Dyslexia

[bluepolo123]

My son (aged 9) has recently been diagnosed with dyslexia (not picked up on by school-he is intelligent and to some extent masked his reading difficulties,his early years were also impacted by the pandemic).

My concern is about secondary school as due to where we live there is only one school that he will get a place at & it had a recent ofsted report which particularly highlights poor sen provision. There are other mainstream schools locally that are evidently doing a better job with SEN pupils so obviously my preference would be for him to go to one of them. Is there anything I can do about this (other than move which I’m not in a position to do!?). While his difficulties are not severe it seems unfair that he has a diagnosed difficulty with recommendations for adjustments and I’m just supposed to send him somewhere that has been assessed as being fairly useless at supporting that.

Unless DS has an EHCP, his SEN wont be taken into account during the admissions process. Places will be allocated based on the admissions criteria, so unfortunately there’s nothing you can do during the application process. But you should still put the school you want the most first because you never know.

After National Offers Day you will be able to appeal. There’s no guarantee you will be successful and you should consider all reasons to appeal rather than just focus on dyslexia because all schools are expected to be able to meet the needs of pupil’s with SEN.

Thank you for replying…..I suspected that would be the case. The next nearest school is massively oversubscribed (300 plus on a waiting list) and he definitely wouldn’t get in, and then we are a long way out for ones further away than that. I keep reading things about “secondary school choices” when actually there is no choice here….& unfortunately while that 1 school may be fine for most kids it really isn’t for SEN 😬

It is misleading when people call them choices. They are preferences rather than choices and in some areas, like yours, there is very little actual choice.