Year 9 son excluded, long PRU wait and route back to mainstream

[TheRightSide91]

Hello, im not sure if anyone has been in a similar situation and can give me some advice. My son 14 ( year 9 ) was permantly excluded from school in January and we have been with Transitional Education service since then. Hes been having online lessons and is on the waiting list to go to a pupil referral unit (PRU), he needs to go to a PRU before he can get back into mainstream school. We have been on this waiting list now since January and have been told a space will not become available until earliest January 2027. I am so concerned that the longer he will be out of school it will be harder for him to manage mainstream. His reading age is 8 years old and has 0% understanding in comprehension. He wants nothing more then to return to a school. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Is there any other way to get him back into mainstream other then the PRU?

What was he excluded for? Are you able to appeal?

Hi.

firstly, if he has a reading age of 8 then it is possible there may be better settings for him than mainstream. That’s a low reading age and I would imagine he was finding it hard to access work at school. Was he in a nurture group or Sen unit?

these days there are a lot of alternative provision settings that are small and can offer fairly bespoke teaching. The ones I am most familiar with usually take kids with autism but there are a wide variety.

PRUs can be tricky and these days there is a lot of pressure on spaces on them. If he is looking towards going back to mainstream then depending on what the exclusion was for there may be expectations around eg anger management courses, engaging with youth offending team if it was a police matter, etc.

He was bullied for a while and retaliated, it was put as an out of character one off serious breach of school rules. I am not making excuses for his actions. We did appeal and the IRP sent it back for reconsideration due to his low reading age and contributing factors, they wanted the governing body to have better understanding of his needs ( the school said he had no SEN or any concerns ) but unfortunately they still upheld the exclusion

Just to add the school said they had no concerns with him academically. They said no SEN. He is below expected level in all subjects he had lexia and Bedrock while in school. When we recieved the 'evidence pack' for his exclusion there was the NGRT reports with his reading age and comprehension in. In that report it told the school to get him diagnostic testing, look into previous support he had and he may need speech and language support also. They did not do any of that. In primary school he was under SEN he had targeted speech and language throughout, in class help and a one to one reader for his SATs.

I would write to your MP. It is not OK for him to be out of school.

If you can, I would try and have him privately assessed for any specific learning difficulties and/or neurodiverse conditions and maybe look at specialist provision to get him back into a school. Jan 27 is far too long for him to be out of full time education. I've worked in a PRU and would question whether it is a route back into mainstream education. In my experience, most if not all the kids in PRU are there because they have a level of support needs that mainstream school cannot provide in terms of staffing levels and one-to-one support. The majority of them had additional needs such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, ASD, OCD and conduct/mood disorders.

Ok, so in terms of academically:

Lexia and bedrock are used to teach secondary school age students to read, write and do phonics.
they’re used for students who are significantly behind in reading which if he has a reading age of 8 at year 9 (so age 13/14) he is.

secondary schools do not report academic progress in terms of age related expectations like primaries do.

they look at the stage a child came in on and see whether he has made progress from that. You say he had a 1:1 in his sats so he clearly did sats. If he got quite low results then this will translate to gcse target grades of 2/3/4.

i used to teach in a secondary school and mostly worked with nurture groups and autistic children. Many parents don’t understand the system and I remember one parent who was very upset because she’d been told her daughter was on target all through secondary but had not realised that her daughters target grade was a 3 - so lower than a pass.

i’m presuming that if a permanent exclusion was upheld for one act of violence it was a pretty serious one and/or involved knives.

is he involved with youth offending at all or was it at a lower level than that? PRUs can be reluctant to take children who have been extremely violent due to the risk to other students.

if there is something you or he can do to show the risk of violence from him is less than it was you may find the PRU more co-operative

If he has a reading age of 8 at 14 years old then he absolutely does have SEN. The first thing I would suggest is you apply for an EHCP needs assessment. Contact your LA SEN team for the relevant application form. What LA do you live in?

If you haven't done so already, OP, contact your local SENDIASS and ask them to help you explore other alternatives to mainstream in addition to PRU .
It sounds as if the poor lad has been badly served by his High School, in several ways.
I know a family who have just been able to get the LA to fund a place in an Independent school, within the authority, which only has 20 pupils.
Their son sounds to be very similiar to yours and our LA are not known for their generosity or ability to think outside the box for solutions.

Yes he hit the pupil a number times which was on school CCTV, no weapon involved and no injuries. The police was not involved. Again I am not here to make excuses for his actions. When the IRP sent it back, the governing board wanted more information on his learning. The school had to provide all test results reading scores etc. When he first started high school he had a score of 107 in reading. From the summer in year 7 his scores dropped between 70s and 80s in reading, all his reports showed effort was good behaviour was good. Hes now doing 1 to 1 lessons via zoom and has been put down to year 7 work.

Something has gone badly badly wrong here, I’m so sorry for your ds.

A child has special educational needs if they can’t cope in a classroom. ANY child that has plummeted from a reading score of 107 in SATs to a reading age of 8 yo three years later has SEN. I don’t care whether the school no which underlying problem he has but absolutely categorically he has a special educational need.

If his behaviour is usually “ok”, I would say that this is possibly the most special educational need I’ve ever heard of - a kid who has gone backwards for no reason at all?!

I would be back in touch with school, senco, head of year, governors, LA - everyone. Something is really wrong.

My hunch would be if there’s no gang or drugs or any real reason for this - I’d be asking myself if he has been a victim of sexual abuse.

A 14 yo child with a reading age of 8 and little comprehension cannot hope to access the secondary curriculum. There must be academic concerns. During this exclusion period you could press LA for an assessment and hopefully ehcp. Is he receiving any education provision? It sounds like his school has let him down and a fresh start via pru may help.

He was bullied for such a long time, from year 7 onwards. 2 days before the incident he had a chair dropped on his head in drama, the school said it was because chairs was being moved around it was accidental. I cannot tell you how many times I called the school because I was so concerned he was at breaking point, I should have kept him home until it was resolved! My son is a very quiet boy he very rarely leaves our home, we dont live in a 'safe' area. Again he went through primary school with support, they was fantastic with him but when he went to high school that support was not continued. Im not sure if that could have caused such a decline? The support he had was a safety blanket in learning for him maybe, has he shut down mentally when things got difficult

Absolutely no fault of your own OP, and definitely not a dig at you x
But it is absolute cruelty to have a child with such a young reading age in mainstream secondary, and expect them to cope. I work in a secondary school (Scotland) and he’d spend most of his time in Support for Learning.

This is a not uncommon scenario.

the primary school know that the student is struggling so they put stuff in place. They offer group extra support and sort out a 1:1 reader for his sats.

however there is no formal documentation of his needs for support as this is done at school level not at EHCP level and so when he gets up to secondary there’s no official documentation of need and secondaries tend to be in much trickier financial circumstances,

the secondary clearly clocked he couldn’t read as they put lexia and bedrock in place.

at GCSEs you can get a reader, just like in sats. But if a student has gone through all their schooling basically unable to read then they can’t access most of the curriculum and don’t tend to do well.

in all seriousness I would focus hard on where he is and what he wants to do. At 16 he can go to college, so maybe try to look at focusing on English and maths and anything else he is interested in?

many students with that sort or profile and history would be in nurture groups or sen units attached to mainstream rather than mainstream.

can you speak to the council about what AP (alternative provision) he might be able to access?

The thing here is that, at the end of Y6, his reading score was 107. Well within the expected range for an 11 year old (Expected scores start at 100).

So there was no indication at the point of secondary transition that reading ability was low or that anything other than mainstream was appropriate.

OP, would you say that the score of 107 was ‘in line with his general ability’ at that point? That he had been tracking at mid-Expected levels throughout primary? Or could it perhaps gave been an artefact of ‘over-helping’ - a level of support for the test that could not be replicated in normal school life?

If you do feel that his end of primary attainment was ‘true’ at that point, then you need to investigate his cognitive decline since then as a matter of medical urgency. Failure to progress, or a blip on transition, is ‘normal’, due to changes in environment etc. Such a dramatic regression (so 3 years backwards academically over 3 years) is less normal. Has it happened ‘all at once’? Can you pinpoint when it started?

He is currently doing 1 to 1 via zoom for his English maths and science. Transitional education service said there is a mechanical workshop close by that he could attend 1 day a week but there is a little wait for that. Reading these comments I am seeing that maybe mainstream is not best for him. His exclusion from school has been a blessing in disguise if im honest because I was not aware just how much he was struggling. Thank you all so much. I have contacted the LA for an assessment, I have contacted my local MP also. I just want him to have the right support and be placed wherever is best for him.

The school governors said it seemed like primary school over helped him and they said with all evidence of scores from starting high school they do not believe it was a true score from primary school. He always struggled from the very start of his school life, I remember they fought so hard to help him to pass his SATs. I cannot really pin point the rapid decline exactly but soon after he started high school he hit puberty hard and had terrible acne, that was a very big decline in confidence. When he joined high school he did say it was very hard and he just did not understand things even when they was explained. I did speak with the school in July last year and said he was struggling and was there any extra help he could get, nothing really came of that conversation unfortunately

Grrr, that’s really poor by the primary school - they’ve deliberately made your DS’s data look ‘too good’ (as it helps their data), and that means he’s not been on the radar for the help he needs at secondary.

Also poor by the secondary, not picking up his true low attainment and putting support in place. However, if available resource has already been assigned to children below expected at end Y6; with EHCPs; with detailed SEN plans, then it’s perhaps understandable that they didn’t gave anything available for him, especially if you weren’t hammering the door down. Sadly, support for SEN pupils is often dependent on parental engagement and pressure.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/special_educational_needs/5484488-ehcp-support-thread-no-6?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share hi OP, I'm sorry, this sounds so difficult and you've been badly let down by both schools. You may want to consider a Subject Access Request to the primary school as it sounds like there was lots of evidence of need and support there.

Here's the support thread. If your LA refuse to assess, appeal.

Officially with the sats a 1:1 reader can be provided and they can read the questions to the student,

what they are not allowed to do is to read the extract that the questions are about to the student… but sats are done at every primary school in the country and children who need readers are usually in a room on their own with just them and the ta so there’s no actual check…

if they gave him a 1:1 reader for his other papers I would have strong, strong doubts about his sats score of 107. A student who gets 107 on sats reading does not need a 1:1 reader nor do they have a reading age of 8.

unfortunately this scenario does happen - my secondary regularly used to despair at some of the sats results that our new year 7s had achieved.

at gcse students who need readers are usually not in the main exam hall but they are in a room together snd TAs are usually trained very carefully on what exactly they are allowed to do as breaches of exam conditions can (rarely, but still) lead to whole gcse results being cancelled.

as he is getting teaching through zoom presumably from tutors employed by the council I’d suggest you speak to them about where he currently is and what sort of gcse grades they would be expecting for him.

I did read some research recently that bullying can lead to actual cognitive decline as well as mental health issues. It can cause structural damage to the adolescent brain via stress hormones I think it was. So bullying causing burnout can affect academic performance massively.
I think I may have argued the opposite with the governors. That the school causes the decline and the SATs were evidence of higher prior achievement and that the school has failed the child etc

As well as requesting the EHCNA, you need to request further alternative provision. The LA has a duty to ensure DS receives a suitable full-time education. English, maths and science is not sufficient.

PRUs vary, but many wouldn’t be suitable for someone like your DS anyway because it sounds like he would be too vulnerable in many of them.

Officially with the sats a 1:1 reader can be provided and they can read the questions to the student,
what they are not allowed to do is to read the extract that the questions are about to the student…

No, in the reading paper, nothing can be read (neither the extract nor the questions).

From the administration guidance :
As the English reading test is assessing reading skills, you must not read it to individuals or to a group, except for the general instructions. However, you may read and rephrase, if necessary, the information provided in the test instructions on page 3 of the reading answer booklet to ensure all pupils understand them. No other part of the reading answer booklet or reading booklet may be read to pupils or rephrased

In the other papers (Maths & SPaG), the questions can be read.

I asked the OP whether there was evidence of difficulty throughout primary, and it appears that there was. Testing on entry to secondary seemed to be consistent with current attainment, with the SATs result being out of line. Both of these seem to indicate that this is a child with longstanding SEN who has been failed by the primary disguising the difficulty (probably through test maladministration), not documenting it properly for transfer, then by the secondary in not acting once he started falling behind.

PRU is definitely not the right place, but SEN schools are bursting at the seams. Potentially a school with an integrated SEN unit (now becoming more commonplace in response to need) might be an alternative, with documentation from current tutors, primary and secondary to support. Be prepared to fight hard, and focus on the learning need. Treat the exclusion as a result of unmet learning need, rather than as the problem itself IYSWIM.