Possible SEN discrimination after child moved down maths set at school

[Meforthree]

Does anyone have any experience with SEN needs discrimination? Our DC is in year 6 at a relatively selective school with documented slow processing and dyslexia but regularly scores 129ish in maths assessments.

He has now been moved out of the top maths set (the lower sets do less challenging work) after having a teacher who was very noticeably resistant to making SEN adjustments for him - and given those grades, (which put him in the 97th percentile nationally) the only thing I can think is they equate his slower pace with lower cognitive ability. Surely this is discrimination?

Ex maths teacher

yes at gcse level the maths is split into foundation and higher and foundation groups won’t be taught the higher content.

at year 6 whether state or private this won’t be driving any decisions about setting.

most schools are fairly fluid about sets until year 9 or so and students are moved up or down based on exam results and often their own preferences. My dd preferred to be top of set 2 rather than bottom of set 1.

it is most likely that decisions about grouping were made on the result of end of year tests. Ask the school if this is the case, and ask to see your child’s papers.

setting decisions are very rarely made by the individual teacher it’s usually a head of department decision so the issues you had with the teacher last year are unlikely to have had an impact.

Then this is surely the point to pursue?

It sounds like a pretty poor school (and you are paying for this!) whereby the work that the child is given is linked to the number of their set and not to the child's actual ability. It's very common to have an overlap in abilities between sets, which generally means that the work covered by adjacent sets overlaps and schools are used to catering for this. It's also common to have able children that might work better in a lower set that goes more slowly (which may turn out to be the case for your son) but they should absolutely still have access to more challenging work. If Set 1 have the more challenging work already, it's not a case of coming up with anything new and it should just be a question of making it available to your DS (and any other children at the top end of the set) if they have finished the less challenging work?

Is your child staying at this school for Year 7, or is he moving elsewhere? I'd be wanting to find out now how he might be taught in Year 7 if he's staying so you can plan ahead.

Thanks yes - the confusing bit though is that his end of year assessment grades have been consistently excellent - 128/129 out of 141, so 97th percentile. So it would really have to be based in large part on teacher observation, because otherwise what is it based on?

We are certainly keen to move him at this point, yes.

Just so that you don't embarrass yourself when you contact school; it's the Equality Act 2010 that you should cite

I’m not familiar with the assessments the school use.

what I would point out though is that the vast majority of private schools don’t have the full ability range.

so the lower ability kids are (generally) not in private school because they are sifted out at either entry st 4 or entry at 7.

obviously there are exceptions and there are plenty of kids like my son who is and was insanely good at moths but couldn’t do languages for toffee and regularly scored 1 or 2 in his end of year French exam.

so the whole year group is in the top half of the ability range and the bottom set kids are probably average (50th percentile) or slightly higher.

at the senior school my kids went there was the occasional grade 4 in some subjects but basically everyone at gcse got 5 or above and lots of kids got strings of 9s.

so because he is 97th percentile nationally doesn’t necessarily mean that if you put the kids in order by their scores he is top set. There may be (and I only say may be because I don’t know where this is) a lot of kids scoring higher than he does.

97th percentile in most state schools would get you into top set but again there are exceptions - some affluent areas have very high achieving schools where it wouldn’t. (I used to work at one like this)

Is there a SEN coordinator at the school? Can you address it with them and maybe ask the Maths teacher to join a subsequent conversation with the SEN coordinator in attendance.

You might also have to gently challenge the teacher about their expectations of behaviours that equate to success and that there are clearly students who do not fit the expected profile but do perform well and that finding ways to challenge and stretch students who do not fit the profile, is important. Their own tests show that your son is in the top % of performers and therefore deserves the chance to achieve his potential.

(I have had similar conversations.. my daughter rarely completed class work but never got things wrong! She was between the ages of 8 and 11.. she was not diagnosed with a processing issue and from.the age of 12 onwards was working at the required pace for her class without any adjustments, albeit not at the pace of some.. but often with better results. I fought to have her in the top set and she got 97% in her end of year engineering maths exam at university.)

I’m a maths tutor so I am biased but I would say get him a maths tutor. I work with a lot of SEN children (I’m dyslexic and have ASD myself) and sometimes the classroom environment is hard for them. If you get him a tutor he can still do the challenging work but he can do it in an environment and way that suits him.

Make sure you ask the right question and find someone with SEN experience though.

Thanks - that’s so wonderful about your daughter, well done to her!

One of the problems tbh is that the SENco is really useless. Eg my son’s official learning profile kept being distributed with the wrong diagnosis for a year; she really doesn’t seem to understand slow processing (or care tbh!) herself etc. The school in general are very bad at accommodating SEN needs and so as a culture it’s not great…

But being in a different set is an adjustment.

He has a wonderful SEN tutor already actually - she covers everything. And she used to be on the SLT of a nearby selective independent and thinks DC is “absolutely top set material” but that the school probably don’t want to have to make the required reasonable adjustments in the top set

It’s not, because it’s equating speed with cognitive ability. They are not the same thing. As I’ve written above, it’s rather like moving someone who is excellent at English comprehension to a different English set, where they don’t do Dickens but something easier, because they’re dyslexic. You’re addressing the wrong problem and providing the wrong “fix”, and denying the child a curriculum they would be excellent at given a minor adjustment in the meantime.

What are the adjustments, and do they impact the speed the rest of the class can work at?

Truly depressed by how many people don’t seem to understand the difference between a SEN need and academic ability on this thread. Although perhaps that is, in of itself, a useful indication of how teachers not sufficiently trained in this area are also approaching it.

Eg an adjustment he was given last year (which we suggested and pushed for) was for him to go at his own pace in mental maths lessons where they had to go through 30 questions in 40 minutes. Everyone else was encouraged to move to the next question at the same time; he was eventually allowed to move at his own pace. His grades immediately went from 16/30 to 27/30 and no one else had to slow down.

The set is likely to cover the same curriculum and not move on so quickly, giving your child time to process. It is an adjustment. You’ve chosen a school that sets for maths, not all do.

If youre concerned arrange a meeting with the head of maths and the SENCo to discuss the decision.

OP has made it clear they're not covering the same work with top set getting more complicated than lower, and her son is perfectly capable of top set maths.

@Meforthree get this moved to the SEN board or repost there. Most people don't understand disabilities.

Children are put in the set where they can best thrive and best reach their potential. It sounds like the pace of top set is moving too fast for him and he will do better where the content is taught a bit more slowly. Parents who push for their children to be in top set at all costs misunderstand the point of setting. Children get top grades from a range of different sets not just the top one.

It's called the Equality Act.

How do you suggest he stays in the top set without impacting the pace of work for the other children?

Yes, I see that.

I think OP needs to have a calm conversation with the teachers and the SENCo, as it is unlikely they are making decisions that are not made with the child’s best interests in mind. Prep schools have no reason to hold a child back, they want children to do as well as possible as it reflects on them. Having a hysterical parent crying ‘equalities act’ is unlikely to have the desired effect. Parents get very hung up on the idea of ‘top set’ and see it as a slight, but the reality is that not all children can be ‘top set’ and it is my experience that many, many children will be getting SS129/130, and not just the very top. It’s not unusual to have children who are not in top set achieving 130 by the time they’re in y5.

How would the teacher achieve this without slowing the rest of the class down?

Yes, that’s a bit more bespoke teaching, really. You can’t pretend it wouldn’t affect the rest of the class.

Have written the answer to this question multiple times upthread.