Can I ask teachers out there their opinion on acceptable progress in an academic year please??

[Becaroooo]

...ds1 (just turned 8) has been in year 3 at his new school since Nov last year.

I am having a meeting with the HT and SENCO on thursday morning wrt ds1 and provision for him....he is currently being seen by the child dev paed who has asked for an EP report and for him to be seen by the spld team too.

Ds1 is a bright, well behaved boy who had significant developmental delay when he was a baby and who has struggles with literacy since its formal introduction in year 1.

I removed him from his last school due to the lack of help he recieved and the bullying he endured because he struggled (was called "slow", "thick" etc etc)

He is happy at his new school - which is great - but he is not really making any progress.

I have got his levels from his teacher this morning (prior to the meeting) and they are:

reading - was 1b now 1a
writing - was 1a now 1a
maths - was 2b now 2a

So if I understand it right, since November last year;
He has gone up 1 sub level in reading (and now is 2 years behind his peers).
His levels in writing are unchanged.
He has gone up 1 sub level in maths (and is now classed as average).

Thats not good is it?

I knew his level for maths would be better than his reading and writing but am shocked he has made no progress at all with writing and only 1 sub level in reading....the HT says they are "really pleased" with this.

How can they be "pleased" ???????

Am I overreacting??? ds1 has had no help since starting this school (aside from very patchy 20 min of 1-1 once per week)

Help!

I perhaps should have pointed out the programmes we have tried without success;
Jolly phonics
Step by step
Toe by toe
headsprout.com
starfall.com
various workbooks; eg; Letts, WHSmiths DK etc

Nothing we have tried has worked/helped him.

I home schooled him for 10 months last year and used a variety of resources including some of the above and internet resources and an online maths tutor site (which placed him as having a maths age of 8.5 a year ago!)

His old school gave him no 1-1 but he did have an IEP (not that we knew anything about it!)

His new school have had 7 months and in that time he has had very little intervention and what he has had has been very patchy. He has had an IEP since April and was put on School Action - so for the last 2 months.

crazybabs "Realistic expectations"???? Well...I do expect my 8 year old, very bright, very articulate son to be able to read and write, yes. Is that unrealistic???????????

working You make some very interesting points and I am rapidly coming to the same conclusion as you i.e. unless the child in question as very severe SN/SEN then the interventions schools offer (school action and school action +) are pretty useless.

We have already paid for ds1 to do AIT and he is currently doing RRT (total cost over £2k) I am not sure a) if we can afford any more private therapies and b) what else there is we can try

Am just praying that the AIT and RRT will work given time (we have another 9 months of RRT to go yet) Am also looking at hiring a tutor over the summer (havent told dh yet!!) but really dont know how to go about it.....working are there any website where HTLAs like yourself moonlight as tutors???????

cat64 Yes, it is a massive thing that he is happy - and a huge relief to us as you can imagine. I still dont feel that a HT should be saying they are "happy" and that ds1 is doing "really well" when his scores are what they are

Cat - I'm confused by your sentence about being put on the SEN register when not having any special needs - Special Needs means that you have a diagnosis of some kind of disability. You don't require that to go onto the SEN register.

As soon as you fall behind academically you get put on the SEN register. That doesn't mean you have special needs - it means you've fallen behind.......

An average child is not meant to make 2 sublevels a year. All children are meant to make 2 levels in a key stage. So in KS1 a child has 2 years to make 2 levels, and is meant to make 1 level a year, whereas in KS2 a child has 4 years to make 2 levels and only needs to make 1.5 sublevels a year.

So when working in KS1 levels, you should be making 3 sublevels a year.

A child who cannot read and write at the end of Y3 is something to be overly concerned about. I hope you don't work in a school :(

A child who cannot read and write at the end of Y3 is definitely something to be concerned about.

I'm not a HLTA, and sadly I don't know anything about tutoring.

An avenue I often think can be helpful is to get in touch with the major centres in the UK that do literacy research - University of Sheffield and York are the two that come into my head straight away (Stackhouse and Wells, Maggie Snowling, Maggie Vance - big names in our field in literacy) but I bet there are others that specialise in less "speech and languagey" accounts of dyslexia too.

They will have students at MSc and PhD and all sorts doing studies of interventions and processing etc and if your child is in a study, they will do assessments which can give you very valuable information that's at the cutting edge of research etc. There are no guarantees but if it were my child, I would have them signed up as a potential participant for everything going in the area of need. If you meet the people and you or your ds don't like them or any aspect of the assessment or intervention process, you can always drop out. It deals neatly with the cost aspect as usually its free and you might even get expenses, depending on the study!

Also, sometimes they will just offer to help... I contacted some big bod at a university when I was having breastfeeding issues and he did an assessment with ultrasound and explained everything that was going on and gave me a nice review of the evidence which I was able to use to support what I did next.

So worth a shot?

God, I am so tired of all this

I'm sorry Becaroooo

Not your fault working Just how it is.

Really dont want to end up crying/wailing and rending my garments at the meeting tomorrow!

He is acheiving at about 1 level below expectations, and only made 1 sublevel progress where you would expect 2 normally. However as you said he experienced significant language delay, this is not surprising.

Although his spoken language may now be age-appropriate, there has clearly been a knock-on effect with his written literacy. It is that the school haven't put anything in place in 7months, but at least the cogs are moving now.

It sounds like they will be moving him to School Action Plus, so you should expect him to have involvement with outside specialist agencies, who at the very least should make recommendations which the school should follow. They may assess and provide a programme for a TA to follow, or they may be in more regular contact.

It may be worth getting a private SpLD assessment and then a qualified SpLD tutor to work with him if they assess him as being dyslexic / having other SpLD.

Thanks BTM

One of my requests tomorrow is that he be put on school action + and that he be seen by the spld team (as also requested by the paed)

I am sorry but I read your "significant developmental delay as a baby" as possible issues for his lack of progress. I can make no other comment as I don't know your child... but moving up 2 sublevels a year are an average ... ie most children - some move up more, some move up less ... what i am asking you (and I don't know you, your child, the school) - are those realistic expectations for someone who had "significant developmental delay" - should he have now caught up with his peers. You need to talk to the school/doctors

Cat64, surely the point is that there are underlying issues and school has not attempted to address them by putting appropriate intervention in place or pursuing appropriate assessments to establish the best route forward?

OP has written that he has been getting 1 x 20 minutes a week sporadically since November, I think? The school haven't involved anyone else and they don't actually know what's going on. If a full assessment had been carried out and there was a definitive reason for his literacy difficulties (or even if there wasn't, but some had been ruled out and there was a clear picture of performance IQ and language skills etc) then what you are saying might make sense. However, in the absence of any evidence as to why this is happening and limited progress, I can't see how a school could judge that level of progress to be appropriate. Unless there was magic literacy dust floating around the room in the 20 minute intervention once a week it wasn't really going to make much difference.

I am fully aware that there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach but he can't read at 8 and that's not likely to get very much better spontaneously, especially as the demands are going to sharply increase as he rises through KS2. This is an established problem and if the 20 minute intervention isn't making serious inroads into it, evidence needs to be sought as to why. It really doesn't sound as if there's enough information to judge his level of progress as being appropriate or inappropriate and the school needs to action that before commenting on the acceptability of his progress.

cat I do see what you mean. However, my concerns are that the school havent actually done anything to help my son (his IEP targets were so easy by the end of the 1st week he had achieved 2 of them!) and what they have done has been a) patchy/not regular and b) ineffective.

I am also very concerned that they are not requesting an EP to evaluate him, despite being asked to by the child dev paed.

I am very aware my son has learning difficulties and I am simply trying to help him achieve his full potential.

Not read entire thread yet, only first few posts but 1 sublevel is not bad progress at all, given his previous difficulties & the transition from KS1-KS2. Also, bear in mind that even though he may not have moved up a sublevel in writing doesn't mean he has not made progress. Sometimes they make leaps and bounds in areas that are not assessed and often the jump from 1 sublevel to the next is quite big. Lots of schools are starting to do sub-sublevels to reflect that, eg 1a.2, 1a.4, 1a.6 etc especially for those children who have SEN.

Oh, caught up now and realize it's moved on . tbh I wouldn't be too concerned about the levels, especially if DS is happy. But I WOULD want to follow up the EP referral and ensure that IEP targets are sensible, useful and written properly (often they are very vague)

Good luck today Bec

Hello everyone.

Well, had the meeting with HT, teacher and SENCO. They had prepared a case study on ds1 and had also done some assessments prior to the meeting.

Outcome;

Ds1 is happy.
He is behind his peers but is making progress - in fact 2 points in the last term (which is hopefully down to AIT and RRT!)
They are very supportive of the AIT and RRT and think it will really help him long term.
He is actually nearly a 2 in writing and reading, but not quite.
He is getting 4 x 30 mins per week "Switch on" - which is reading recovery for older children - quite new apparently so thats why I have never heard of it!
He is getting other class interventions too.
The long term plan is to get him to a 3a/4c by the end of year 5 (i.e. in 2 years time).
His IEP has been reviewed.
He will be assessed next term by the "specialist teaching service" (spld?) for dyslexia not the EP as in Leics the EPs dont "just" come out to assess dyslexia i.e. the school cannot put the case for ds1 to be assessed by an EP as he hasnt got bad enough SEN!!!. HT has talked to the paed and he is also happy with this.
I am going in to observe a reading recovery session so I can see how its done and will be given ideas/help on how to help him over the summer i.e. NOT phonics!)
We have another meeting in October (next term) to discuss whats happened and reassess.

How do I feel about all this?

Well, quite positive

He is happy.
His levels are better than we thought.
He is getting more intervention than we thought.
He has a new IEP
He will be assessed by an outside agency. He will be reassessed in a years time. If he stops making progress in that time he will then be seen by an EP. Am ok with this - although tbh if ds1 stops making progress then he will be seen earlier than that I think.
He is getting intervention (at last!!!!!!!!)
I will get advice/support about what to so over the summer.

Am feeling much more positive. Ds1 is obviously on "catch up" so to speak but they feel that given time and more interventions (and continuing with the RRT ans possibly behavioural optometry) he should achieve 3a/4c by the end of year 5.

I like the fact there is;
a short term plan
a long term plan
an assessment by outside agency
we are meeting again next term to re-assess

Thanks everyone for your support

Really pleased for you and ds

Thanks!

This is the 1st time in his 8 years that I feel that all that can be done is being done...its a great feeling!

That sounds great Becarooo! Am really really pleased for you as sounds like you couldn't have asked for more :)