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Here you'll find advice from parents and teachers on special needs education.

Gap between English and Maths

4 replies

MangroveGirl · 24/01/2014 13:31

I wonder if anyone can advise me. I pulled ds out of school during year 4 because he could not read or write and appeared to be getting no support, extra help etc in school just a lot of homework that the rest of his class were given. He could not do any of it. He would then get into trouble because he had not done his homework despite me asking him to be given more suitable work that he stood a chance of understanding.

He was home eddied for yr 4 & 5 then we found a lovely school and put him in there for year 6. For his SATS he got a level 6 for Maths and level 2 for English. He went into senior school for the start of year 7 hoping it would work, we did not get the schools we really liked and neither of us was happy about the school he was allocated. I pulled him out after 6 weeks.
Despite many many hours practice his reading skills have improved but he still has to concentrate and focus on each word and his writing is terrible however you can ask him how to spell any word and he is right there with the correct spelling.

Am I doing something wrong or could there be more going on? His maths is fine. He is whizzing through the GCSE book. He is 11.

OP posts:
lljkk · 25/01/2014 09:56

Has he been professionally assessed, for things like dyslexia?

MangroveGirl · 26/01/2014 10:40

Thats the problem.

When he was in school the school said wait till he is older and wouldn't do anything and since now he is home edded I have tried to find out about getting him assessed but I have been told you can only get an assessment if the child is referred from his school.

The problem is we visited a lot of schools when they had their open evening last October when ds was in the senior school we were not happy with.
We went with an open mind. We ignored all OFSTED ratings and wanted to get a school we both felt comfortable with.
We chose 5 to go on the tour of the school during the day and got it down to 3

One of them I was a little nervous of as it was very academic, it had been purely selective on Music, Sports or Academic but this year had to include the catchment area as part of its selection process and I was nervous of sending ds there as the teacher who showed us around did not take on board that this September intake might not live up to the standard 12 GCSE A* that previous pupils had come away with.

Another was in a beautiful modern building with every facility you could imagine but on the walk around we witnessed a child having stand up arguement with the teacher, we went into a classroom to see a lesson in progress and a pupil turned to us and said
"Don't come here it's shit"
There were quite a lot of classrooms with pupils stood outside.
And as we were leaving we saw one boy running out of school pursued up to when boy jumped the wall by 2 teachers/adult shouting for him to come back. So that was struck off our list.

The final school we saw was we thought really really nice. The pupils and teachers had a banter going on but it was done in a way that the pupils still looked up to the teachers, the building itself was falling apart. It was in the back end of our local town but we agreed we both felt comfortable with it.

The only school we can get into is the modern one with the discipline problem and I feel that it would be a backward step to send him there.

The other 2 both were over subscribed by 2000+

One of the reasons we pulled him out of his last school was because of a discipline problem and after 6 weeks he had only managed to complete at the most 3 sides of pages in an exercise book. In certain subjects there were only 6 lines written in that subjects book. The school had a new HT who in trying to tackle the discipline problem had the teachers in each lesson cover the school rules for the first 2 1/2 weeks then during lessons if anyone said or did anything, no matter how minor all the lesson would stop whilst they spent the rest of the lesson going over the school rules.

I actually did not believe ds when he told me what was happening so I rang his head of year who confirmed it.

So at the moment I am home edding. Not what I wanted to do for senior school. But feel I have no choice.

OP posts:
lljkk · 26/01/2014 11:39

I sympathise with the assessment problem. I don't think DS ticks all boxes for any SN but he is a right PITA so would be nice to formally rule it out. But we've been told no assessment by school, too.

Could you go private, get a private edpsych opinion? I bet the same EdPsych who works for the LEA also does private work. Maybe £125 I'm guessing?

MangroveGirl · 26/01/2014 15:07

£125!!! Just spent £400 on Ed Psych for dd after being referred from her school.

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