Latymer Upper for SEN

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Hello all,

Would love to hear from parents with kids at Latymer Upper, particularly if they have any kind of SEN.

ds is dyspraxic which mainly impacts on his organisation, handwriting (takes forever hence types) and sport (can't hit/catch a ball!) He's doing well academically and we looked around LU recently and really liked how down-to-earth it felt. I met the head of academic mentoring and she seemed really clued up and absolutely brilliant - she managed to roll off a couple of recent dyspraxic leavers who were heading off to Oxbridge and didn't seem to think ds's dyspraxia was likely to cause any issues.

However... ds's OT has a very different view and told us she wasn't keen on LU for SEN as they 'offer very little support on a day-to-day level' and they're 'just left to get on with it'. She seemed pretty horrified at the prospect of ds applying. Similarly his prep head said she thought the school was quite a 'tough' environment.

It's very hard to figure out what's right as the girl who showed us around at LU was dyslexic and seemed to be very happy and well supported. The school in general seemed down to earth and not at all what we'd been led to believe (very monied/very socially sophisticated) - just seemed like a warm, clever school. And of course the head of academic mentoring was great and I loved that they call it that!

Would really love to hear from other parents with kids there. Thanks so much in advance!

I have a child in year 10 at LU. No SEN issues.

He is really happy at school and has been since day 1. I always laugh when I hear the suggestion that it is a 'tough', 'urban' or 'cool' school - it doesn't resonate with what we've seen. I would describe the school as being very much as you experienced it at open day - fairly down to earth, enthusiastic and supportive. It suits clever kids who enjoy academic study and getting stuck in to other activities. I am sure the cool urban kids exist but they are not a dominant part of the culture.

It is a very organised and experienced place - I don't feel like anyone could slip through the cracks - the form tutors and heads of year take their roles very seriously and any issues, however minor are dealt with quickly. There is academic mentoring available to all - if they need extra help they can get it - I know because we are reminded of it regularly.

The pace of work is quite fast but it is not a hot house - there were no exams in year 7 and home work gradually increases through the years.

I feel my ds is very lucky to be educated there but can see the school would be a difficult place if you weren't clever enough or interested to keep up - not because the support isn't in place for the odd glitch but because the general standards are high. I know there are children with dyslexia in some of my sons classes. Lots of kids type homework - my ds does a lot of homework on the computer.

I hope that helps.

Kids with SEN don't have the best time at the top academic schools and I do wonder why parents are so intent on trying to 'shoe horn' them in. There are plenty of other private schools that will give your DC the attention he needs.

OP:
I know a few kids at LU with SEN (and a couple of them with disabilities). They are doing very well and happy overall. Parents seem satisfied and the kids are supported. The impression of the school you formed on the open day is exactly what LU is, IMO.

Hi alldone thanks that's very helpful and backs up what I thought.

jeanne16 do you have a child at LU? Ds's prep are very keen for him to apply to academic schools because, like many kids with SEN ds is very academic, with cognitive scores in the top 0.99% and at the very top of his prep. His Ed Psych also says he will be bored at a less academic school and in fact our back up school, which is less academic has been far less clued up on SEN as compared to the academic schools we are looking at.

Livinginchiswick thanks so much, that's very reassuring!

Jeanne16 that is not true at all. I have a child with autism and dyspraxia at a highly selective London independent school and the school has been very supportive (my dc is far from the only one with SEN). My dc has done extremely well so far. I find it appalling that you want to bar SEN kids from the top schools and to put people off with your ill-informed comments. I'm sure not every SEN child thrives at a very academic school but a lot do.

I completely disagree with Jeanne16. DD had very very low processing speeds and her preps advice was to avoid selective London schools altogether and aim for country boarding. Our instincts were that her natural friendship group was bright academically engaged girls so we wanted her to try for the same type of schools, at least at 11+ with a wider range at 13+ if we had to.

LU gave her a place and were totally supportive. It is a busy school so it's probably important to find your talent (music, art, sport, drama etc) but as good credit is given for non academic stuff there is less emphasis on academic class placement than at some neighbouring super selective schools.

DD switched to Westminster for sixth form, again very good with bright SEN, but she still owes LU a huge debt. The progress she made in her five years, plus the increase in her self esteem, badly dented by her prep, was huge. It is almost frightening to consider the different outcome she might have had, if we had followed the Prep head's advice.

Ginermog and needmoresleep thanks for sharing - it's very reassuring to hear your dc's are doing well. Dc's prep while in no doubt of his academic ability are under the impression LU isn't gentle enough- they are very keen on KCS but ds would prefer co-ed and I'm inclined to agree, and based on academics I can't imagine KCS is any less pressured than LU if you aren't very academic. Just out of interest Ginermog which school did your dc end up at? If it's boys/co-ed would love to know which one so we can add it to the list. Thanks both for your feedback!

If you loved LU then you should go with your gut. I have friends with dc there with various SEN and they all seem to be thriving

You may choose to call me ill-informed if you like, but I happen to teach in a selective secondary school in London. All schools have to have
SEN Departments by law, so of course they will tell you about them. However I have seen what a miserable experience it can be for pupils who are trailing along the bottom of highly academic schools. Why not choose the slightly less academic hot houses where your DC will probably get more attention, feel better about their own abilities and do just as well if not better.

jeanne16, but the OP said her son was at the top of the academic ability spectrum or are you equating SEN="trailing along the bottom"?

OP, dyspraxia is well understood by many of the academic schools especially in London and especially if they themselves are proactively communicating their support for it (by contrast, Ibstock used to explicitly state they are not equipped to manage this). Your OT might be going by the old(ish) reputation of Latymer, but I think they all massively stepped up their SEN support in the last 5 years.

Jeanne16; I've been on MN for many years now, and note that every time a particular school is mentioned, you seem to offer your very negative feedback. And yet, and do correct me if I'm wrong, you have neither taught there, nor had/have children there. Odd.

OP - good luck with your reviewing of schools, using both your gut intuition and research as part of the process. LU is indeed an academic school that welcomes children intellectually curious, with a good reputation of supporting children with SEN. I would agree with your prep head in that it is a tough environment, in the sense that it will not spoon feed those that are academically capable, but are lazy. This is not the same thing as not supporting SEN needs.

Clearly I am deluded that my dc, with fantastic GCSE results, should be in a very academic school (not LU by the way) because of their SEN. Just as we say that if you've met one person with autism...you've met one person with autism, just because SEN kids in one school don't fare well, that probably says more about that school than it does about the other schools where SEN are well supported. Perhaps We need to avoid that particular school with our kids.

Thanks all for the advice and support. I feel much better about just going with my gut on this and applying for LU and then perhaps raising any concerns should ds get an offer.

Jeanne16 I'm sure you mean well, but I think it's a little concerning that, as a teacher, you assume that anyone with SEN is less academic and will 'trail along at the bottom'. As I mentioned earlier, ds's prep is quite confident re his academic ability and has encourged him to apply to very academic schools. They do seem to be under the impression however, that LU lacks a little pastorally, and this is very important to us, hence the question.

I think there are three questions:

1. Is Latymer good at supporting SEN. IME yes, They have a well resourced department, and SEN is taken seriously. They also have a track record for supporting kids with wider disabilities eg deafness or Aspergers.

1. Do Latymer have good pastoral care? As far as I can see yes. In our day they were certainly good at managing children who pushed at boundaries, and I know several people who chose Latymer for their bright, but sparky children, over one of the academic girls schools or St Pauls. (And their children did well.)

1. Is Latymer the right fit for a quieter child. I am not sure. I think the best approach is to look round and decide whether it feels right. It is also difficult because the school has changed faster than its reputation. DD was in the first year that the school was fully co-ed, and it is arguable that girls in the years above were selected partly on their ability to be pioneers. Once established as West London's most desirable co-ed school, selectivity and results have risen, adding further pressure on places. Results in her cohort were really very good, and DD said that the younger years appeared quieter and more studious. (She claims to have been in the last proper party year, living up to LU's local reputation.) The fact that OP is directly comparing KCS with LU is telling. A decade they would not have been considered in the same academic ball park.

It was quite a robust school. Roles in the school play, spots in the choir, places on the sport team all had to be auditioned for and only the best were picked. Fine if your were good at something and could find your corner, but not great if you did not. Some of the single sex schools were much better at finding the quieter children and encouraging them to engage or try out new things.

I have no idea what it is like now at the bottom of the school. I am pretty sure that their intake is even more academic. Whether this means more quieter studious children, I don't know. I assume so but OP will have to look, listen and decide. I would say though that her DS sounds like a good fit with Westminster, which is very good with the bright and quirky and has excellent SEN. Sport there is quite individual with effort made to get pupils finding a sport they enjoy (a huge range) and to participate. There is therefore a much smaller division between the sporty and non sporty. No rugby, and no need to play team sports like football, and enough going on that there is every opportunity to represent the school, whether climbing, real tennis or fencing, and to continue at University.

This thread is quite old, and seems like these days SEN in Latymer Upper is doing downhill following that "everyone invited" scandal.

Our son has had an extremely dramatic experience in Latymer Upper School in his first (and only) Year 7. I feel it would be important to warn all parents of children with autism and ADHD, or simply children that may fail to sit quietly, “behave” like a saint and do exactly what they are told 100% of the time, to avoid this school at all costs.

Our son is autistic with social difficulties and high academic abilities. After a first month at the school we received a call from the head of pastoral “care” - what an irony - warning us about severely disruptive incidents our son has had. Felt like they accumulated and documented them for a month, having seemingly decided early on to do what it takes to exclude him as soon as possible because he did not fit the profile. The most severe of these “incidents” was pushing a girl against a locker and saying “idiot” to a boy. In the months that followed, which saw us hiring a solicitor to oversee the EHCP application and help with ensuring the school is not beaching the Equality Act, we received a tremendous amount of letters threatening with permanent exclusion. Without the solicitor he would surely been permanently excluded very quickly afflicting irreversible damage to the young child’s self-esteem. By the end of the year (three months in!) he was finally offered “support” which mostly only existed on paper and in practice was a combination of policing and case-building, recording all further “incidents”, of which many were unproven or so mild that it was outraging. For example, making “your mum” jokes that everyone else at school was doing were recorded and added to the case, and kept popping up in letters. We saw very little, if any, of the humane, supportive and nurturing atmosphere their website and policies talked about.

The school claims that it offers excellent support for SEN children, with a dedicated team well-trained in autism. However in practice the “support” included forcing him to spend all his breaks in one of their “Academic Mentoring” rooms, being watched and singled out on lessons and escorted to and from the canteen, and prompts about considering medication. It did feel like the support staff on the ground did try helping, but it was clear that they were given an instruction to instead police and build the case, and they did not have the expertise to support autistic children with social difficulties.

Despite all that, our son loved the school and wanted to stay there. The sporting and other facilities were brilliant, and teachers were high-class.

The amount of dry letters threatening with permanent exclusion was killing us. This year has permanently scarred us as a family and changed us to be different people. Our son’s sibling had had their own mental issues intensified, blaming problems with our son as the primary cause of their mental health deterioration. We ourselves sank so low that my work was suffering and our relationship as a couple changed for worse. Thank god to our family therapist who managed to keep us afloat. The sound of the names of the headteacher and the head policeman (aka head of pastoral “care”) still wakes us up at night.

As soon as we received the EHCP, we withdrew him from this toxic atmosphere, and hoping one day to forget this dreadful experience. It is now months into the new term in Year 8 at a new school, and our son has settled well, enjoying the people there and people are enjoying him. It is like a different world now.

@ylexus I appreciated so much of your experience and indeed its very generous for you to share. I found a lot of school claimed excellent pastoral care which is really a joke and keep a case file like police. I wish your son all well in his education as no kid should deserve to be treated like this. Tks !