My DS (Y6) struggles with school and is a bit of a school refuser. He’s been diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia and Auditory Processing Disorder. Academically, he is very weak, hate to say it, but he’s behind and getting further behind. He has support in place but he has tantrums over it and behaviour can be hard to handle when he isn’t following or understanding what everyone else in the class is. He’s very good with his hands/practically minded and excels at this I think. Sometimes, the only days I don’t have to physically drag him out of bed, force him into uniform and pull him along the street to school, usually all of this is while he’s having a tantrum/acting up/being a right pain, are when they have PE or swimming or drama afternoon or music day or are doing making bat boxes or something like that. Those days he is keen to go.
It’s taken a lot of searching, and actually it was the SENCO at primary who initially pointed me in the schools direction, but I’ve found a school which I really think he will like and might actually want to turn up to. It’s an academy but they aren’t running like a traditional school. They have a longer day 0830-1630. It has a learning support department and seems really caring but I don’t think it’s as good as the learning support department in the local/catchment/guaranteed school although they will support him.
They do a lot of hands on/experiential learning even in the core subjects.
They have 3 lessons a day covering English, maths, science, languages and humanities. They have given the impression, and shown it off on an open day, that they value the academic side of things and want to get it right. But their methodology and ethos is all about experiencing things to learn about things. Everything is related to real life, doing things, working together to get the right results. We saw a maths lesson where Y11 were using equations to work out finances and housing budgets in their groups. We saw a Y7 geography lesson about changing landscapes entirely taught outside in the rain. We saw a Y8 language lesson which was about communicating rather than drilling grammar. The kids were actually talking to each other in groups about what their plans were for the weekend in German. We also saw several practical lessons such as performing arts, DT, electronics, horticulture and construction. All which peaked DS interest. I thought this might all be put on for the open day, so I asked to go back another day and it was no different. I’ve also been and “stalked” the school at random times over the last month and seen many lessons outside or in the local area or the park.
They have 2 lesson of outdoors education from Y7-Y9, 2 lessons of sport, 2 lessons of arts on rotation, 2 lessons of engineering and technology on rotation and 2 lessons of life skills which sweeps up the practical skills which don’t fit into the rest as well as citizenship, RE, politics, the world of work and even how to change a bike tyre.
They than have a lesson doing something else. This can be anything from homework to sport or gardening to chess or another language to woodwork or science experiments to band - basically what everyone else calls after school extra curricular is part of the school day.
At GCSE they have a lot of vocational options - BTEC Engineering, hospitality and catering, sports, construction, land based studies, travel and tourism, horticulture and ICT. They also have plenty of practical GCSEs. As long as he does English, maths and combined science he would be allowed to do what suits him (within reason - timetabling). They have said they don’t care about results other than English, maths and what each child is interested in passing to succeed in their future. On the other hand, they do offer the full range of academic GCSEs and a handful got all 7/8/9 this year across 8/9 subjects including EBacc subjects. Surprisingly, their headline English and maths % are roughly the same as local school. P8 headline is lower. However, except for EBacc P8, the P8 breakdown scores blow the local school away. They are also drawing in quite a comprehensive mix of pupils.
However, this school is in a different town. It would require him to travel there on the bus for 30 minutes (about 45 minutes all in) and also travel back. I know this in itself has problems due to friendships, busses not running etc. I worry, especially knowing the effort it can take to get him to school some days whether this is a big risk and he will not get on the bus/deliberately get off at the wrong stop/not go into school and there is not a lot I can do about it.
The school also seems to be like marmite. Everyone I’ve spoken to either loves it or won’t touch it. When digging into the reasons, the love it group like how they engage the kids and all their kids, regardless of ability, enjoy going to school. This group of parents seem to think their kids are getting more out of school and learning more because they are not in the classroom all the time. The won’t touch it group tell me it’s to do with a “wishy-washy” curriculum, or lack of sitting in the classroom and learning, or their kids wouldn’t get a proper education there and all of them told me not to consider sending DS there. But, when asked, none of them have direct experience of the school. It’s undersubscribed, not massively, about 10 pleases each year, so a place is likely.