As a teacher, I find parent’s evening goes well with a child there-once they are this age (6 year olds, not so much). I invite my yr6 pupils in and point out that nothing I say should be a huge surprise! If I’ve spent all term telling them to stop talking, I’ll be telling their parent that; if they’ve done brilliantly at fractions I’ll be sharing that too. Education at this point is a team effort, all 3 people involved need to be working towards the same thing- and all know what that is. I’m also very capable of asking a pupil to pop out if I need a quiet word alone with a parent- and happily do so.
As a SENCO, I often have child-free meetings. We can get into the nitty-gritty of that he barriers to learning are for that child. That might include things the child doesn’t want me to know- they wet tfe bed, they get frustrated and trash stuff, whatever- but that parents (rightly) need to tell me to build up a bigger picture. I’m always happy to arrange these at another time.
I also have a child diagnosed with a SpLD at that age (just before yr6 SATs). We all found yr7 really hard. School exhausted him, he frequently fell asleep on his bedroom floor, just being organised enough to deal with the day was a challenge. He got into small doses of trouble (never his fault apparently). It was a tough year. Yr8 was easier (even when his hormones kicked in), he was more familiar with the routine and less overwhelmed. Now in Yr10, he’s enjoying his GCSE options and is (mainly) fully engaged. He’s not a Grade 9 student, but he wants to do the best he can and is proud to share his progress. Parenting a child with SpLD can be a bumpy road- balancing an understanding of their needs and giving a kick up the bottom when they just can’t be bothered. It’s hard to know what’s right!
Has the school been in touch with their dyslexia outreach team for support? I’d use the PE to check with each teacher that they are aware of the SpLD and are making the reasonable adjustments needed. We often found DS was sitting at the back “because he’s tall”. This goes completely against the recommendations for his diagnosis. I found teachers telling him to copy more accurately off the board (nope, can’t do that) and complaining that they’d told him how to spell that word in class- hmmm, not that simple.
Some of these things only came to light at PE as they’d give this sort of feedback to DS in front of me. When he was younger he didn’t know how to tell teachers he needed to be moved/ can’t hear the spelling sound etc so he needed me to do that. He’s now confident enough to talk about his diagnosis and tell teachers if he needs something to help.