Private schools for children with reading difficulties.

[mikeyx]

I have heard that many parents of children with reading difficulties are choosing private schools because they are unhappy with how their local primary schools are responding to their children's needs. I spoke to a group of three mothers who said that sending their children to the private school was the best investment they had ever made. These mothers were quite scathing about the 'special needs' box their children appeared to have been placed in. I have also been told that many of the smaller private schools are only surviving because they are accepting and succeeding with children with reading difficulties. I would appreciate any views.

I think it depends on the schools themselves. Some private schools have the facilitites to cater with children who struggle to read, or do maths, or socialise, or whatever, but many other schools dont. You would have to be sure you selected the school that can support your child's individual needs.

A lot of private schools possibly also charge extra for providing the support that would be free in mainstream. Worth it if they do a good job.

Private schools have smaller class numbers so your child gets more onetoone attention.

Some main stream schools provide excellent facilities, but as always it is ultimately down to the person teaching and how a child interacts with that teacher.

You cant categorically that private is better than mainstream or mainstream is better than private for teaching children who struggle.

I haven't heard of this- none of the independent schools where I live would take children with SEN specifically- but they do have waiting lists as long as your arm to get in, and all select academically, even for rising-4yo.

That said, I live in an area where people are fighting to get into the Special schools as many of them are outstanding provision, and I know people who have moved into the area specifically for the Special schools, due to their childrens' needs.

I have heard of parents who have gone for private assessment for SEN, but they are not using independent schools, using state schools. It is becoming almost impossible to gain a Statement in our authority now

I have in mind a particular, small private school. I was in conversation with three parents of children with reading deficits who had sent their children to this school for this specific reason and all three were particularly delighted with their child's progress since joining the school. I have also heard independently that this is a trend which is developing because of dissatisfaction with provision for such children in mainstream schools. I was advised that many of the smaller private schools with tight finances are more willing to accept such children and I would like to find out if this is indeed a national or a purely local trend.

It depends what the reason is why the child has reading deficits.

Our local state schools are notoriously bad for not giving the basic building blocks for reading, and this has been commented on in Ofsted reports. This means that whilst a child may be able to 'read' i.e. bark the words back, they do not have the means to decode words. Therefore as they get older it becomes more apparent that they can't read.

Whilst other children figure this out for themselves so not too much of an issue.

Because it is such a problem locally, all of our local independent schools use this as a selling point, that they will teach the children the basics and for older (years 3+) coming to them without these skills they will take them back.

However if a child is dyslexic the schools are useless.

It will vary hugely from one to another - some will proactively offer help others won't entertain an application if it shows on assessment, most will be somewhere in between. Really it depends on what the cause is - is it a spld like Dyslexia (whcih will be a SEN) requriing ongoing intervention or a need for one to one or small group support to get him going ? One child's experience is not indicative of how your child may fare. Be prepared to pay for learning support particularly as your child gets older and also be denied access to LA funded resources such as an Ed Psych. I'm not sure that activley avoiding a label is necessarily a positive long term strategy, sounds more like denial to me, and traditionally the state system is much more geared up to the variety of needs which may manifest themselves as a reading difficulty .

It depends. There are large numbers of SEN children with various difficulties in the Prep school where I work and, although they are catered for very well with tiny lower sets and individual tuition at least once a week, the individual tuition costs extra on top of the fees. So, if money isn't a problem, then yes I think it can help but you may end up paying more than parents of a child without difficulties. I'm sure some schools would provide the individual help for free though. A private school should in my opinion, you're paying for the best education they can give your child, that shouldn't have caveats because the child has a problem.

It really depends on the school. At the private school I attended (a few years ago!) it had a specialist unit that we called the dyslexic unit, although that probably wasn't the only thing it did. The head of that unit was frequently speaking at conferences on the subject as she was well thought of. This wasn't a small struggling school, it was a very large academically selective school that achieved very good exam results. My dds state primary school has a speech & language unit that takes children from quite a wide area and is always very popular.
I guess what I am saying is it will depend very much on the individual school, so if you have a child with SEN you need to find the best school that you can in your area for your child and it might be state or it might be private. Going private doesn't guarantee you a better education for your children if they need something that the school doesn't offer.

I withdrew my child from a state junior school at start of year 6 and have sent them to an independent school which caters solely for children with dyslexia, dyspraxia or dyscalculia that is on the CRESTed list of schools catering for children with dyslexia. All staff at this independent school are dyslexia trained and understand the needs of the children and classes range from 5 to 7 pupils in the lower school, often with a teacher and teaching assistant.

From my own experience I would say as a parent you need to understand what your child's needs and to try and find the school that best meets those needs. There are some good schools out there both state and private but there is no perfect match. Also what might at first seems to be just reading issue may be wider, so a school that has access to other specialist such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy is invaluable. In an ideal world I would prefer not to pay for it. The fees are high, but given the cost of engaging lawyers to fight the LEA to get a statement, we felt the funds would be better spent on school fees.

It's a bit old (2008) but this Guardian article covers the national trend.

Parents of special needs pupils forced to go private.

"Over the past decade the number of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in private schools has almost trebled, with an extra 52,594 taking places, according to a report by the Bow Group, the centre-right think tank. It says that children with special needs account for 83 per cent of the growth in the independent sector since 1997."

^Our local state schools are notoriously bad for not giving the basic building blocks for reading, and this has been commented on in Ofsted reports. This means that whilst a child may be able to 'read' i.e. bark the words back, they do not have the means to decode words. Therefore as they get older it becomes more apparent that they can't read.

Whilst other children figure this out for themselves so not too much of an issue.^

I'm not really sure of this point - if a child can 'bark' the word back from a piece of text, they are decoding the print. If they are decoding the word but not understanding what they are reading this points to other problems (reading for meaning for example). That oft-used phrase 'barking at print' referred to a criticism of the phonics-only approach to teaching - that children could decode only ('bark' at print) but didn't understand what they were reading.

Ah maybe that is my misunderstanding of the barking the words back.

What I mean is that the children cannot "read" the words, they can only see the word as a whole so for instance although they would read:

'A cat sat on the mat'

If they saw the word 'catastrophe' they would not be able to read it as they would not see that it could be broken down to as 'cat ast ro phe' (and also if they did break it down they wouldn't know what sound phe makes as fee.)

I'm no teacher and this is just a simple example. But it basically means that the children race through early reading schemes, but when reading free text cannot work out words they have not previously encountered.

I have a DS with SEN, he is significantly behind in both reading and writing (more than a year). His very lovely, but understaffed primary give him 30 minutes one-on-one a week, which doesn't make much difference if I am honest. He is in a class of 36.

I have had him tested for dyslexia when he was 8.5.. The result was very interesting. He showed up as above average in terms of intelligence, and with no learning disabiliy, he should really be somewhere in the middle of the class, rather than doing the work of the year below. The Psych Ed said there is no reason he should not be doing well, other than maybe not being taught well. Ouch! So the school class him as SEN (3 IEP's) but the psych Ed says he should not really be classified as such, just as being behind for no-SEN reasons! He is just one of those kids slipping through the net (daydreamer).

So I will move him to private next year . I am spending this term looking around for the best one for HIM, have my eye on one that is not selective at intake (a selective school would not have him I guess ) but where 98% go to their chosen secondary, many on scholarships. They have a "famous" SEN dpt. Must be careful not to be too excited about this school though, as a year behind is a LOT to catch up.

meanwhile we do extra work at home.

I am a bit sad though, as I think his teacher is great, but somehow (due to class size maybe) it just isn't working...