ASD in mainstream secondary

[Verbena37]

Hi,
DS yr 7 diagnosed HFASD last winter and has started at secondary two weeks ago.
On a positive note, I think he prefers having lots of new subjects to learn but from a pastoral side of things, I'm just not sure what to expect, and at what level, from staff.

I already met with the SENCo last term so they know his issues and needs yet since he started, and I realise it's only early days, I've been having to email school to point out issues that I would think staff would be more thoughtful about. Stuff like organising his time and not being able to remember noting down homework and not remembering to go to the loo before lessons start etc.

To the staff, I'm pretty sure they think me overprotective but for DS, who has had late night meltdowns for the past two weeks, it's not trivial but things that would enable him to feel less anxious.

Am I hoping for too much? I almost feel apologetic that I have to raise things with them.

I am a tutor who works with many students who have ASD or other special needs. I see how a variety of schools deal with this. Although I do understand what teachers are saying about time and numbers of students, the fact is that some schools manage things much better than others. I'd does need to be system based rsthervthan expecting every teacher to remember every need but it can be done.

That's good to know educatingarti. It is sad that it all boils down to time and the lack of it.

flyingfauxpas your DS sounds similar to mine. Doesn't want to stick out by doing the things they think they're being helpful by doing. Is DS school, they think it's really helpful having the chill out room and sometimes for some kids, I'm sure it is. But what it needs is more inbuilt systems to educate the kids who are mean and don't understand and also to help the children with SEN cope better making new friends, feeling safe, holding more break time clubs etc....things that are helpful but not only limited to SEND children. Maybe look at their current policies and wondering if they can change them to make them more inclusive for everybody, rather than only NT children.
I don't know. I'm so tired just thinking about it.

Verbena having been through all this with ds2 and pretty well come out the other side (with a spell of home education and an EHCP) I would say that it is worth telling the teachers immediately of any concerns, however small, things that upset your child or bothered him (like losing a sheet or not knowing what the homework was, or who to ask) Those things can often be sorted incredibly easily and next time the teacher will know to be more explicit or to temper their exasperation. No-one will be telling them the small print about your child.

I found that the more I communicated the better things became, whereas the less I communicated the more upset and frustrated I became and son likewise. At the end of Year 7 I found I could have dropped Art homework Music homework had support for ds2 in the choir (which was inclusive, but I didn't realise this) enrolled him in homework club (which didn't appear to be suitable for SEN students when I first asked). By that point I was tearing my hair out in the mistaken assumption that I couldn't ask for any dispensations.

The toilet pass is a very important issue. Would the teachers really want your child to be humiliated by soiling or wetting himself? - it does happen. It is a physiological need - ASD children often have very poor awareness of the need to go until it is too late, and holding on for long periods makes things much worse. I didn't have this problem with ds at secondary but I have had to mention it to teachers in primary because even in primary I cannot think of anything worse than a child wetting themselves in front of their peers.

The other issue you should discuss is the quantity of homework. Decide with the SENCO what they think a reasonable amount of time for your child to spend on their homework across the subjects. It may take your child much longer to complete the homework than another child who is less tired after his school day. It can be tailored. The homework is for your child's benefit not the schools. Keep the discussion open, make suggestions, try not to be on the defensive.

|The worst that can happen is that your child hates school, hates learning, and refuses to go, and makes no friends. It is a possibility. I took ds out of school after Year 7. Despite a kind and supportive SENCo. It can get really bad. Your child is not a burden on the school to be tolerated, he has as much right to be there and to be supported as anyone else, and he can probably give back an enormous amount to the school with the right support. Ds2 is now one of the better behaved children in his new [mainstream] secondary school despite his ASD; I think the staff appreciate that despite some of his difficulties he contributes as much as anyone else to the life of the school.

What helped ds also has been to be in some of the smaller remedial classes for some subjects; even though his ability may have been higher, it was nice to be in small groups occasionally - the relentlessness of the large groups was very demoralising. Also a SEN lunchtime club, which he is now moving away from, joining other groups instead.

Thanks so much for your post knitting. There is some really good info in it that I will follow up.

Had parents evening tonight and I explained to the form tutor that the reason I had emailed the subject staff so far, rather than her, was to save her time trying to find out details and I didn't want to bother her when she didn't teach him any lessons. She totally understood and said she ask about a toilet pass....she said they can hold them discreetly to the staff so their back is towards the class. I think that could work.....if he agrees!
She said how lovely and polite he is and I'm thankful because some of the stories from the first two weeks of boys fighting, being rude, punching girls in the face etc all sounded quite worrying! At least DS is generally a good pupil who just wants to get on with everybody.

Thanks again.

"I'm wondering whether setting up a local informal family support group at the school on a weekday morning might help?"

Just re-animating this thread, because I thought of you today, Verbena. We were invited to a coffee morning at school (actually in the attached community learning centre) for parents of pupils supported by the ALN department. Partly it was a catchup session & also a council family support worker was there, but also advertised as an attempt to bring parents together for some mutual support.

Also, re. another of your comments:
"It surely wouldn't be hard for the teacher to have a page for each class, with brief support needs on it? E.g. Verbenas' DS - ASD, toilet, introvert, no touching, fidgets."
I found out today (at the coffee morning!) that the IEP that gets given to all the teachers for supported pupils has a big yellow box at the top with a few key messages, just as you're saying. (So the example was: "If X is upset, leave them to sit quietly, or allow them to leave the class & go to room 6") So these things obviously are possible - even if they don't always work!

Thanks Error414.
Yes, a simple box on their sheet would be a good idea.
It's all been quite quiet this past week. Ds seems to have settled slightly better and is getting more used to the routines. He has even bought food he doesn't usually eat from the lunch canteen.

verbena I feel like I could have written your posts. Ds1 has hfasd and as also just started year 7. It's certainly a steep learning curve for both of us.

I used to work as a TA in a mainstream high school and we were all expected to know each students needs before going into the class. It wasn't always 100% perfect but we could also check on SIMS, a computer programme to look up a student and their SEN etc.

Sadly I think there's a LOT of teachers who choose to believe that asd is a choice.

You're very right there violet roar. Last week a friend who teaches was telling about her head teacher, who said about a child with low functioning ASD, "I'm sure he'll improve as we get further into the term"!
As though he was going to get a bit less autistic!!

At my DCs school a lot of children have cards (actually tags attached to their planners), and other children tend to ignore them. (They are for medical,SN, behavioural and young carers among others.)
The school also clamps down heavily on "bullying", so actually there isn't much in the way of "comments" from other students.

My DD with ASD for the first year had TAs in almost all her lessons, and didn't they were for her usually. She now doesn't need that level of support, and is well known enough that most staff (and importantly senior staff) know when she needs understanding.
But you developing a good relationship with the school is key. I personally would be communicating with the "key worker" over the issues of settling in, maybe they can suggest solutions?

I have already emailed two member of staff about a couple of issues this year (SENCO and Head of Year).

I tend to agree with TheFlyingFauxPas unfortunately. Realistically, there are no proper provisions that can be made, the kids have to fit in.

But 'just fitting in' can make their school days really awful.
You wouldn't make a disabled child in a wheel chair just fit in. Allowances are made....they have a lift, they don't have to get out of their chair to walk upstairs etc.
Just because autism isn't physically visible most of the time, doesn't mean schools shouldn't make allowances and support different needs.

Why the fuck should they have to fit in ? The Equality Act applies in schools as much as anywhere else, schools have a legal duty to make every reasonable adjustment necessary. Forcing our children to fit in is the reason that so many children and young people with ASD suffer with poor mental health.
It seems to me that ASD isn't recognised as being a worthy disability requiring planning and adjustments to be made by so many not only in schools but on these boards too.

I wish now isan I hadn't been so polite in my above post....you said exactly what I should have said .

Joining this thread to add my misgivings about how secondary works out for children with ASD.

My experience so far this term with ds2, who has a diagnosis of ASD, no EHCP, and in mainstream secondary - not great.

His primary SENCO last year apparently visited his secondary to liaise with the SENCO there so that things could be put in place for him starting in September.

I heard nothing from SENCO at new school at all since registering ds.

Three weeks into term DS gets his first detention for arguing with his class tutor. Tutor phones DH sounding seriously pissed off that DS was difficult. DH says 'by way of explanation of some of his challenging behaviour, you are aware that he has autism aren't you?', to which the tutor responded 'Umm, no, I haven't looked at his file'.

So this is the tutor who he sees daily, who is responsible for communicating with the staff who are teaching DS. I'm now assuming none of the other people who teach him are aware of his diagnosis.

DS has been getting more and more anxious as the term has continued. After a fortnight he was sobbing every morning, begging not to go in, unable to eat his breakfast, complaining of stomach pain. Three boys started picking on him in his class, and one threatened to smash his face in with a rock. Another boy told him in PE that his breath stank (it doesn't - I ask him to breathe in my face to make sure he's brushed his teeth before he goes) and then got all his friends to join in laughing at him. So the bullying begins. He's never been picked on in this way before, and had plenty of friends in primary (which was a big fairly rough inner London primary).

Anyway, I contacted the HOL for year 7 and she asked us to come in and talk to her. He is now on the radar of the KS2 learning mentor, knows where to go if he's overwhelmed, and the bullies have been spoken to. He came back from school on Thursday and Friday much happier.

But as far as his needs go, I have no confidence that his teachers will really understand him or be able to properly accommodate him because they simply DON'T HAVE TIME to do all the research and preparation they would need to do to really put all the necessary things in place, and he has no allocated, paid for one to one support. There are 360 children in his year group this year, which is a bulge year, and I feel like his teachers are working at the limits of their capabilities. There are a good number of quite disruptive children at the school and it's also an environment where there are many children from academically ambitious families. This puts huge amounts of pressure on teachers and I just feel, being realistic, it's going to be very hard for them to give him the one to one support he needs.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I'm going to write a letter for each and every teacher on his timetable setting out the basic things they need to know about him and his diagnosis and what strategies have worked for him in the past to help him in the classroom. I'm going to hand deliver them to the school. I'm also asking for copies of everything which is in his file at schooland will deliver my own file of information (containing things like copies of his old IEP's, the EP report and the CAMHS report) to the SENCO to fill in any gaps. The school isn't a terrible one, but they are a bit crap with paperwork and organisation so I think it's useful for me to step up on this front as soon as possible.

If DS continues unhappy, and there are bullying issues that aren't resolved, or he's not making progress, I'll pull him out and home ed him.

I tend to agree with TheFlyingFauxPas unfortunately. Realistically, there are no proper provisions that can be made, the kids have to fit in.

What absolute, disablist, insensitive, rubbish. There are schools out there that are getting this right and pupils in those schools that thrive and achieve - so it can be done. What I have found, over and over again is that the reason it isn't done is nearly always down to money.

Also, what sort of person honestly thinks that a child who has ASD can just choose to 'fit in', ffs? Being Autistic is not a choice! As insanity said, The Equalities Act is there for a reason and applies to schools, just as it does in wider society. Unfortunately, our present society seems to be losing all sense of empathy, compassion and the desire to help and support those that need it. I have sat through so many parents evenings listening to various teachers essentially telling us he needs to 'stop being so autistic' or worse - 'he could be so much more and do so well, if he wasn't so autistic'. Where on earth do teachers get off saying things like that about about a child. It's heartbreaking and soul destroying for both the child and their parents.

Often it's simple/small things that make all the difference. A card for my ds to be able to leave the room when his anxiety levels are too high, he needs help or is uncomfortable - be that for physical (such as needing the toilet) or emotional reasons - was the single biggest thing that helped him. That and them finally dealing with his bullies properly.

A weekly meeting with a mentor can help with organisation which, contrary to some opinions on this thread, doesn't always get better with time, you can't just learn to be organised by osmosis. For some people, no matter how many times you show/teach/demonstrate/support they simply do not have the necessary Executive Function for 'being organised' to become a habit. My ds is now in Y9 and both his school and us have tried literally every method we can think of, including those that have worked for pupils with a similar SEN profile, but he just cannot

minifingerz I totally agree and I do understand how stretched teachers are, but it's the responsibility of the school to set up systems that make it easy for them to identify and support pupils that need it. They don't need to read every child's file. They need the most important, salient points about their SEN and what accommodations they need in class (be it an electronic flag or a paragraph on a sheet) and then, if they struggle with how best to handle or support a particular pupil, they can approach the SENCO for more information and advice.

We don't actually need them to be specialists in ASD, just to be given the right, concise information about each SEN pupil, in such a way that they can actually make use of it, without having to read reams of paperwork. An understanding of ASD is a fantastic bonus, but given the numbers of pupils and variety of disabilities/SEN, that is an unrealistic expectation. They don't need a comprehensive understanding of each disability, just enough information to support each individual child. In my experience ASD training courses for school staff are often far too generic anyway and set staff up to fail, by expecting every child they meet who has ASD to be the same, when quite obviously each child who has ASD will be just as much an individual as any other child.

It's good to hear that your dc are well supported in a big school moosemama. I think dd's school benefits from being very small, with only 80 in dd's year, and in a very small community, so teachers do tend to know every student - and very often all the rest of the family, too.

The problem in dd's school tends to be the occasional teacher who just doesn't 'get it' - they think that because dd is baseline very able, she 'ought to be able' to do X, Y or Z. Unfortunately that tends to lead to dd panicking and freezing, when if left and not pushed, she'd manage a perfectly acceptable outcome. On the whole I'd say it's the nervous / anxious / stressed teachers where this happens.

Arghhh....so today, I get an email after school from his teacher saying that ds had been disruptive to the class for asking to go and find an item that two boys had stolen from his bag at break time. She said he could go and look for it but still then gave him a break time detention for tomorrow!

How is that in any way fair??
is it now the norm for the bullies and the victim to get the same punishments?

The school have missed out a bit. They should be giving him a strategy = ie you cannot leave class now, but I will discuss this with you after class, and whatever is missing, there will be no repercussions (if it was homework or something he needed there and then) If they just shut him down when he is desperately trying to explain why he needs to get something without giving him an alternative solution, no wonder he was disruptive. However, they DO need to remind him that there is another way to tackle the problem without being disruptive.

A similar situation might be if someone hits him, he has to have another strategy rather than hitting them back. It is "social story" stuff.

Just punishing him isn't going to work, as you rightly say. However, within the classroom, they do need to find a compromise so that he isn't disruptive/runs out of the lesson.

I would be tempted to not let him to go to school tomorrow, whilst you sort this out, if it is making him very upset. My son would take this very much to heart, and I would never hear the last of it, unless it was in some way talked through and a new strategy defined, and agreed with teacher.

This thread has made me really

I'm a secondary teacher and I too teach in the region of 200 pupils per week - 120 of whom I see only once per week. That's a lot of individuals to try and get to know in the space of a term; assuming an average class size of 25 and a 50 minute lesson time that would be 2 minutes per week of undivided attention for each child - assuming I did no whole class teaching or discussion in the lesson. I'm not trying to excuse myself for not knowing every child's name at this point in the term; I'm just trying to spell out the massive difference between primary and secondary. I will read the profile for every student but often they are not specific enough - so I may see that your son is asd but that does not necessarily equate to needing to be allowed out of class to the toilet just after lunch!

I feel there have been a number of good suggestions - the toilet pass and marking toilet breaks on the timetable in particular - but please OP I beg you - don't take the attitude that most teachers don't care or won't try into meetings with the school. The vast majority of my colleagues will make every effort (which may include offering some of their free time - again this should not be an expectation as you hinted at earlier) but you need to be willing to help your DS too. That might be to encourage him to accept support for example - if a key worker has been identified and he doesn't want to engage then it's harsh to say the school aren't trying - perhaps a compromise would be for him to meet privately with the key worker to ask them to arrange toilet pass for example? Students are removed from class for all sorts of reasons not just asn by the way so it would not mean much to his peers.
That might not be the ideal solution but it might be a compromise that could work?

He actually wasn't really disruptive.....other than simply getting up during a group task and going over to the other boys to ask if they could give his ruler back.the. Asking the teacher if he could nip to look in the toilet, which is where they said they'd hidden it.

To him, having something as insignificant as a pen I
Case item taken by another child is going to totally upset his day. Like when he dropped a precious stone he had found by the river edge....and we had to spend half an hour searching for it....amongst the other thousands of stones!! Or like when a child took his stick at the park. There were lots of other sticks but his one was special to him. It's the little things like that that I want to staff to understand. Any other neurotypical child age eleven wouldn't, I assume, get so distraught about losing a ruler.

Verbena, it is a very long time since I have taught your son's age group (I am happily in my element teaching 16+) but I would have thought that in Y7 he would have a form teacher who he sees for registration at the start of the school day and immediately after lunch. This person is the one to get to know and to ask to make sure that he goes to the loo and has his stuff for the next few lessons.

Please don't think that teachers are only interested in delivering lessons and going home. It is far from the case. Over the years I have dealt with the fall out at school of children living with violent marital breakdowns, losing parents, feeling suicidal, having anxiety because they are perfectionists or because their parents have expectations they fear they can't meet... I have modified lesson plans to accommodate children with every SEN diagnosis I can think of at varying degrees of severity, as well as G&T children. Almost every teacher I know does a vast amount more than is contractually required of them for little thanks and with no thought to personal cost.

This all makes me glad I got mine out of mainstream while he was struggling in a lovely mainstream primary

I had 350 kids a week at my peak. Hellish, but I tried to get the lowdown on those with the most obvious needs. The class of 28, most of home had some sort of AEN was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. We had some great lessons and the TA who occasionally joined us thought I was either brave or foolish for what I got them to do, and enjoy, but separating 2 boys fighting over scissors, while pregnant, pukey and very sore was the final straw for me. Having my own high needs baby - DS1 - sealed the deal and I haven't been back. I really couldn't stretch myself that thin.

For a ruler, there was no need for him to leave class - he could have borrowed one. However "detention" can often just mean: the teacher wants a chat.
For real detentions at least one of mine had a really good time in all of his. But in my experience children with ASD can get over anxious about them, my DC all had one quite quickly and learnt they weren't that bad.

However the key thing is if your son is being bullied, then you need to complain about that, and it needs to be clamped down on quickly. For my DC things like having your stuff taken an hidden was tolerated at Primary but not at all at secondary - Primary school had far more bullying as a result.

Could you write a letter to each of his teachers? Same letter but outlining things you've mentioned here? An email perhaps?