Please help

[pintsizedblondie]

Hi there,

I currently undertaking a PGCE teacher training course and I am currently writing a 6,000 word essay on the subject of models of provision for SEN pupils. I wanted to include some of the views of mums who have children with SEN and their opinions on the provision that your child's school provides.

Thank you in advance for any one who can help.

If you have a good school with a good SENCO and who are prepared to work with you and our child, then great. But if you don't, it's tough. It's totally pot luck. All Individual Pupil Funding (the last rung before statements) has just pulled pulled, despite my son's being agreed to end of 2013 school year due to LEA budget cuts. So there are two strands what the school can and will do and what the LEA could and should do.

I am very luckly that my school is brilliant with dyslexic DS1 in Y6, he can have a scribe and a reader for test, he does a small group with a course called Beat Dyslexia 3 mornings a week that he's in and workjing at 8,30am for. All his homework can be adapted to suit him eg: 100 words required he can do 50, they stress the quality not quantity angle. He also goes to a Madaline Portwood group withing the school run 1 afternoon a week by a TA to helo with dysrpaxia.

What other schools do or dont do in comparrison I have no idea. But in a nutcshell if you get lucky with a school, fantastic, otherwise ou have a shit stained hideous constant battle with the LEA who are forever changing the goalposts, full of people who don't take any ownership or responsibility for anything and take months and months to make any sort of decision, which you can't hang about for whilst your childs education suffers, so you and the school just get the fuck on with it to be frank whilst the LEA pisses about to be honest!

Sorry for the swearing but it warrants it to be honest, it's the great and the good teachers and TA's that make it happen on the ground day to day, regardless of what new pile of crap policy the LEA or G'ovt pontificate about, they live in totally different worlds.

DS has AS and is in mainstream school
When he was DX'd at aged 7 I felt like I fought the school for the next few years to get them to gradually provide more and more help so that his needs were being met.
Thankfully the SENCO was co-operative, and the TA he had was absolutely fantastic. She definitely went the extra mile for him. She know much more about what he needed than the SENCO and did things as she saw the need. She was always my first port of call.

We got a statement of educational needs in year 6 in preparation for HS.
Things are organised very differently there and I am struggling to get the school to actually do what is on the statement - even to the point of complaining to the LEA and threatening judical review.Actually he is coping well, but he does until something upsets him then all hell breaks loose. They haven't seen to much of this yet and are getting complacent that he really doesn't need everything in the statement - but if it goes wrong they will regret that they didn't put all the provsions in place!
I have also had lots of conversations in writing with various teachers and the SENCO when I pointed out that they were failing to make allowances for his disability and punishing him for things that they should be helping him do. I had letters back saying "this is the policy - and yes I do know about his problems" - to which I pointed out that they were discriminating against his disability. - Despite them not backing down in writing( which is useful evidence for me if I need it) they have now eased up on him and are helping more. The problem is unless you are a proactive parent, then schools seem to try to not provide ALL the help needed.