Daughter being excluded from prom

[user1471497170]

My daughter is year 11 and sits GCSEs next month. She has struggled throughout the whole of secondary school with friendships, MH/school anxiety, behaviour and approximately a year ago almost got sent to pru. She has never settled in school. However she has made significant improvement, not on any behaviour plan, is revising hard and should pass GCSEs and do her chosen subjects in college.

She has autism, anxiety and some physical health issues that are likely linked. Getting her into school is a struggle as she feels unhappy there but we make the effort and her attendance is good.

Although much improved her behaviour score is not high enough to meet the 90% prom threshold (reminders, uniform points and gokng to toilet when not permitted). She was informally told this week the final decision is that she will be excluded from prom.

Now all the girls have their tickets and she is beside herself. They are all making plans and talking about dresses and she now feels unable to continue going to school due to feeling so distressed about this. She is worried how she will cope with the sense of exclusion having to keep hearing about prom in school and assemblies

She's now at home. I have written to the school and submitted 2 complaints over the last 2 months however I have not received a satisfactory response. There has been no communication to me from the school about their decision or how they will support those excluded. Please can someone advise how I can escalate this further and if possible externally.

And lots of kids get no support or the wrong support

Very few kids are actually getting adequate support

I didn’t make your assertions, it’s not on me to research the basis for them. Your AI post doesn’t back them up.

Because there aren't enough adults in the building or funding available. That's not the fault of the school. Ultimately these kids need to cope in the real world.

It's like the canary in the mine situation

Schools are no longer fit for purpose. They are causing so much damage it's just SEN children / autistic children are struggling first (they are the canary) but everyone is ignoring the issues and more canaries are struggling and kneeling over but apparently it's the canaries who are at fault not the mine.
When you child becomes the next canary - will you blame them or realise it's the mine ?

Again this isn't the child's fault it's a fault in the system
Children shouldn't be paying the price for school system problems

The child has been sanctioned for not complying with school uniform expectations. This has led to her being excluded from the prom, together with other behaviour and attendance issues. Keep up.
She is very immature and not grown up enough to attend the prom. She is not workplace ready. She is probably not well prepared for her college course.
Op still hasn't told us what her future career plans are. Maybe she would be better off getting a part time summer job instead of fretting over the stupid prom.

P.s. the last person I knew who was flaunting her prom photos was pregnant within 2 years. Not a great career choice

Teaching staff shouldn't have to put up with badly behaved children at asocial occasion.

Families should not have to put up with the school and LA failure to provide the education and support a child with SEN needs but not only do we have to put up with it we pay the price and our child pays the price for education deprivation and trauma
And we get the blame for the system failing

No I don't generally A previous poster talked about everything teachers have to put up with and the implication in some posts is no one should question the decision or policy ever especially not a parent 'because there must be a reason' and 'teachers do it voluntarily' .

I'm saying that proms are not a good way to work through sanctions and shouldn't be used like that- and I'm portraying the kind of power we don't want teachers ( who are very powerful people in relation to children) exercising.

Events which exclude young people for safety would normally be done through risk assessment and often the parent is co operative with that.
There's nothing in the OP that tells us there's a safety issue in the prom.
If there had been a risk assessment and parent disagreed the parent normally should have been involved in a conversation about how to mitigate it. She could be on hand for example? She's just been told something about behaviour points ' toilets uniform and reminders' and thinks a lot of it is historic.
The school appear to have a blanket policy of an amount of points. That's not indicating a specific risk in a prom situation. So there's no suggestion presented that she's a danger.
If the YP wants to go she should be there unless there is some insurmountable problem.
Like I said I think a lot of people don't believe the OP and believe there is a lot of missing information. That's possible. But a lot of people don't believe in anxiety either.

They're your kids if you think the school is failing them take them out and home educate them, then see who the actual problem is.

In order for SEN kids to get what they need in education then there would need to be wholesale change in many/most/all schools. I have 4 children in my class (mainstream primary) who are dysregulated through noise and the fact there are 29 others in class alongside them. One child’s stim is another child’s sensory overload. Those children would benefit being in a much smaller class setting but there are no funds (or space) for that. And is that even inclusion?

That’s just one example. There are so many other needs, that I said on another thread that I find myself going home most days completely despondent over it.

I’m a former SENd teacher; and a SENd parent.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that the problems my son had in his initial mainstream setting aren’t the fault of individual teachers or senior leaders, it’s the fault of LAs putting kids in schools they don’t belong in, and then chronically underfunding them once they’re there.

Most teachers want the absolute best for the children, but can’t provide it because the resources aren’t there.

They’re not responsible for making sure they are - the government is.

Well this is what we did when school trauma was leading to self harm. Child is thriving but the damaged school caused will be lifelong. School and LA refused to support SEN needs and we paid the price.

I had to give up work to home ed, so that's an income down at home, I actually liked my career as was great at it. So now not only is the government down my tax, we have to claim benefits.
So the system is not actually saving money of school support costs the costs to the country, the child and to families are higher than actually getting education right in the first place

I know it's the fault if the LA and many teachers hands are tied. But this is going to get even worse with the planned changes

We can not put the blame at families and allow further reduction in support

I absolutely agree. We won’t be affected by the changes in the White Paper - hell would freeze over before my sons EHCP is removed.

But it will fail, and it will make the situation in mainstream school much, much worse. That won’t be the school’s fault, they’ll be struggling to manage more children who aren’t able to manage in mainstream, and have even less resource available to them to do that.

I feel sorry for both, in truth. The families who’ll be forced to EHE or send their children somewhere unsuitable, and the staff that are already struggling with the lack of SENd provision being put in an even tougher position.

I think education staff will leave the profession in droves.

"We can not put the blame at families and allow further reduction in support"

The problem is that the level of support is unaffordable right now and getting more so every year.

People expect Rolls Royce service standards at bargain basement prices. This country is in economic decline and cannot afford it so further "reductions in support" are inevitable

Can I ask what support would look like? Particularly for AUDHD? With one class teacher and 30 pupils, half of which are SEN?

But in the long run the government saves as I assume you are raising a capable well behaved child that the school couldn't so the child will be able to complete their education and get a full time job and you will to as this wouldn't of happened if your child stayed in school as you said they where traumatised from school.

It's not a safety issue in a prom. She's allowed to go to the toilet during a prom. But- yes- literally anything else could be true.

It’s about trust. If she uses going to the toilet as an excuse to wander around in school and lots of children do. If in the past she disobeyed minor rules and pushed boundaries can she be trusted at a prom? If a student has a certain number of behaviour points this indicates the student consistently does not follow instructions.
At prom a high stress, high emotion evening, teachers need to be able to trust the students. Saying things like she can go to the toilet at prom, misses the point that she may decide to go for a look around the hotel - she’s only looking. However, massive safeguarding as who else is in the hotel?
With young people it is very rarely as simple as “she was only….”

@Dozer
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-77268-y
Permissive parenting (no rules) is a significant cause of anxiety in adolescents. Obviously more complicated than that other factors involved, this is one study the confirms other studies that firm but fair parenting is the most successful.

The point being following rules helps children and adolescents. Moving the boundaries can lead to anxiety. The school made the rules clear to all the students they need to enforce the rules to help all the students develop.

It's worth remembering that OP was very insistent her behaviour would be fine at prom, but then we've all heard "I'll behave if you let me have what I want" before, and when they don't that somehow becomes the school's fault too

It’s a safety issue because it means she wandered off without permission. Often students who say they want the toilet and wander off are not, in fact, going to the toilet. They are just wandering. In a public setting that’s a safeguarding issue (see for eg the thread a week or so ago about a child taken out of class by two other children).

It's not a new thing. Back in the mid 90s we didn't have prom but our school ran a day trip in your last year, it became a thing of legend in school, a rite of passage it was one of those things that was looked forward to since first year of school. I didn't get going and to this day I still am gutted.

I didn't have enough behavioural points either they were made of various things including attendance, results and uniform. I was a good child a rule follower I was a prefect, student librarian, mentor but I didn't get enough points and was expected to stay behind at school. My crime was that my dad died and a few weeks later I ended up having major spinal surgery. No exceptions, no trip. At a time when I could have done with a treat as much if not more than the rest of my year I was blocked from it (my mum kept me at home and we did our own thing nice lunch, ice cream etc) Ever since I hated this sort of crap.

@Seagullsandsausagerolls i agree attendance shouldn’t play a part but it hasn’t in this instance. It’s behaviour only and the OP has consistently been vague about the exact actions of her DD.