ADHD in teenage girl - no evidence provided by school

[Prayingmantis]

My daughter is 15 and in Year 11. She sailed through primary school with no issues and did very well academically. She started to struggle in secondary school from around Year 8 and found Year 10 very hard. She finds it very hard to maintain concentration, keep focused and retain information.

She seemed to fit the profile for inattentive ADHD and we saw a paedatrician in August. She had a long talk with my daughter, and with me, and concluded at the end of the consultation that it very likely was ADHD but she would need evidence from the school to make a formal diagnosis.

The school have now come back and haven't really provided anything that would help. They were asked to provide examples and for most of these they've just come back with 'no issues raised'. E.g. "Often has difficulty organising tasks and activities." - they've said 'not a reported issue' although this is a huge issue for her. The same goes for many others which are real issues for her, e.g. "Often is distracted by extraneous stimuli.", "Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work or other activities." and "Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks."

So, I'm very concerned now that she won't be able to get a diagnosis. She is very quiet at school and struggles silently. I think she is good at masking her difficulties but this makes them difficult for teachers to identify. It also doesn't help that she's had lots of different teachers and I don't feel that any of them know her particularly well.

It's very frustrating and I don't know what to do. If the teachers haven't observed examples then they can't list them, but I know she struggles and I think that they just haven't picked up on it.

Has anyone else had a situation like this? Thanks in advance for any help.

My son was diagnosed with autism through CAMHS so it's not the same thing, but we had a similar issue. The psychologist did not get enough evidence from his teacher initially. She went back to school to observe him again, and talked to his previous year's teacher, and that gave her the evidence for panel. Just by observing him for an hour she could see things both teachers had missed, even though they saw him 20 hours a week.

Do you know how school (SENCo?) gathered the information? Did they ask all the teachers she had last year and collate their responses? How many even replied? Is there anyone else they should ask eg tutor, TAs, pastoral care, or is there a favourite teacher who "gets" her perhaps? I think it's incredibly difficult for a secondary school teacher, who sees hundreds of kids a week, to observe some of these things unless the child is demanding their attention. Could a member of the paeds team or someone at school observe her in some lessons? Do you have any sort of paper trail such as detention data, homework log, school reports, emails between you and teachers, diary of incidents? Look through her books to see how far she is getting in class work. Teachers generally do want to help but they are also fiercely busy, so you might have to collate the evidence and bring it to them.

Push this. My DD teachers didn't really see the issues until we pointed them out. The neurodiverse board has lots of sources of help

Thank you both. We have managed to collate some additional data so hopefully that will be enough. If not, we'll take it back to the school.