School are revoking my autistic son's five minute early pass and he's full of anxiety. Please help.

[Sweetchildofmine123]

Hi,

I'm looking for some advice please.

My son is 13, and autistic.
He's a very young 13, not anywhere near the same maturity as most of his peers.

My son's school are taking away all five minute early passes to all children who have them, and replacing with five minute LATE passes.
This has had a huge impact on my son, he's not coping at all.

He used to be able to leave lessons and school five minutes early to avoid crowded corridors, and the crowds at the beginning and end of each day, and it's the only thing school have ever offered that's actually helped him.

They've replaced this with a five minute late pass.
Which means he has to wait behind in lessons, potentially leading him to be late to the next lesson.
Furthermore, and more crucially, they've taken away the leave early pass, so now he leaves school in the crush along with 1,900 other children.

It isn't working for him, he's in a high state of anxiety and is not sleeping well.

I've begged school to keep the early pass for him, as all children are different, and what works for one child may not work for another, autistic or not.
They point black refuse this.
So he's lost the one and only aid that really helped him.

I've contacted CAMHS, WMIM, and SENDIASS, asking for urgent intervention, but nothing is fast as they've all overloaded with work.

So I've requested a slight adjustment to his timetable with the school's SENDCo, and I don't think it's unreasonable.

I've asked if he can get in to school early (which he already does) and to be able to leave at the end of the school day five minutes early to avoid the crowds, which he cannot cope with.

After speaking with my son, I've agreed to the five minute late during transition between lessons, but I've asked school for this one little adjustment at the end of the school to help my son.

He masks at school, so they don't see his meltdowns, he saves them for when he's home.
They have no idea how badly he suffers, though I've tried to tell them.

Am I being unreasonable in asking for this small adjustment to help my son's mental health?
I'm not asking for a reduced timetable, just for him to be able to leave before the crowds start.

So far, school have failed to reply.
Also, when I spoke to the SENDCo yesterday, who has never even met my son, she suggested some ridiculous ideas, and she was having none of him keeping his early pass.
She even mentioned him leaving mainstream school, when there's no need for this - he is a perfect student who gets good grades and never causes any trouble.
That's really upset me - Can they push him out even though he's a model student?

And by law, can I ask for this tiny amendment to his timetable to help him with his anxiety please?

Sorry to waffle on, I didn't want to drip feed.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me, as waiting for replies is a nightmare, and I need this sorting before the new school year starts in September.

Thanks so much.

That’s unnecessarily nasty. I understand this is MN but this just crosses a line.

I get why he feels he shouldn’t havd to leave late, but then again why should other kuds have to have disrupted last 5 mins of lesson? There has to be a compromise position and the late pass seems a sensible one.

What part did you find nasty?

I’m sorry you’re going through this, I don’t have words of advice but I admire you speaking up for your son. The school’s got it wrong.

Did you know your initial comment before you edited it can be seen by everyone? And in this case, your comment was totally unreasonable!

In Scotland, children are taught that children can be born in the wrong body and rapists should be put in women’s prisons if they say they’re a woman. So I wouldn’t have any faith in the education policies that are in place!

It’s the Equality Act 2010

OP, what provision does his EHCP quantify? The SENCo may have their hands tied by SLT who have decided to blanket ban leaving class early, the SENCo is not your enemy here most likely.

Seems very isolating to be fair.

Mum posts looking for support. A shit tonne of mums come on to tell her that the free thing that has helped her bright, well-behaved son access education is unacceptable, disruptive and offer nothing but scorn.

Good luck to Bridget Phillipson getting more autistic kids to stay in mainstream when this is the accommodation that schools and other parents are willing to give - by the way, scorn and brick bats entirely based on supposition about levels of disruption.

And this ridiculous cookie cutter, 'fit in or get out' is why EHCP applications are so high. There's no reasonable left in education. There's no scope. There's no work around. And in that circumstance, parents apply for an expensive, difficult legal document to protect their kids' minimal rights.

The reason it feels like a punishment is because it is. It is removing support that has previously worked.

There's a huge difference between arriving early and arriving late.

If you leave early before the hustle and bustle you're calm, you enter the next classroom while it's calm, you transition calmly, you're in control of the environment and it gives you chance to mentally prepare.

If you leave late and arrive late you're subject to the commotion of everyone else leaving, then you're in a rush to the next place, and you're not given any transition time and you're expected to fully engage with the next lesson immediately while 30 pairs of eyes are all on you.

It sounds like the OPs child not only struggles with crowds but struggles with transitions and change, it's self evident by this post.

OP I would fight them on this, reasonable adjustments should be person centred.

Your poor son. My son is also ASD and has the passes you mentioned. It can make or break them. Please fight for him. He doesn’t need to change - THEY do, legally. Look up reasonable adjustments. It comes under the disability discrimination act and tbe School are acting illegally.

j would go to the school governors, ofsted, Mp, newspaper, anyone who will listen. How awful for this poor boy at an age then ASD gets harder for a while. He need MORE support, not less. I am so angry for you!

And on the other side, you disrupt 29 others when you start packing up 10 mins before the end. You disrupt them when you leave. You then arrive outside a classroom where 30 children have to walk past you to leave. Far better to wait, leave a couple of minutes later, walk on a quiet corridor and walk into the lesson as everyone is settling down. Lost learning time reduced. You aren't spending the lesson worrying about leaving 5 minutes early, you see it to the end. Then you don't miss any learning from the new lesson, because you walk in just after everyone else.

Imagine being a teenager and being self aware and brave enough to advocate for yourself but adults are jumping over themselves to tell you that your own understanding of what works for you is wrong.

It isn't working for the school as well reasonable adjustment though. Reasonable is reasonable for the individual, and the organisation putting the adjustment in place.

Imagine thinking reasonable adjustments were a free pass to get what you like when you like it because you say that's what you want.

Have you used the phrase reasonable adjustments and asked why the current status quo isn't reasonable

This child isn't trying to get what he wants. He's trying to get what he needs.

His need not to be in a crowd is met by him leaving school five minutes after everyone else.

He wants not to have to be at school five minutes later than everyone else.

For some, leaving 5 mins late does not meet their needs.

So if he can't cope with crowds, presumably he has dinner/break in the dining room before everyone else, never queues with the rest, never stays to socialise and then maybe goes to a quiet place for the rest of lunch/break like a library or similar?
Presumably there is some supervision for him?
But what happens for his first lesson after dinner or break? He can't go into the new classroom early without supervision- safeguarding. (Unless of course you expect his teachers to cut their statutory break short, which is unacceptable.)
Does he have paid TA time to supervise him in the overlap?How does he avoid the crowds in the corridors at the end of dinner or break as presumably he would have to wait for his next teacher outside the classroom and corridors at this point would be heaving.
Just can't picture how he copes with this situation but not other changes of lessons without a pass.
If he is coping with the above perhaps he is more adaptable than you think and the proposed change of arrangements is therefore a reasonable adjustment. I also suspect that there might be some informal supervision arrangements going on through staff kindness, so maybe you should cut his school some slack over this pass alteration or you might find the goodwill gestures are withdrawn.

So if you leave school 5 minutes early, you miss the foot traffic, the car traffic, if you travel by bus it means you can get a quieter bus that isn't crowded by boisterous and unpredictable school child behaviour and full of noise, projectiles. It means you're ahead of time for all of those things. It means your route home will be predictable.

You know, the things that fall under the strict adherence to plans, routines and schedules part of autism.

If you leave 5 minutes later, you are stuck in the traffic. It takes longer than 5 minutes to clear a full school, the roads are congested, you're surrounded by people with behaviour you cannot predict. Buses become hives of wild and erratic excitable behaviour, and fill up quickly.

Now let's use our brains. What happens to an autistic person when they are facing sensory overload, especially on a repeated basis?

Well it could be any number of trauma related responses. It could be: school avoidance (in this instance), it could be extreme psychological distress to the point the person's behaviour becomes out of their control, it could be self injurious behaviours, it could be complete shut downs, it could be poor mental health and suicidal ideation (a lot of why am I like this, why can't I change, why no matter how hard I try can I just not be like other people, it isn't worth it any more it will never get better), it can be verbal shutdowns, it can be lack of engagement, it can be extreme fatigue, catatonic behaviours etc.

If leaving 5 minutes early prevents all of the distress above, it is the most appropriate adjustment that can be offered.

Yes, if I was this boy I'd also want to leave 5 minutes early, because it isn't just a want it is a need.

I don’t know about you but we used to be able to be in classrooms alone at school. Your post is horribly judgmental.

If he has this level of support (and one of my children did) then the school should apply for HN funding or an EHCP if they feel they can't provide it any longer. Not remove a child's RAs/other support.

It's a pathetic 'gotcha' attempt isn't it. If your child can cope with x they can cope with y. Which demonstrates a severe lack of understanding around asd.

But the problem is that a school with 1600 children simply can't provide the exceptionally personalised help that people are suggesting. They simply can't.

This boy is only one of maybe 300 children who also need these interventions and accomodations (with one child's accommodation clashing with another's) and in the meantime there are 1300 other pupils and very many lessons potentially affected.

The school has to provide reasonable accomodations, and the reasonable bit is there to recognise that perfection is often impossible if the school is to run efficiently and safely.

I get it. I really do. I spent 30 years teaching in special provisions for autistic pupils, so I absolutely understand the need to provide personalised support as much as humanly possible. But in my visits to mainstream schools, I recognised just what an impossible job it was for them, and how fortunate I was, and and my pupils were, to have that time, space, and focus to be able to do what we did. Managing accomodations in a school of 150 where the entire focus is on autism, is vastly different from making them in a school ten times the size with a huge range of abilities, needs and expectations. I have huge sympathy for all parties in situations like this one.