School want 5yo to be removed.

[Indecisivelurcher]

I'm asking so I can perhaps pass advice on to my relatives. I think the main thing I want advice on is what sorts of things they should be asking of school.

The little boy in question is 5yrs old, in yr2. He has some issues around anger management, basically he flies off the handle and won't calm down. He has hurt a teacher before and he has hurt class mates, things like head butting. He hits his mum. He still has multiple incidents wetting himself a week. Autism and ADHD have been suggested, autism has now been ruled out by private assessment, ADHD hasn't been investigated yet. He has always been a bit of a handful but not dreadful, he can sit and concentrate well, he's bright, he's very kind to younger children.

The issue I am asking about is school seem to just exclude him. My relative has several calls a week to go pick him up, and not allow him back the following day. School have suggested they consider taking him out of the school. My relative thinks they just want to get rid of him now. They want him to go to part time hours but again that won't necessarily help with anything. Since then, they just default to exclusion, which doesn't help him. They don't seem to have a plan in place on how to help stop these behaviours. They have very full classes of 33 kids I think, 1 TA for the class and a part time SENCO. It's like they just want him out of their hair.

Thanks for reading, as I said at the start I am hoping to get some tips to pass on to my relatives to help make sure they're asking the right things of school. What would a good school be putting in place here?

Special schools don’t really exist for chn in the op. They are for more extreme difficulties. It really is dire in state schools. I wish the country would wake up and stop voting Conservative.

OP, does the boy get a lot of screen time?

I think some posters are being completely unrealistic about the truth of how stretched schools are just now. They are understaffed on a good day, let alone at the moment with covid absences.

It’s very easy for people who don’t work in schools to press on about what else the school should be doing to support an individual child, and there have been some good ideas that may well help this child settle into school better, but who is supposed to do that? The class is already over full with 33 children, they only have one TA who is probably not paid to give extra support during lunchtime, lunchtime controllers have to supervise huge numbers of children and won’t have that much time to dedicate to one child who needs extra support.

We can repeat that exclusions are illegal as much as we like, it won’t magically provide the extra resources, adults and time required to adequately meet the child’s needs.

The school clearly can’t cope. That doesn’t make them shit, it makes them humans trying to do the best they can with the resources they have. I find it hard to believe that any school regularly asks a parent to collect a child lightly, and without doing everything they can to deal with the issues in school first.

This little boy is in Y2 and having multiple toilet accidents a week, even without the major behaviour and emotional issues it would be hard for them, year 2 classes just aren’t set up to deal with that.

It sounds like the relative is (understandably) minimising the problems the child has, and probably needs to rip up the last assessment they had and start again.

My post seems to have been ignored. Can the parent sit 1-1 with the child if agreed with the school? Cost effective for the school and a useful observation tool for the parent.

You cannot place all the blame on the school especially as he's displaying the same behaviours at home and attacking his parents. Schools hands are tied until he's been assessed properly which others have said are currently not happening as they are not attending schools. Our schools have a lack of funding and staff shortages and have a duty to ensure the safety of all pupils. Now put yourself in the shoes of the parents who's kids are being attacked or even the teachers, at my DD's other parents have started removing their children to protect them from a child like this because they cannot be kept safe. It's a hard situation for everyone concerned but the needs of one does not outweigh the needs of the many.

why do they always have to put so many barriers in the way of getting support

I wonder who you are referring to with your ‘they’?

As a SENCo, I completely agree with the sentence, but my ‘they’ is the LA, who block my requests for help and support for our high need children at every turn, because of funding.

The LA EPs won’t come out to see children.
Our requests for additional funding are thrown out or we are allocated the most basic banding which only provides minimal time-limited support.
The specialist teaching team were virtually all made redundant to save money.

We also have two high need children recently placed with us who have EHC plans whose parents want special school. Even the LA panel have agreed they need specialist placements, but say there simply aren’t any places for them, so they have to be placed with us (as catchment school) until a place somehow becomes available. This could take months, even years.

Meanwhile, the funding they have allocated for both children, is barely enough to pay a 1:1 minimum wage for 5 hours a day-let alone full-time qualified experienced staff!

The lack of funding for SEN children makes me cry on a weekly basis. I know so many SENCos who have resigned recently who feel the same; the system is broken.

@Nomorefuckstogive I've put the suggestion on my list.

@Howshouldibehave

why do they always have to put so many barriers in the way of getting support

I wonder who you are referring to with your ‘they’?

As a SENCo, I completely agree with the sentence, but my ‘they’ is the LA, who block my requests for help and support for our high need children at every turn, because of funding.

The LA EPs won’t come out to see children.
Our requests for additional funding are thrown out or we are allocated the most basic banding which only provides minimal time-limited support.
The specialist teaching team were virtually all made redundant to save money.

We also have two high need children recently placed with us who have EHC plans whose parents want special school. Even the LA panel have agreed they need specialist placements, but say there simply aren’t any places for them, so they have to be placed with us (as catchment school) until a place somehow becomes available. This could take months, even years.

Meanwhile, the funding they have allocated for both children, is barely enough to pay a 1:1 minimum wage for 5 hours a day-let alone full-time qualified experienced staff!

The lack of funding for SEN children makes me cry on a weekly basis. I know so many SENCos who have resigned recently who feel the same; the system is broken.

I mean whoever controls the purse strings. I have a SEN child but have also worked in schools, so I do understand the challenges teachers face and particularly when the local authorities don't provide adequate funding for support - so I 'm not criticising schools or teaching staff, just a broken system that is failing children and staff alike

@Indecisivelurcher if you knew a bit more about the triggers we could suggest more strategies, I.e. struggles when asked to do something with the whole class leading to violent outbursts > lining up first or last or standing with teacher, issues on the carpet a special space or even a chair so that no one is accidentally hurt because that can lead to huge blow ups from children.

It very much sounds like they're trying to encourage the parents to remove their child, without following the formal exclusion procedures. If the early pick ups have apparently been informally agreed, with a suggestion that the parents don't bring their child back the next day, rather than a documented fixed term exclusion of one day, there's something funny going on here. The school probably know that the criteria that they are using to suggest the parents keep their child off school, does not meet the criteria of a formal fixed term exclusion. They're also shirking their responsibility towards this child, and they know it, as there's no paper trail. If they had properly documented these exclusions, they'd need to also show how they were providing appropriate support. Tbh, I'm afraid to say that even though the parents should refuse to accept this situation, that they are probably better off finding another school that would be more supportive. It does not need to be a special school by any means, but just a different one, as a different school may well be much better for this child than the one he currently attends. Schools with a reputation for both good and poor support of SEN students are often well known about locally, so it's worth seeing if there are any support groups for SEN parents in the local area. The parents should ask around and network a bit to see if they can find a school that would better support their child. His current school are failing him, but it can be very difficult to turn this around without something drastic like a change in leadership. The parents can kick up a real fuss about this, write to the governors and Ofsted, which they may well want to do regardless of whether they move schools or not, and it might eventually lead to some action. Bit it also it might be sensible to move, as any action is unlikely to be immediate.

@Howshouldibehave

why do they always have to put so many barriers in the way of getting support

I wonder who you are referring to with your ‘they’?

As a SENCo, I completely agree with the sentence, but my ‘they’ is the LA, who block my requests for help and support for our high need children at every turn, because of funding.

The LA EPs won’t come out to see children.
Our requests for additional funding are thrown out or we are allocated the most basic banding which only provides minimal time-limited support.
The specialist teaching team were virtually all made redundant to save money.

We also have two high need children recently placed with us who have EHC plans whose parents want special school. Even the LA panel have agreed they need specialist placements, but say there simply aren’t any places for them, so they have to be placed with us (as catchment school) until a place somehow becomes available. This could take months, even years.

Meanwhile, the funding they have allocated for both children, is barely enough to pay a 1:1 minimum wage for 5 hours a day-let alone full-time qualified experienced staff!

The lack of funding for SEN children makes me cry on a weekly basis. I know so many SENCos who have resigned recently who feel the same; the system is broken.

Can I also add, we are fortunate enough to have a wonderful SENCo at our nursery and she has honestly been nothing short of fantastic supporting us - and I can't tell how grateful we are to her, so I'm sorry if my post sounded critical of you and your colleagues who fight tooth and nail to support your children. It's just very sad to hear all too often that children don't get the support they need and sometime schools seem resigned to that fact and therefore don't try.

IPSEA

SOSSEN

The School Exclusion Project.

Those are all charities.

If they can afford it, ADHD assessment should be the 1st port of call (private, sadly) as meds can be life changing for those who have it.

these people are clinically great, and relatively affordable (as affordable as complex needs healthcare gets).

Second on the list is medico-legal assessment and a lawyer, as EHCP provision can vary wildly by LA and by case. The law is clear but funding is such that the only kids who get what they are meant to are those with parents willing and able to force it.

A barrister called Alice de Coverley used to head up the School Exclusion Project and now represents kids who have complex needs through the EHCP process. She can recommend specialists to assess to ensure any EHCP is fit for purpose, and she is amazingly effective herself. She's kind and capable and normal as well as brilliant in legal terms, and she's genuinely passionate about children's rights. She's very busy but her Chambers have other excellent barristers (and direct access barristers are much, much cheaper than solicitors) so if she can't help she can steer your relatives to someone who can.

It's not screen time. It's not parenting, not unless there are huge traumas in the child's past you are unaware of. Everything you describe is common with unmet needs in neurodiverse kids, right down to the late toileting, impulsivity, outbursts of anger. And with the right help, children can thrive.

If he has sensory needs then the setting you describe is horrendous for him, too. That creates the 'fizzy pop' reaction, where a kid just can't contain it and explodes. Sensory assessment by a good OT can establish that, and he needs a specialist speech and language assessment, too, to work out if he has major barriers in communication that can be missed (especially in a more able child).

He's only five, there's lots that can be done. But unfortunately time matters.

My eldest, and I had the ASD assessment done first, too. He got the diagnosis, and sod all else. A few years later we had an ed psych, OT and SLT assessment and huge needs were found - he now has the support. My second child, and we went for the ADHD assessment, and then she was medicated and it helped enormously - but the autism came through far more as a result. I didn't go with that assessment, from experience: I had the OT and SLT ones, and started the EHCP process based on them. The autism assessment was done as part of the EHCP statutory assessment process, and she was diagnosed then.

If I had known all I do now at the start, my son's path would have been very different. Your relatives need to lock into the parent support network - search out Facebook pages etc for parents of kids with additional needs. It's a hidden world, but everything I have for them now, including the details of the above specialists, came from other parents.

I send love to them, and I'm glad you care so much. Sadly, they will have many years ahead of people assuming it's parenting. Not infrequently teachers. I wish I'd had the assessments done earlier, and not assumed it was me and diligently done the courses, which just delayed his proper assessment and therefore his support. You can't support needs you don't know are there. With my second, I was on it at once and she has had help from very early on. It's been a game changer.

Nomorefuckstogive- you’d think that might be a temporary solution, but there are all sorts of implications, around safeguarding and insurance to name but two. My experience has been that children will manage their behaviour whilst the parent is there, but it doesn’t last.

Are there adjustments that can be made to try and reduce the impact of the behaviour, if it happens mostly at specific times.? What distraction techniques could be used? Is there a reward system in place? It sounds as though this little lad needs to learn that you get recognition for positive behaviour, rather than negative. At present, he kicks off and gets attention.

It’s easy to say that not having access to an EP is illegal, but the reality is that harsh decisions must be made when prioritising need. There has to be lots of evidence prior to that too. There’s a naivety around finding specialist provision. It was always difficult, now it’s even worse and very expensive.

Having said that, sending the boy home isn’t addressing the problem, but providing some respite for the class and teacher. If there’s a reduced timetable, it should be with a view to planning for full time.

It isn’t easy or straightforward and it’s heartbreaking for everyone involved.

Even when Ed Psychs do come in, the cost to the school is £300. This has to come out of the school budget.

For those who have EPs who aren’t assessing DC. If the assessment is part of an EHCNA then if the LA’s EPs won’t or can’t assess during the statutory timescales the LA must commission an independent assessment.

Howshouldibehave have you encouraged the parents to appeal? The majority of appeals are upheld but many parents don’t know they should appeal, some don’t realise they can appeal at all.

@Indecisivelurcher

I'm asking so I can perhaps pass advice on to my relatives. I think the main thing I want advice on is what sorts of things they should be asking of school.

The little boy in question is 5yrs old, in yr2. He has some issues around anger management, basically he flies off the handle and won't calm down. He has hurt a teacher before and he has hurt class mates, things like head butting. He hits his mum. He still has multiple incidents wetting himself a week. Autism and ADHD have been suggested, autism has now been ruled out by private assessment, ADHD hasn't been investigated yet. He has always been a bit of a handful but not dreadful, he can sit and concentrate well, he's bright, he's very kind to younger children.

The issue I am asking about is school seem to just exclude him. My relative has several calls a week to go pick him up, and not allow him back the following day. School have suggested they consider taking him out of the school. My relative thinks they just want to get rid of him now. They want him to go to part time hours but again that won't necessarily help with anything. Since then, they just default to exclusion, which doesn't help him. They don't seem to have a plan in place on how to help stop these behaviours. They have very full classes of 33 kids I think, 1 TA for the class and a part time SENCO. It's like they just want him out of their hair.

Thanks for reading, as I said at the start I am hoping to get some tips to pass on to my relatives to help make sure they're asking the right things of school. What would a good school be putting in place here?

Our child was assessed for ASD by a developmental pediatrician team at a top children's hospital after six months of assessment and we were told that there was "nothing wrong, stop trying to find something".

School were gobsmacked and asked if they read any of the extensive notes and assessments they sent.

Speech therapist asked to reassess again within school a year later and the school paid for an education psychologist to shadow regularly for several months. She came back with data that showed an absolute indication for ASD and ADHD. Our child is able to appear NT for an hour or so when being assessed, so the specialists didn't spot what we and the school did. Apparently gifted kids with ASD need different testing. I think (its been a long while so I may be remembering incorrectly) our ST used information from Michelle Garcia Winner to help get the assessment done.

All this to say that just because you get a negative, doesn't mean it is necessarily true. Once our child was assessed and getting different services it was like night and day. Went from failing multiple core classes and sitting outside of the head's office every day to getting an A in every subject (well except MFL -- not good at languages) and being picked as a school ambassador for visitors. It was a complete turn around.

They need to develop a behaviour support plan but I would be very surprised if there wasn't one. It could have a plan for what to do at key difficult times:
e.g. He is always in sight of a named member of staff or MDS at lunchtime.
He comes in first so there is no lining up where there could potentially be an issue.
He may be asked to sometimes do a club or indoor activity instead of being outside with lots of children
He sits near the door so it is easy to get him out of class when there is an issue.
He may need to be seated near the TA for more support in class.
There could be a designated calm down place.
He may benefit from 1:1 work on emotions and managing his feelings

Some of these may not be available due to lack of staff or funding especially as he the EHCP process isn't complete.

They won't however mean that he will not be excluded for violence. Even with a support plan, violence may result in exclusions as the school has a responsibility to safeguard adults and children in school.

Your family member's best bet is to pursue diagnosis and an EHC plan. If they have the funds, an EP assessment might be helpful.

I love how several of us have told FACTUALLY that the system (we are currently in with our own children) is not currently operational and there's nothing that can be done on our or the schools end just to be told by others that our real life experiance is 'wrong' and that we don't understand or are doing it wrong .

I have been through it myself as I have the same condition my DS is believed to have, Im a fucking expert from a lifetime of first hand experience so I don't need to be talked down to and told I don't understand and Im doing it 'wrong'.

@Streamingbannersofdawn

Its not as simple as just finding a specialist school unfortunately. Its a long process and the LA will often fight you all the way.

My son wasn't violent but he couldn't manage the classroom. His school felt it was absolutely fine for him wander the halls all day shadowed by a member of staff. He was 4 years behind in his education and still we had to spend £40.000 and a year of fighting ending up at the first tier tribunal to get him into specialist provision. It's hideous.

The LA lost miserably by the way we got everything he needed and then some.

Yep. This is the norm, sadly.

I really like our LA. They care passionately and work hard in the teams I have met. But we still had to go through a horrendous and expensive appeal process, because they can't properly fund one kid voluntarily, even if the law says they should - because they can't do it for all of them.

It's money. If every single person reading this emailed their MP tonight and demanded a billion pound uplift to SEN funding, and made it an absolute priority, we'd have kids in schools that met needs - and it would save so much taxpayer money: 3/4 of young men in Young Offenders institutions are diagnosable with some problem that has, usually, been missed; CAMHS is awash with autistic kids whose diagnoses came too late, and then think how many able autistic people are unemployable because school just broke them.

We need schools that are mainstreams, but with classrooms designed to be low sensory, and fewer kids, and teachers who are all SENCO level, preferably in old village school type settings, so low stimulation and small. Kids would need to access those without EHCPs, and there would need to be liaison with a good secondary so they could have a similar secondary setting. Instead, we fail these kids catastrophically in primary, they crash out in secondary, and they are either reclusive at home on computers, or being educated, poorly, at vast expense in private schools for very aggressive, angry kids - because all the state special schools are full.

It would save billions, to invest better in disabled children at an age where early intervention could be effective. But the billions saved would be in the decades ahead, and so no government really needs to care.

All through lockdown, parents loudly complained that their children were missing months of school.

My son's been out of school for five years. He's brilliantly clever. He's gentle, kind, and terrified of anger. And he's pretty much a recluse.

I can't hear Pink's "What About Us?" without crying. Next time you hear it, remember the tens of thousands of kids being failed across the country, despite LAs and SENCOs who would desperately love to help, but instead have to block provision at every turn. A caseworker in my LA has to deny support all the time, and quietly buys Euromillion tickets in the hope that if he ever wins a big rollover, he can afford to tell his team: yep. Yep to them all - support all of them. He's not the enemy, any more than the SENCOs are. It comes down to money.

What about all the lives that ended in disaster, indeed. What about them.

Actually it sounds as though it's the right course of action by the school -the more exclusions -the more the LA will have to do something. Does he have an EHCP?

It's ok to say 'he head butts' himself and be blase -that he has hurt a teacher -but that could have life long implications for his teacher. I know one teacher that was headbutted by a '6 year old' with anger problems -and could never work again.

This is huge -so saying his is kind to other teachers doesn't negate the behaviour. School is not able to cope with him safely or keep its staff or other students safe- so exclusion is the only option a 1-2-1- TA might not even be answer.

An EP assessment is

He has hurt a teacher before and he has hurt class mates

It appears that a schools is the only setting left in which people, both teachers and students, are expected to accept that being hurt is something they just have to accept.

Can anyone suggest any other setting in which it is considered acceptable?

Having read some more posts I can't believe that some posters think that what this school is doing is OK. The school cannot just decide that they can't deal with him, so pressurise the parents to remove him. I'm fully aware of the pressures on state schools, I work as a teacher in one myself, but there are procedures in place which the school must follow if they want to exclude a student, and even if they're not getting the support from the LA that they need, they are legally and morally obliged to follow those procedures. Any school wilfully bypassing those procedures is not a good school. Yes it's very very difficult, but it is these sorts of issues that school leadership are responsible for. It's not all about getting good SATS results and nativity plays, the headteacher is paid to deal with this sort of stuff too. I can well imagine that they can't get the correct support and funding to deal with it, but it's simply not OK to try and subvert the correct legal process because of that, and a school leader worth their position would not do that. Of course some schools do this, but it is wrong.

@Foxyloxy1plus1 If the child manages his behaviour whilst the parent is there, this demonstrates that he is Cardiff able of management no his behaviour and might help with assessment of needs. I understand the safeguarding issues, but if the parent is DBS checked it’s no different from volunteer readers at the school - which still happens n many primaries. If the parent doesn’t work, it needn’t be temporary, but could be a regular check in and check up, if agreed by the school. Obviously, Covid raises other risks and a thorough risk assessment would need to be carried out, but that’s the art of the school’s duties. I believe parents need to take a more active role in such cases. You can’t leave everything to the school, you have to carry out parental responsibility too.

I'm horrified by the number of people on this thread who are using additional needs to excuse children bullying and physically hurting others. 'Ohhh it's a medical condition, he's not a bully' - he can, in fact, be a bully with a medical condition!

Non-neurotypical people are just people. Having additional needs doesn't make someone a bad person, no - but it doesn't make them a good person either. They still have to, you know, not hurt people.

(And to clarify as I know this assumption will be made if I don't - I'm not autistic, but I'm not neurotypical either.)

Autocorrect *capable lol