School not giving dyslexia help

[MintfordGreen]

There isn’t much response in the SEN group so I was hoping I might get some POVs here.

My dd12 is dyslexic. We were told she was showing signs in year 3 by her Primary, she was given extra time for her year 6 SATs which helped.

She is now at a large secondary, she’s about to go into year 9 and has got here doing well with no additional help than an overlay. She recently came to me and said she’s struggling, and that with complex questions for example she has to keep reading them over and over again as they don’t make sense and the letters are jumbling etc. She is still doing well but hasn’t completed a maths assessment in a year.

I spoke to the school and requested extra time to take some pressure off of her and they sent a firm email back saying no one’s flagged up an issue and she doesn’t need extra time and wouldn’t qualify for it until year 10. They said no one gets extra time before year 10.

We decided to get her assessed with the BDA a few weeks ago and they’ve said she has processing issues and the report says they strongly recommend she has additional time.

I read school’s don’t have to really acknowledge this report but it seems crazy to me they’re still able to ignore this on top of everything else. Also, when her teachers filled in the BDA form for their part they did say they’d noticed she had processing issues so it contradicted what they sent to me.

She’s getting good grades, she’s a clever girl and our fear is that she’s masking and working extra hard. I can see she is.

The school have also just sent an email saying they’re removing children off the SEN register who don’t meet certain criteria and I’m concerned she might be on this list.

I feel like the school is setting her up to fail and not giving her the help she needs right now. FWIW the schools Ofsted is requires improvement and a big part of this failure sits with the SEN dept.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated on how to fight this and if I can?

I can't help OP but following with interest.

I've found both primary and secondary fairly useless when asking for help with DS dyslexia. I think the children who are sufficiently able to mask and who work extra hard to get average marks get lost in an overloaded system.

@TisEye this is exactly how I feel. I really want to do right by her though and don’t want to see her struggle. If there’s a way I can fight it I’m going to try.

We are in the exact same situation, DD going into year 9 with no dyslexia support, my emails get ignored and she struggles to reach her potential but is lost in the system because she behaves well and does ‘ok’.

I'm sorry that your daughter is struggling.

When looking at access arrangements, such as additional time, the school is governed by rules set by the JCQ (the exam board regulatory body). They get inspected on what access arrangements are in place.

The JCQ do not consider dyslexia a reason alone to grant extra time. However, the school should build a picture of need and seek teacher feedback on your daughter's progress. JCQ do not accept what the parent think as evidence. Also, external reports can make recommendations but ultimately it is the school who manage what exam consessions are in place and need to manage the appropriate process and have the necessary evidence. If she is repeatedly not completing exams in the normal time and that should come into it.

If the picture of need is there your daughter should be assessed by a qualified (often external to the school) access arrangement assessor.

If she meets the criteria she would then have to demonstrate how she uses the extra time consistently across a broad range of subjects and teachers would need to evaluate it's effectiveness before they can officially apply to the JCQ for the exam concession.

Extra time would need to be her normal way of working.

What your child had in place at primary school does not dictate what is in place at high school.

I should also added it needs to be KS4 evidence in order to apply for access arrangements in GCSEs

This isn’t helpful, but I’ll share anyway. One of my DSs is dyslexic and we’ve ended up sending him to private school as found it impossible to get any traction in state sector.

He has the classic spiky profile including very high IQ but impossible to achieve potential without adjustments which weren’t made. School were unbothered as academically he is above average although he was exhausted from the effort. His self esteem was eroding daily by being told by silly teachers that he should work harder because he was capable of top grades whilst failing to understand how hard he was actually working just to stay afloat. He became really disengaged with school and burnt out generally. A really painful experience for the whole family. Different experience at his new school which are far more accommodating, supportive and focused on “whole child”.

It’s so frustrating that support has to be fought for in most state schools and I’m frustrated about stereotypes around the independent sector.

@Monstertruckstwo is absolutely right.