talk to me about IEP's

[thisisyesterday]

was having a chat with ds1's teacher earlier.
She told me he had 3 IEP's last year.
not really knowing a huge deal about them I just said "oh, ok"

anyway, from googling it would appear that I should have been involved in this.....?

You most certainly should have and indeed so should he - afaik you are supposed to sign them for a start.

An IEP is a way of tailoring what the teacher does for the whole class specifically for your child.

There should be some targets on it that he is working towards and also how they will measure the targets and these should then be reviewed.

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be along shortly - our school is very poor with IEPs so I can't really share any positive experience!

:-S yes, that is what i had read

is it possible that she doesn't mean IEP at all??

An IEP normally refers to targets for a kid on the SEN register. And sometimes schools are very naughty and neither tell you that your kid is on the SEN register, nor discuss the IEP with you.

However, other schools routinely give an IEP to all children. As all it is is a doc detailing targets (often 3) .... So it is possible to do one for every child.

Do you think your child is on the SEN register?

we've been pressing them since this time last year for a referral as we suspect some kind of asd or similar
he had a few issues in reception, hence the IEP's. but I was never told about them

they've been saying he is ok in school (well, the headteacher has) and that they want to wait and see rather than refer

we went to the GP who agreed to do the referral for us, and then when I talked to his teacher today (different to last year) and mentioned this she said that he'd had these IEP's

Ok. Then he is on the SEN register and they haven't told you.

The thing to do now is to see his current IEP. And from now on book termly 'IEP review' meetings. I just email my SENCO and ask for one....

Good that the GP has referred you.

Stay on MN (especially the SN board) and get really informed about SEN and it will help a lot....

apparently he doesn't have one now. but she said if she put him on one that would be 4 so far and she could use that to refer to the paediatrician??

AFAIK only the GP can refer to the paed - not the school.

Ask her to create one now, either with you or to be reviewed with you. Make sure the targets are SMART ( specific, measurable, achievable, relavant and timebound)

My son has ASD, and to be honest it is a real nightmare trying to get good IEPs if you want them to be about behaviour rather than achieving academic targets.

If it was for reading it migh be something like: To be able to read 30 CVC words in one minute by 15th Nov

For behaviour I've always been given ones like: To sit quietly on the carpet after lunch time 3 days out of 5.... Hopefully you'll be able to design better targets (I certainly know more now than I did when I was signing that one :) )

But really it's not just about the IEP doc, it's also about the chat you'll have with the SENCO / teacher. What are their concerns about him? How diff is his behaviour from the norm? etc, etc.

You definitely should have been advised/involved. Having an IEP has nothing to do with getting a referral to a paed. Ds got referred to the community paed by our GP before he had an IEP at school. The outcome of his paed assessment had no impact on school at all (paed thought he was fine). School assessment (more specific to learning) revealed problems and an IEP resulted.

The hardest thing I've found is getting the IEP focused on what are ds's issues. Just had latest one and will be having a meeting after half term to get it re-written!