Anyone changed schools not due to house move

[mummytwobears]

My daughter is about to complete yr 1, we've been unhappy with her school since she was in reception but have stuck with hoping things would improve, they haven't.
She has SEN but isn't sufficiently supported. She meets her academic targets and that's all her school care about. They are not interested in her potential or her individual needs which are simply not met.
We've met with head of school, her class teachers and SENCO many many times but still nothing changes, they just fob us off or ignore our concerns and requests entirely.

Iam going to meet head of another school this morning to see what they can offer. Her current school has 210 pupils and is rated as outstanding, the other one has just 30 pupils, which is less than her current class! And is rated as good.

I am so torn about what to do, I have a lot of friends at the current school and it's a very popular school but they don't meet my daughters needs. Socially I think it would be a huge loss to move, as my daughter has a lot of friends but she isn't thriving and she is falling further and further behind.

Has anyone been in a similar situation, how did you decide?

Cheers x

I think you'll have a good sense of what decision to make once you've met with the head of the other school and compared their approach to that of her current school.

Some friends of mine changed their children's school for similar reasons when the oldest was in Y4. They had put it off because they were worried how the change would affect her, she had made some friends etc.

It was the best thing they could have done. The new school took her SEN seriously, provided appropriate support and she took off academically. This helped her feel better about herself, make new friends and enjoy school for the first time in years.

The key seemed to be that the school met her academic/learning needs, and this helped everything else fit into place.

I moved dd in yr1 from a small school to a bigger school, it was the best thing I have done. Dd has a statement and the larger school meant more resources and experience, a larger friendship group and better preparation for secondary.
Does she have a statement? Maybe ask for a review, think about getting private assessments and get the support you want written into the statement is a way forward.

We moved my Ds due to lack of support for his SEN from a 90 a year intake to a specialist school with just over 90 in the whole school. Easily the right thing to do. DS does have such close friendships in school 2 but he now has a chance of scraping some GCSEs. You can stay in touch with friends from the original school if you put the effort in.

I wouldn't worry about moving her, but is such a small school a good idea? It will provide very limited friendship opportunities and may not having much in the way of funding to provide the necessary professional help for your daughter.

Are there any other options in your area that you could look at?

Like pyrrah - I came on to suggest you think very carefully about moving her to such a small school if she has SEN. The smaller the school, the smaller the budget so the less money there is to play with. With the best will in the world, if the money isn't there, it isn't there. My experience of working in a very small school (although bigger than the one you're talking about) is that it's very caring and the children are known by all members of staff, and treated very much as individuals. Their individual strengths are known to everyone and celebrated. But it's incredibly hard support some SEN children with the limited resources (and people) available. So for you, I suspect it depends on the nature of your daughter's SEN.

Thank you all for your most helpful and considered thoughts, I've certainly got a lot to think about.
I met with the head of the new school today and she was so welcoming and the school was inspiring, very big on arts, drama and creativity, all of which suit my daughters personality.
My daughters SEN is that she is deaf and hyper mobile so wears special boots to walk and can't run and so on. She has funding for deaf equipment such as loop system and radio aid, this is attached to her and was provided through LEA rather than school, we have in writing as part of her EHC plan that if she moves school the equipment and funding for it will move with her.

My husband is going to visit next week and my daughter us going to attend a day there to see if she likes it.

Thanks again, it's so helpful to read different experiences xxxxxx

In that case, I wouldn't worry about moving her from a SEN point of view. It's when a school has to buy resources for a specific child, or a child needs 1:1 support or interventions that a small school might struggle. It's all very well saying there's money devolved to the budget for SEN - it's never enough.

What does she do in PE lessons? Does she watch the class? Change with the others and then do what she can? Or does she go elsewhere for the duration? If there are only 30 children in the school there's going to be a very limited pool of people she can be with if she can't join in with the lesson.

She joins in and does the best she can, she's always last but she genuinely enjoys taking part in the running, throwing and catching side of things.She doesn't like the gym sessions at her current school as she can't do any of the activities and gets upset. Her school are big on swimming they have their own pool but I had to stop her doing that as no one supported her with drying her ears or putting on her ear protectors and she kept getting ear infections from wearing moist hearing aids, the last one resulted in perforated ear drum again, so now she just sits on the side which is a real shame as she loves to swim but school can't provide the little bit of help she needs with it.

That sounds dire, absolutely awful.

I hope that your dh and dd also like the alternative school, as it certainly looks like the way to go from your posts.

I could go on and on!! I've been reduced to tears in front of my daughters reception class when her teacher had a go at me saying the school had spent too much money on my daughter already after she was assessed as needing the radio aid as well the loop system.

The ear infection is a big thing for us because she had one that led to an infection in her skull and then a brain abscess, so all infections need to be assessed in hospital every time. School know all this, and are supposed to ring me if her ears hurt, two weeks ago she came out of school and I could see she was in pain, she'd told her teachers but they'd told her she was ok, later that night her ear drum burst and she had blood coming out of her ear, two weeks later it's still not healed.

When she started school she was assessed as having vocabulary skills as 4 months ahead of her age, despite her hearing loss her speech has always been amazing, she didn't sit, stand or crawl till age 2 yrs so spoke instead, now after two years at school her speech is 11 months behind :( school have done nothing to address this and just accept it as inevitable for a deaf child.
I'm furious really, we worked so hard to help overcome her disabilities before she started school and I feel all our hard work is being undone and her very resilient nature has been tested to it's limit.

Interestingly another parent with a deaf child is also moving their child from current school for similar reasons.

Thanks for your replies, it's very sad it's this hard to get support for our children.

I am. DD2 has been having issues with her handwriting for the past two years, but as she is meeting academic targets, she has got no support whatsoever. Not allowed to use a laptop in class (even though she can type and her OT recommends it). She is starting to struggle a bit more academically now (moved down a reading and maths group), but I suspect it would be another two more years before they would intervene - can't wait that long. We considered other local schools, but part of the problem is the LEA, so decided not to pursue that. Also considered a school in the neighbouring LEA, but eventually decided to bite the bullet and go private - they are putting in place a plan to support her and everything is looking good..... hope it works out!

Thank you, hope your move works out for you too. X