Secondary school teacher advice needed

[Arizona29]

AIBU to be confused by this, not sure.
DS year 9.
Choosing options for GCSEs in 2 weeks.
Went to the open evening last week. Met with his core subject teachers. Chatted to other teachers. They all said he's doing well but needs to work on staying focussed in class.
Told to spend the weekend thinking about which options to choose.
Told we'd receive the form today to choose options and submit in 2 weeks.
I've received DS's form today, to see he's been given the options form for the SEN students who are having their language GCSE removed from them, and replaced with extra Maths and English support.
Confused by this, I emailed the teacher who sent the form, and he had replied today and advised me that the SenCo recommended DS be removed from languages and put on the SEN pathway of options for additional support in English based on his low reading ability and his additional support needs in English. In his email to me he referred to DS by his name, so he has got the correct student.
I have never, in 2 and a half years of him being at this school, had a conversation with the SenCo about DS. School have never conveyed to me any concerns about his reading ability. He has never attended any extra intervention support lessons for his reading/literacy. I have never been made aware of any suspected SEN. He has never been screened or assessed at school for reading ability. Primary school never flagged any problems. He was reading chapter books in year 4 and was a bookworm at that age. He is currently 3/4 way through Orange Boy and is loving it, he's flying through it and is telling me all about the plot.
I am so confused.
AIBU, or do secondary schools ordinarily make assessments and decisions such as this without any communication with the parents?

Odd. We have this option, well, not making kids choose languages but nobody will be made to take it. The Learning Support students follow the 3rd pathway as the OP describes. Our decisions are based on CAT scores, along with any diagnoses that are in place. Only students who were originally withdrawn from MFL will follow this route.

I think you need a discussion with the SENCO asap. I’m not sure how such a mistake could be made.

I would email the SENCO, English Teacher and Form Tutor and politely say you were surprised by the information as no one has mentioned it before and please can they confirm it is correct and the English Teacher to say current expected grades for English GCSEs.

My DD slipped under the radar at school with her SEN. Sometimes I think teachers are too busy being polite that they are not explicit enough as to what is going on.

Unless he is desperate to do a language, extra English and Maths support is no bad thing if it might be needed. Resitting post y11 is an absolute pain.

I don’t think the person saying his full name is evidence that it isn’t a mistake - if he has a spreadsheet of all the people to send the forms out to and it has the two pathways indicated on it, he’ll read from that and have the English/Maths support pathway next to your sons name. The question is whether the wrong pathway has been allocated to your son on that spreadsheet. All you can do is call and ask to speak to the SENCo. You can also look back at previous reports and see what grades he’s been getting, this can be something you then raise with whoever you speak to. It’s possible that he’s been getting low grades and you haven’t realised the significance of that, but that seems like a bit of a failure of their reporting process and they need to know that as well!

What have his reports said since starting secondary school?

It’s possible it’s a mistake, but it sounds to me more like the school are desperately trying to get their maths and English results on point. It doesn’t mean your ds has sen, just that they are really pushing English and maths.

That said, I wouldn’t be thrilled about it and would (nicely) challenge it. Assessments at ks3 can be very haphazard so no real way of knowing if if he’s actually behind or not.

You should have already been aware. Is reading age or English grade never on reports from school? If it is this shouldn't be a shock.
Take the extra support. I agree sendco involvement if seems out of the blue can be a shock.

So what you've explained is exactly what pathway they've put him on.
Drop foreign language in year 10 & 11. Replace those language sessions with extra Maths & English sessions.
"most of those additional students fell into the “could do well but not really working hard enough on their own” sort of group."
I would accept this about DS. Teacher feedback at parents evening last week was a general collective of "DS is capable of doing well in gcses but he loses concentration and gets distracted in class if someone else is sitting nearby and is mucking about, so he needs to ignore what's going on around him and focus better. When he does focus, his work is good." They pretty much all said this. Maths teacher said he needs prompting to keep going if the questions are difficult and would like to see DS doing this more independently.
I took this all on board and discussed it with DS.
But I didn't realise this had set him on to the SEN pathway.
So I'm still confused.
Have emailed school again for further clarification.
In your experience, was it all SEN students that dropped the language in the school you worked at?
I'm starting to wonder if school suspect he has SEN but haven't communicated this with me?

'They all said he's doing well but needs to work on staying focussed in class.'

I'd first ask more about this if ALL teachers are reporting attention is a problem - less so in early in education so primary may not picked it up. SENCO must have felt it's having impact.

At the school I worked at all Sen students dropped a language.

a lot of students who were not Sen also dropped a language to focus on their maths and English.

this wasn’t badged as the Sen pathway at my school - our Sen pathway had BTECs and skills for life and for some students work experience as well.

i forget what they called it but it wasn’t badged as SEN.

It's not necessarily a SEN thing, more a 'would be better off not doing a language' thing. But the only way you'll know for sure is to talk to the school. More schools will be withdrawing students from MFL/making it optional at GCSE now that EBACC isn't an accountability measure.

@Arizona29 i honestly would not focus too much on “SEN pathway” and think of it more as your son needing some support to ensure he gets passing grades in maths and English (as yes as @TeenToTwenties ssys, it’s a real pain if they don’t) and yay! He’s getting that support.

No one is saying he has any kind of specific additional needs, tho for sure there is nothing wrong with that, but it feels as tho that’s what you’re worried about.

By all means speak to the Senco and take a look at his reports from the last years. If every teacher said he needs to focus better then yes, small group work may well help.

Does he want to take MFL? It’s not needed and it’s not the most important thing. And I speak as an MFL specialist.

my child was constantly mixed up with another pupil with the same name , even exam results were mixed up , but contact school and hopefully this will get resolved

i am keen for my youngest dc to drop a language, and potentially another gcse if possible, so I don’t think it is a bad thing. A language gcse has a lot of exam components (i think four exams), so it can start to make the exam burden of the GCSEs overall a lot higher. Having more focus on English and Maths is a good thing. In a similar way that unless it is absolutely necessary for what you want to do at uni, then it is generally better to just do 3 A levels, and get much better grades, than do 4, and not do so well. In the same way that (unless it is necessary) sixth form destinations (even selective ones, near us) are only interested in the ‘top 8’ or ‘top 7’ gcse results.

And it might be that your dc is a bit borderline in terms of SEN issues - in my experience (of having 3 dc with SEN), schools are often not really geared up to spot those who may be flying under the radar as their performance is still in the ‘average band’. We spent years asking the primary school if they thought dc1 might be dyslexic (as my dh is), and they just said ‘no, he is just in the lower reaches of the average band of achievement’. We had him tested privately, and he turned out to be very intelligent, and also dyslexic. Once accommodations were put in place, dc1 began to achieve at a much higher level.

So in terms of possible SEN, definitely speak to school, and keep an eye out - we have found that adhd-type focus and executive function issues became a much bigger thing in year 11 onwards.