Progress Review Day/ Barriers to Learning

[insanityscratching]

Tomorrow is dd's first progress review day since starting secondary. I have got her data sheet today and she is mostly in red which means that she isn't making the expected progress.
Dd is quite worried as apparently "any reds are to be discussed with parents and assurances made that the student will make the required effort to change the reds to amber"
Dd has autism and a statement of SEN and yet no allowances have been made for this and apparently she has no barriers to learning it is purely a lack of effort on her part.
Her targets/levels are aspirational ones that are ridiculous to be honest considering how much effort it takes dd to cope with being in school and to be frank the full time TA support is poor at best not least because their grasp of dd's needs is tenuous. There is no pro active support, everything is mopping up after I have raised concerns and offered solutions and it drives me mad tbh.
So would I be unreasonable to demand that the targets/levels are adjusted to ones that dd has at least a chance of meeting and that her autism is recorded as a barrier to learning and allowances made accordingly because quite frankly if school were making half the effort dd and myself are making then it would be ten times more than we have experienced so far.

insanityscratching, a complaint from a parent is not going to get rid of a TA! More likely she just didn't want to look after your DD anymore, you don't exactly come across as fun to work with.

If it wouldn't out me I'd send you copies of the HT's correspondence so you could see for yourself that my complaint worked,she had no choice as to whether she worked with dd or not and she very much wanted to continue that's why the SENCo tried to brush it under the carpet.
Are you a TA? "Looked after" is not what I want anyway support and enable is what I expect. Whether the TA's like me or not I don't care but seeing as dd has had TA support since she was three years old and I have never complained about any TA previously and don't even complain now when the basics are missed I only advise. Added to which I keep in touch with all the TA's she's had since she was 3 so I don't think I'm that unreasonable to work with tbh.

There is another tactic, and please don't snap at me esp. as I was the first person to agree YANBU. But longer term it would benefit your daughter more if she could learn to brush sodding targets off & just work to her own benchmarks. May seem like an impossible feat to achieve that, but maybe less impossible than getting a school to change the targets on paper.

Oh no I wouldn't snap at you and tbh I tell dd repeatedly the targets are a load of tosh which works up until she gets into school and is told "that piece of work isn't up to standard" or "there needs to be more effort made if you are to get to 6b by the end of the year" Because they are there then obviously the school pushes the child to meet them regardless of their needs. Obviously if the targets were achievable then there would be less pressure exerted.
In Primary they told dd she was to try for a 4, it didn't stop her getting what she was capable of but it did mean that she didn't feel pressured or anxious. Regardless of the targets set dd will achieve what she is capable of, realistic ones would mean that she wouldn't feel as pressured or stressed though.

insanity:

I think people are trying to indicate to you that the school is under a lot of pressure to know what the expected target for each child vis a vis their KS2 performance is and closely track their progress against that target during KS3. That is the context in which they're working. They're under pressure to get your DD from point A to point B on the NC Level spectrum (or whatever they use to replace it and vis a vis the new GCSE 1-9 Level system).

You can't change that - but you are right that how they're handling your daughter - the incessant pressure to preform at a certain ability target is causing her a great deal of stress and apparently resulting in self-harm.

You have in the space of 4 short months developed an adversarial relationship with the school because of the TA relationship with your child. I think the question to ask yourself is whether you are willing to invest in this new TA and build constructive relationships which improve life for your own child (and hopefully future children with similar issues) or not.

You sound deeply unhappy with the school - not just the red target thing - so my advice is that perhaps you need to take stock over half-term about the school's approach/ ability to work with you & your daughter and what steps are best for her going forward.

HTH

Hi,
I hope your review meeting went ok. I would suggest that you move over to the special needs children thread for help.

Although school will not be able to amend targets as they are all set from KS2 results, you do need a meeting with SENCO to discuss ways to support your DD. For school to be using phrases about work not good enough is not going to do any thing for her self esteem. My DD is in yr9 now and we have found it hard/battle to get school to listen to how my DD ticks even though it states it on her statement. She made no progress in some subjects for a year and half and her self esteem was very low. Finally she is now getting the support that has been on her statement all along and she is a different child and doing brilliantly educationally, also she is a happy child.

First thing to do is ask your DD what she thinks needs to change to help her be happy and do well in lessons. if she is anything like my DD she may not know, so I made a big long list of help that could be provided and she ticked the ones she thought would help. I hope you get somewhere and I am sure you are aware that unfortunately you do have to fight you childs corner to get the right support in place.

One big question to ask at your statement annual review is 'If the statement support has been put in place, it is not obviously working anymore; therefore, what do YOU think needs to be put in place to help her progress and well being'

There are lots of useful people on special needs thread that would be happy to help you.