ASN and Higher PE

[jinkers1]

My son is doing Higher PE - he has significant fine motor skills difficulties and perception problems, as well as difficulties with organising information. On reflection, it perhaps wasn't the best subject, but he struggles with school and had limited options. He has to do two sports - rugby is his main one, and he thinks he scraped a pass in his recent assessment, after months of training very hard. However, he needs to pass a unit assessment in a second sport- probably basketball -and he's just been told that he probably won't, and therefore won't be allowed to sit the exam. The school are being useless, despite being well aware of his ASN. They've said no allowances for his problems ( which aren't trivial) can be made in this subject. I can't make sense of the SQA's labyrinthine website - I've emailed them, but want to speak to school tomorrow. It's a long shot, but I wondered if anyone had any experience/knowledge of this? It just seems so unfair that a child who through sheer bloody persistence managed to get to the point of doing Highers can be knocked back at this point.

Can't help specifically, as ds only did Nat5 PE.

Can he swim? Iirc, the swimming assessment (which includes Life saving, at least in Nat 5) is one of the more straight forward of the sports.

In none of the sports are they looking for specific ability - they are just assessing whether you have a series of specific skills (so in life saving for example, it includes "assessing the situation, producing a plan of action").

I say again, I only know the Nat 5 requirements - and I only know the swimming/life guard example because ds' PE teacher (who wasn't his rugby coach and knew nothing about rugby and had never seen ds pla) was surprised when we told him that ds would be doing rugby rather than the "easier" swimming assessment

Fortunately, his rugby coach at school got trained up on Nat 5 assessment for rugby I might have commented that I thought it was wrong for a School of Rugby only to allow rugby as a sport at Higher level and not for Nat 5 and he get 40/40 for his practical assessment

I'd have also thought that the school should be making some form of accommodation for your ds' ASN - in the same way that some kids get to use computers in their exams. But I might be naive . WankersHacksAndThieves might be able to advise as she had to fight for extra support for her ds.

Hi, yes, both my DSs do get support in terms of using laptops for their exams, this is to accommodate their very poor writing ability. Neither of them have been specifically diagnosed with anything but it's clear that their ability to write so that it can be easily understood is , A - Very difficult and time consuming and B - Effects the quality of what they are writing as the flow is affected. We suspect that DS2 may have some element of dyspraxia though that has only recently occurred to us . No idea what is going on with DS1 though, he is talented in the fine motor elements of graph comm and art but his hand writing is atrocious

I have no experience of PE I'm afraid as neither took it. However, I would expect the school to be making reasonable accommodation for him and if they can't do that by reducing the achievement criteria for the sport chosen, they should at least be seeing if there is another sport that would suit him better. Unless he has suddenly parachuted into the school for Highers, you would have expected that the school should have had a view as to his ability to pass prior to allowing him to take the subject.

I appreciate that it is difficult when they get forced into a choice due to the columns so I am surprised that the school didn't look into this more for him prior to him starting.

Is there another sport that he would have a better chance in? I appreciate that it's now very late in the day to start something completely new but if there was something with an element of crossover it would be good.

I've pasted in this link as it wont let me copy and past specific parts, but it looks to me that the SQA expect that the individual needs of the learners should be taken into account.

www.sqa.org.uk/files/nu/CfE_Unit_H_PhysicalEducation_FactorsImpactingonPerformance.pdf

It also says further down that evidence should be supplied for at least one physical activity which seems to imply that one would be okay rather than two?

Have a read through in case I am missing something but if not then use this as a basis of your discussion with the school. It is clear from the info in the link that the SQA don't want to exclude people.

Ah, just noticed the performance unit does say 2 sports, I was looking at the other unit.

Thanks so much for useful comments - at work, waiting for school and hopefully SQA to call back. DS has to use a computer for all written work, and the school,which he's attended since first year, are well aware of his problems - this has been sprung on him and us with no warning. Will look at the SQA info, and prepare to do battle (again!) with school.

Good luck jinkers I was still thinking about this and as far as I remember it talks about "activity" rather than sport so maybe there is a chance to do something else such as gym training, running etc but I've been unable to find a list of activities that can be used.

Surely the point is that the pupil understands the contribution that the activity makes to their body, the risks involved, the best methods to improve etc so, since his other activity is a team sport, there should be scope for the 2nd one to be something individual rather than another team sport? The only thing mine are any good at is swimming but since the school don't have a pool and the "local" club is essentially the training ground for the National team, they have no chance to either do PE they enjoy and can contribute to or complete for the school. It's all so depressing.