCO, which suggested there might be issues, so we paid for a full dyslexia assessment, completed in March 2025.
The assessor didn’t diagnose dyslexia because DS’s reading, spelling and comprehension scores were mostly age-appropriate, and he hadn’t had any previous specific interventions for reading or spelling

The dyslexia assessor said that if she re-did the assessment in the future that she might provide him with a dyslexia diagnosis but she couldn't at the time. I might get another assessment some time next year.

Thanks for this - aside from the suggestions from the dyslexia assesor, I have no idea what else I can ask for. I am hoping when I speak to the SENCO, they will have advice / suggestions that we can follow.
He is such a polite and sensitive boy. We don't need to ask him to do this homework, he has the motivation to do it himself. I am just so upset for him that his hardwork isn't reflected in his results.

You need a meeting with SENCo to find out/agree he needs to be on the SEN register and what interventions they can put in place.

Schools are all over data points, so I would expect their to be interventions naturally with low scores like that, SEN needs or not.

Co Pilot may very well worth using too. If you put on your son’s situation, it will advise on a list on suitable interventions. I would repeat them verbatim back to school, but would give you an idea of things to ask for.

Please bear in mind schools have no money and 121 support is non existent except for significant need. Is still be expecting some small group intervention to be available for English and Maths at least.

Rather than a future dyslexia assessment I’d get a SPLD one as that will cover a broader base including dyspraxia which can impact on processing.

My DS has no diagnosis but has always been academically very average. He really struggled with English and school were no help whatsoever. Unfortunately in my experience the well behaved children with no diagnosis and with very average IQ are often bottom of the pile for any support at school. They often end up in low-ish sets which then further exacerbates the problem due to poor behaviour of their peers. I’ve seen this time and again.

In the end, we employed a tutor for English in years 10 and 11 and tutored him ourselves in Maths and Science. He worked so so hard in year 11 and came away with grades 4-6 across all subjects (which is essentially what his CAT scores predicted). He also got a 4 in English Language which was a massive relief. I can honestly say that he would not have got those grades without a tutor and our help as school were so useless.

I regret not pushing for more help in years 7-9 but I hadn’t realised quite how much he was struggling and the COVID lockdowns at that time didn’t help. I’d also never heard of processing disorders.

My advice would be to push school as much as possible but be prepared to help as much as you can at home.

Ultimately my DS passed his GCSEs, is now on a level 3 vocational course and far happier than he was at school.

OK.

I have a son with a diagnosis of dyspraxia. His secondary school was a nightmare.

Despite numerous and constant meetings, they did absolutely nothing to support him.

I agree that his difficulties were seen as behavioural (ie a choice and why didn't he just...) rather than understanding his brain difference and putting things in place. The school's attitude was that because he wasn't a 'problem' for them (eg his behaviour was good and he wasn't disruptive), he didn't need any support.

What helped us was a chance encounter my ex husband had with someome from SENDIASS (we'd never heard of them) who suggested we contact them. We did and it made a big difference. Not perfect and we still had battles throughout GCSE and A Levels but he at least got the extra time he needed.

My son went on to university and now works in computing but it was a stressful, long and difficult few years. SENDIASS really did help though.

Thanks

Would this be with an educational psychologist?

Its reassuring that your son managed to pass this GCSE, My son is very quiet in class, and is well behaved. He generally does OKish with his school work: home work is handed in on time etc, so he below the rader.

He passed his SATs. His scaled score was just above the expected stanards. They gave his an extra 25% for his SATs and he also had some guided reading classes with other children, and was given access to Nessy.

He actually sounds very like my son. Quiet and well behaved etc. My son always handed his homework in on time although it was rarely marked and very little feedback give . He didn’t do SATS due to Covid but was generally meeting expectations throughout primary school and achieved just above average in the CAT scores (about 105 where 100 is average). He ended up with GCSEs that were reasonable for his abilities (4s and 5s) but that was only with a lot of support outside of school. I just always felt that secondary school let him down a bit. He was below the radar and falling through the cracks.

I used Senior dyslexia consultant who also has SpLD specific qualifications. So they tested across the board for all SpLD.

The organisation is Literacy Solutions and could likely recommend someone in you area.

Do you mean sats of around 101-103 etc as that would probably translate to gcse English of 4-5

@GladFatball which diagnoses still allow extra time as my dc has adhd diagnosis and school say that doesnt. Also very likely asd. Do we have to trial rest breaks? And how would you make a school start to allow extra time (when you have evidence the child is not finishing on any tests..?

It's very easy in the Autumn term for secondaries to be overwhelmed with the sheer weight of SEND work needed for the year - and no, primaries don't always send over everything or say there's actually 3 files' worth of documentation that is also relevant; they also forget to upload the electronic transfer files very frequently.

...if you add in a masking ND child or one who is extremely intelligent and able so the behaviour in class doesn't indicate there could be a need, it can take until formal assessment (or even later, when hormones kick in) for anything to be picked up.

It's one of my hobbyhorses and I spend a lot of time combing through the raw data at KS1, KS2 and CAT4 in combination with the first data drop once that comes at the end of the Autumn term to see if there's anybody that's slipped through the cracks. But my employer pays me to do this stuff - if I leave, there's a good chance that they will spend the equivalent salary on a couple of TAs and nobody will be doing it.