(London) school options for highly gifted ASD son?

[Londonwriter]

Our autistic seven year old has an EHCP and a 1-to-1, and a measured sky-high non-verbal IQ, and is currently at a mainstream state primary who are moving earth and sky for him. It was slowly improving, but he's just started Year 3 and is melting down constantly again, including hitting staff members during meltdowns, mostly due to noise in the classroom while he's sick from minor viruses.

As he can't be in class right now, he's currently working in his own 'office' elsewhere in the building. He reports being extremely bored and "not learning anything", which isn't surprising because - at home - he's reading first-year undergraduate medical revision textbooks for pleasure.

I've looked at specialist ASD provision online and it doesn't seem appropriate for him because it's so focused on life skills. When he's not melting down, he's already managing his own pocket money and can navigate public transport better than I can. Some of the schools mention on their websites he might be able to do an A-level whereas, educationally, he's the sort of kid who'd breeze into an academically-selective school.

I just don't know what to do. As of yesterday, he's started displaying school refusing behaviour. He says school isn't worth the sensory and social hassle for how little he's learning, although he accepts it's probably the best place to access the national curriculum. He has no friends at school and only one friend generally, our babysitter's 11-year-old autistic brother, and attempts to get him to treat his classmates as humans (rather than a shrieking alien nuisance) have been a failure so far.

Just wondered if anyone had any success, or positive stories, or even any suggestions of schools?

I've looked up all the usual places like More House and Holmewood online, but they're either focused on communication difficulties (he's no difficulty communicating!) or he'd have to go elsewhere to study after a certain age, which seems to defeat the point. I'm worried about home schooling or EOTAS incase he becomes an under-socialised mess, as he's weird enough already, and taking him to SEN activities locally as a homeschool mum would run into the same problems as school (he's just not interested in 'kid' things).

77 Summers
im not sure a bit more ‘understanding and kindness’ is the answer in situations like this. Teachers have 29 other children, of widely varying abilities, in their classroom. There will inevitably be noise and bustle even in the most well run classroom. Dealing with a child who regularly reacts violently to such stimulation
is highly disruptive to classmates’ learning and will cause anxiety to many of them (not to mention the teachers and TAs). Add to that this particular child’s exceptional learning needs, it sounds as though this school have tried very hard.

sometimes a smaller, private school is the answer but it sounds as though HE, or some version of it, is the only way forward.

You're partly right. Everyone at school was safe and their education remained secure because he had a full-time support worker to remove him from the classroom if he looked like he might meltdown. The staff moved earth and sky for him. They couldn't have been more understanding and kind. They were discussing a part-time timetable to get him back into class at the point when I deregistered.

However, no amount of kindness can change that they're a mainstream school with large class sizes, noisy corridors and loud playgrounds - and this was immensely stressful for my son. No one should be under so much stress and sensory overwhelm on a regular basis that it become normal for their nervous system to short circuit, especially not a small child!

If he'd had other options, I'd have fought for specialist provision, but I deregistered because it turned out he was already two years ahead in literacy and eight in maths! Having spoken to other parents, that's hard to accommodate at an academically-selective private mainstream school, never mind a SEND one.

you might find this video an interesting watch

How is his maths? Can he pass this test? What about this? How does he do on the Junior Mathematical Challenge?

Don’t rule out home educating as sounds like it might really suit you Don. Homeschooling doesn’t have to mean lack of socialisation and homeschool groups would enable him to hang out with older, non shrieking children. Also our experience of homeschool groups was a lot of very mature, smart kids so no shrieking anyway. I would check out the home school groups in your area as an option to explore.

DD (not diagnosed add but gifted and we now realise adhd) went to a very small educational hub for homeschooled kids from 11 and took her first gcse at 12. She socialised there and at hobbies and has great social skills. She’s at school now for 6th form. One of the many brilliant things about homeschooling is learning to socialise with kids of all ages and not just kids your own age.

@Iamthemoom I find this really interesting about home education groups that so many start doing GCSEs from the age of 11, and often a wider range than most pupils at schools. It would suit my daughter to take GCSEs in maths, further maths and music early, say in year 8 or 9, and then another 3 to 4 GCSEs each in year 10 and 11. It would make school so much more relevant and give her a focus and motivation, without it being too overwhelming and pressuring. Yet I'm told universities hate it. I'm under the impression that top 20 universities won't accept a child who hasn't sat 8 GCSEs at the same time - or is this a myth? Do you know anyone who went on to a 'mainstream' Russel Group uni with early GCSEs?

Yes I know a couple of homeschool kids who sat GCSEs early at Cambridge. I know they don’t like A levels sat separately or early and they all need to be taken in one go but I haven’t heard they’re bothered about GCSEs as long as the applicant has them.

DD took one gcse at 12, 3 at 13, 3 at 14 and then 2 in the normal year are would take them if at school. They were all one year courses and were very focussed. I know it wouldn’t work for everyone but I do think school might be less overwhelming for some kids if GCSEs were spread out.

That's a myth. Unis are much more interested in A levels than GCSEs, and may like to see evidence that the young person can handle the workload of doing several A levels in one sitting.

I think this narrative of spread-out GCSEs being unacceptable is sour grapes. It makes some people pretty irate that home educated kids can sit them in exactly the way which suits them best: at whatever age and in whatever order they want to do them. Heck, sometimes (as with one of my kids) they can even choose from various exam boards and pick a specification which plays to their particular strengths.

That DOES give home educated kids an unfair advantage. It isn't fair that schoolchildren have to cope with an inflexible system which creates a ton of pressure for no clear educational purpose, and that operational reasons such as timetable clashes can deny them the subject combinations they want. It feels like schoolchildren should get some compensation for having to put up with that. I can see why people would like to fantasise that HE children will be turned away by colleges or universities because they had the luxury of doing exams in a sensible way.

Which exam board did they opt for and how did it play to their strengths?

Regarding A levels, is it a problem if A level maths is sat in Y12 and A level FM + 2 other A levels are sat in Y13? How do "predicted grades" work - does the parent send the predictions, and how seriously are the predictions taken?

I don’t know I’m afraid as DD went back to school for A levels and I don’t personally know anyone homeschooling for A levels. Most homeschool kids I know went to school or college for A levels and took them all in one go.

@Muu9 it depends on the university. Some would make the offer based on the 3 A levels sat in Y13 (and ignore the A level sat in Y12). Some who EHE for A levels use tutors as referees for predicted grades.

My dd is similar. You need to completely stop worrying about typical socialisation. There’s nothing wrong at all with ‘limited’ socialising. My dd only liked to converse with adults from about 18 months, even children up to
age 6/7 made her have meltdowns and vomit as she found them too babyish and ‘dirty’ and couldn’t manage. Try to move away from what society thinks socialising looks like and if your ds is already objecting to it and struggling it is putting a strain on him so it’s better to avoid it, exposure type therapy doesn’t work for a lot of people with ASD.

Home education was a lifesaver for us . EOTAS can work too. Some children need to be in the adult world and let’s face it it’s where they are heading anyway they just arrive earlier. Childhood and other children can be overwhelming it’s not necessarily a bad thing if it’s what keeps him calm and settled and happy.

I don't remember all the details because DC researched it all, but it was something like this. For English Language, some of the specifications have a set of texts which learners should read in advance. Questions will be based on a subset of those. It's a good idea to think about those specific texts and practice writing essays based on them.

And then there are other passages which usually will be new to the reader and are sprung on them on the day, which are called "unseen texts".

Some people hate surprises, and like to work hard and be well prepared.

My DC isn't one of those people. They were good at thinking on their feet, so they were happy to figure things out on the fly and preferred the unseen texts. Having read quite widely, they actually had encountered some of these "unseen texts" before. They disliked being made to read and think about disturbing content (they still haven't quite forgiven me for chivvying them into reading 1984 and Animal Farm on the grounds that those books are culturally important and we don't have to enjoy everything we read). They also wanted to do the least preparation work possible 😂in order to focus on other subjects.

So they chose Edexcel Spec B, which is (or was) all unseen texts with nothing one ought to prepare.

IIRC the maths syllabi don't vary as much as the English Language syllabi, but even there one might have preferences. Some papers allow the use of calculators and others don't, so I guess people who are particularly good or bad at mental arithmetic might lean toward a spec with fewer/more calculator papers.

And I think some are sat over several sessions and others over a single session, so stamina and time management might be a factor.

IGCSE Cambridge English Language has e.g. the option to only take 1 paper in reading comprehension and then have the writing and composition paper substituted by course work. So definitely worth looking at all exam board options. It's really weird, as people speak of GCSEs and Alevels as if they are all the same and comparable, but there are rather a lot of differences among the different examboards.

Sometimes it’s not the child, is the school ignoring adjustments or doing something totally different to what they supposed to, how come some of the children are able to be I. Primary and get Y7 and all goes bananas? I understand the rest of the class dynamics, but we are talking children that were able to cope in that same atmosphere in primary. Considering that the brunt of the PEX and suspensions in school particularly in secondary is on SEN with or without students maybe something needs to be done. Lack of funding is one of it, but also LA need to get more involved into that what schools actually do. Just today Schools Week article about how bad children feel in secondary should be a red flag: https://schoolsweek.co.uk/revealed-the-school-pupils-who-disengage-during-year-7-dip/ 🚩 something needs to be done. Home schooling is not sustainable for many families.

Thanks for the links. He's studying for his GCSE maths now and we're doing Junior Maths Challenge questions problems via Parallelograms (the Simon Singh website).

I'm not sure we'll be done with the GCSE course by next May for the summer sitting, but there's apparently also an autumn sitting for the iGCSE where the exam centre is quieter. There's obviously no rush, but he's keen to do the GCSE because he now feels it's within his reach ability-wise and he obviously thinks it would be cool to have a GCSE age 9. Several of his new peer group have taken GCSEs at 11/12 and I think he's got some 'one-up-childship' going on!!!!!

I've looked at the entry tests for Art of Problem Solving. He's currently doing Beast Academy Level 5 and finds it a breeze apart from the enrichment/trophy questions where he occasionally needs to do some thinking. I've made a decision to keep him on Beast Academy right now for emotional reasons - he's just chronologically quite little (although he often doesn't seem it) and Art of Problem Solving doesn't have the cartoons and the kid-friendly interface.

P.S. @Muu9 What a heartbreaking documentary - I've just had the chance to watch it. His parents didn't seem to have the support or advice for raising a DME kid and I could see the mistakes coming a mile away. Poor lad.

I see - you can check out BA Puzzles 4, The Moscow Puzzles, and the Man Who Counted. The last one is more of a storybook, but it's good fun for a kid his age.

Fun fact about that kid - despite obviously having the potential to do maths at Oxbridge, he instead graduated from the Open University and ended up working as a university maths tutor. While I understand that gifted people don't owe the world anything, part of me wonders if he wished he focused more on highschool math to get ready for Oxbridge so he could become a mathematician, since he clearly liked maths a lot.

If he wants to do a GCSE I would have him do one under the same exam board he will take under timed exam conditions (e.g. in a busy area of the library where there might be some coughing or whispering). It's also a good idea to take it seriously to model taking exam seriously so he takes future GCSEs and A levels seriously. Aside from past GCSEs, you can look at the "higher plus" five a day here: https://corbettmaths.com/5-a-day/gcse/ and some extra hard GCSE math problems here: https://www.savemyexams.com/learning-hub/exam-guides/hardest-gcse-maths-questions/#hardest-probability-statistics-questions

Personally, I don't think the AoPS prealgebra book is any less friendly than a GCSE prep book - they're both pretty dry and focused on the maths relative to Beast Academy. (No comics in a GCSE maths book, after all). You can also get free AoPS style practice problems at https://artofproblemsolving.com/alcumus in a gamified form. If he's struggling too much you can reduce the difficulty setting from normal to easy. But if it was up to me I would get the book (cheapest I found is here) for him to work through at his own pace. There is also a self paced online course, but books tend to be easier to navigate than websites for kids, and the book is significantly cheaper, even with UK shipping. There are also free Videos by art of problem solving on the topics covered in prealgebra, which are just as fun as the ones in Beast Academy online.

https://ukmt.org.uk/junior-challenges/junior-mathematical-challenge - have him try this and, if he meets the relevant threshold, the junior kangaroo and let me know how he does. (Maybe as a PM to avoid cluttering up this thread, unless others are interested in this conversation staying public)

As a bonus: if you want to see what (some) kids like him in America study, look here: epsiloncamp.org/curriculum

No shame in being a maths tutor. A career as a mathematician at Oxbridge etc is extremely political. I started an academic career after gaining my B.A. and D.Phil at Oxford and it was all about networking, funding, getting quoted, organising and hosting conferences etc. I really struggled, even though I graduated in the top 1% at Oxford and was throughout all my studies on a very prestigious global scholarship program. I now work part time as a carer for people with dementia and learning disabilities. Minimum Wage and mainly 1:1, no pressure. Careers and academic potential are very different beasts.

And I'm nt, just not exceptionally good at networking etc.

I don't especially want to speculate in public about someone who isn't here to defend himself and who I don't know, but he never went to Oxbridge (or even studied for an MA) and now works as an IT support officer at a local college.

It's not that he tried an academic career and decided it wasn't for him. It's that he 'peaked' around the time that film was made. Bear in mind, there are literally thousands of flexible low-stress careers that use advanced technical qualifications, and that he could have got one of them if he'd gone to university (again) aged 18.

Personally, my suspicion is he either couldn't afford to go to Oxbridge (paying for accommodation, etc) or he 'burned out' after the OU degree. Seeing that he didn't do an OU MA, or an MA at a local university, my suspicion is the latter. That's why I found the video heartbreaking.

As per the beginning of the thread, I live with a very gifted little boy with significant disabilities, who would have been diagnosed with 'Asperger's' (Cameron's diagnosis in that video) when it was a diagnosis. I have a second DS5, also diagnosed autistic, at home with me. Neither of my sons has an 'IQ' because they have significant gaps between their measured verbal and non-verbal intelligence.

When I watched that video, I saw a teenager whose writing looked like my 8 year old's (his parents' book confirmed that he never learned joined-up handwriting), struggling desperately to write multi-paragraph long essays. There's no way my own DS8 could do a degree at 13, and he knows it, because his language abilities are only that of a bright 8 year old. I've been told by Potential Plus UK that gaps like my boys' are very common in kids diagnosed with autism. Listening to Cameron on the video, and knowing he had a sibling with more complex disabilities, it's entirely possible his speech and language abilities were delayed below 13.

I can't even begin to imagine how it must feel struggling to do a degree, age 13, with those gaps. My DS8 hated doing literacy-related school work for his own age group, never mind an older one. I can't even begin to imagine struggling along with other subjects at school all day, and then coming home to struggle writing maths explanations. It's a wonder it didn't put Cameron off academic study for life.

I work with ASD/ADHD/gifted learns as a teacher and tutor, and am adamant that classroom environments are not for everyone (they weren't for me!)

IGCSEs/I-A-Levels, which can be done in an online school, independently, or with private tuition at the student's pace has been a solid option for many of my students. Once the sensory overwhelm associated with schools is removed from the academic equation, they typically feel a lot better about learning. Which in turn frees up bandwidth for special interests and socialising.

Can you look around at some other independent schools?

The one he was at before doesn't sound very inclusive or interested in helping helping children develop socially and emotionally if they expelled him at age 4? What was their reason?

My son had problems with violent outbursts in reception (on list for autism assessment) the school (Independent) have been fantastic - worth looking around?