nalubeadsgirl:
First off - Wonderful to see a teacher considering parents perspective/ desires. I really am pleased to see it. I say stick to your guns - parents will welcome honesty - but given what you've said, tread carefully - your school (and the Head) clearly do not welcome transparency. Possibly best to argue this from the point of view of OFSTED expectations (which now require this information is known by students/ parents).
Second: What on earth? Indigo & nalubeadsgirl - why on earth wouldn't a school communicate to a parent they've tested and indeed put a child on SEN register. Surely if a child is struggling and the school identify that there is a problem and attempt to assist with it that's a good thing and parents would be so grateful for the help.
Back to the hiding NC Levels fro parents thing. (warning: here commences rant...)
What is going on here? I had to really fight to get NC Level information out of our school and basically things only changed when OFSTED was about to inspect and it was clear that they required that both pupils and parents knew how their children were performing against NC Levels. I've had a rather heated exchange with another teaching professional on another MN feed because she refused to provide some form a brief written summary for parent/ teacher meetings and said that she gave all that information verbally (which being fairly ancient would mean that I would only forget it 30 minutes later).
Personally as a parent I am not angry, upset or likely to go 'postal' should I learn that DD1 was struggling. I would just be concerned. I just want to do all I could here at home to help my DD1 and the school with whatever the learning issues might be. In our case, it turned out the main problem was that maths was taught in KS1 by just giving the poor kids the same test over and over again (11+ club for those of you who have this scheme) and because the children weren't progressing the teacher had them spend other numeracy hours practicing (read memorising) the answers so that they could pass the test. When it wasn't 11+ club days they were endlessly doing pattern sequences and colouring in segments of caterpillars, train cars, etc... By Y2 DD1 was functionally innumerate - she was completely missing the skills to add numbers over 20 or subtract at all - not because she was lazy or goofing around in class, but because the basics quite simply were never taught. My complaints to OFSTED which ended up with a personal interview during inspection have resulted in the school going on one year notice to improve maths provision. (OFSTED I'm your biggest fan!)
What concerns me here as well nalubeadsgirl is that the school (as was also the case with our school) has a tendency to just repeatedly tell parents 'everything is fine, your DC is doing well' rather than honestly convey the information that DC is struggling with reading and writing, could you try and do a bit more at home?
I may be mad. I am clearly ancient. But...why oh why do schools refuse to see education as a triangle between child - parent - teacher (school), where the child, parent and teacher can all work together to help with learning (whether they're struggling with a learning disability or they're a high flyer who needs more challenge). Why is this so difficult? so impossible?
I have just witnessed the distress of Y6 parents at our school (many of whom have had years of 'your DC is doing fine' parent/ teacher meetings) come to terms with their child not passing the 11+ or failing to get a high enough score for the grammar schools in the area and then on top of that deal with the fact that the catchment for the one well-respected state secondary schools in our area has greatly shrunk, so their children are now going to the rough sink school where