Special Educational Needs or Not?? At My Wits End

[Paula1974]

Could anyone please offer some help and advice, i am at my wits end! My son is 7 years old, he is loving and caring and very highly spirited. I have been aware since reception year that he may have problems. I self referred to speech and language therapist and audiology, we are still under these professionals. Each time we go for a hearing test there has been some loss, when asked what they are going to do about it, we are told that they will monitor it (how many years do they need to monitor it for???). My husband and i offer extra support at home to try and push him, he is around 18 mths- 2 yrs behind his classmates.

I had a meeting last week with the SENCo, she advised me that they would be applying for a statement in September for him, however i had an appointment with his class teacher yesterday, i was informed that because he had improved in certain areas of his work, he was now not considered as having SEN.

Whilst i am very pleased that he is improving i still can't help thinking that he does need more support, i can't stand by and watch him fall behind even further, and why should i? What can i do? do i start screaming and shouting now?

what? He has gone from needing a statement to having no sen WITHIN THE SPACE OF A WEEK? That doesn't sound right at all.
You can apply for the statement yourself. There are letter templates on IPSEA.

IPSEA

It is very odd that the class teacher and SENCO are saying two different things.

Firstly you need a meeting with both together to clarify what school think should happen next for your son.

Thank you.

Presumably his class teacher won't be his class teacher for much longer? Just wondering how much weight you need to give to her opinion really.

However, you can't really wait until September and the whole settling into a new class thing to before act so the first thing I would do is to ask to see evidence in terms of reading age, levels and classroom assessments and where the improvements are. The teacher should have them and you should be able to see them.

Then, if he is indeed more than year behind, I think you would be well within your right to apply for a statement yourself.

Hopefully the SENCo has more experience and maybe even some training in SEN so will be a better judge but for me the first step would be to look at evidence of this improvement because you really need to know where your DS is at moment.

Plus as he is under the SALT he still has SEN. He should still be on the SN register.

I agree it does all sound very odd. High incident statements don't come with extra money - I suspect the school are trying to avoid you getting one so they don't have to provide extra resources out of their own budget.

Sorry that second para didn't get off to a good start! It should say

'.. settling into a new class thing to be over before you act..'