ADHD in secondary Grammar school

[Whereisthesunny]

Ds is in yr7 and keeps getting in trouble in the afternoon for shouting out as struggles with focus by then. Any suggestions i could ask school to try. He is not medicated. He is allowed breaks but it still happens.
Would also be interested in those who chose grammar for their ADHD child and moved them later on. Son hates it and wants to move school and i can’t see if this would be better in local secondary as surely ADHD would be still affect him the same way.

Not sure what the impact is but overall similar numbers with local comp being much bigger
1800 students 12% with Sen as opposed to 1300 students with 13% Sen in the grammar

With those stats, compared to secondary state mainstreams in England, they have a low number of EHCPs but ever so slightly above average on SEN Support. But, you come back to the point of not knowing the type of SEN and e.g. ASD is probably more common than ADHD.

@Headfirstintothewild exactly and to be honest i have raised this once with head of year more like gently asked the question about how experienced they are with adhd and he gave an expected answer that they have a few adhd students and so have experience.
I can’t really challenge it to be honest as i don’t have any better suggestions as to what else to try and most that have been suggested here have already been implemented so I feel a bit lost.
The truth is i don’t know what’s acceptable in a grammar setting.
I know in the local comp will just give out tons of detentions and behaviour points so it’s not rare that students will end up with around 100 by the end of the year and these will be children with adhd as i know some.

Here at the grammar they don’t do any behaviour points only detentions for serious stuff and when i had the call from the head of year to ask to come in for a meeting as they are still finding his adhd difficult to manage i feel we are going down the route of being forced to move school or try medication but i feel they don’t want to risk him causing issues to the overall results of the school which i can appreciate but just doesn’t leave me much choice.
Especially when ds so wanting to leave the school i feel its only going one way even tho he could great here if he improved the behaviour.

Have you considered requesting an EHCNA? Has DS ever had ed psych and OT assessments?

Yep he had one in yr6 and the report was all about how he thrives in lessons and that he needed minimal sen support.
There was no struggle like this back then. He was only diagnosed in yr5 due to having incidents at school which were based on his impulsiveness at break times and unstructured time but in terms of sitting during lessons and concentration there was no issue or if there was school managed to handle him. Not sure if things changed or if the level of concentration has increased due to it being grammar and he finds things hard or if puberty hormones are making his adhd worse or if school dealt with it better in primary. i’m not sure i will ever know the answer to all these. I have nothing to compare to in terms of how good school is dealing with sen as don’t know anyone else apart from a lady a while back had told me about her son who lasted till year 9 in this grammar who was diagnosed aspergers but school was not interested in catering for him so they moved to a comp but apparently things hadn’t improved much in terms of sen support.

they gave him extra work when they thought he was messing as wasn’t challenged then the next time he messed around he told me the work they gave him was way too hard so he was bothered by that.
He has always had issue with authority especially when when the teacher is a young female. i suspect he also has ODD but he absolutely struggled with being diagnosed with adhd and took him a while to accept (as he didn’t feel he belonged to the group of ‘special kids’ he told us this)
so we decided not to pursue any additional asd diagnoses which the paediatrician had suggested.

Sounds like DS needs reassessing. The environment and demands of secondary are different to primary. You should request an EHCNA.

Have you looked at PDA strategies?

I think the tricky bit is also they will ask him every now and then if he is happy and if he accepts that he is difficult and he will say it’s because he doesn’t want to be there which there is not a lot the school can do about.

So i feel in between two minds if i should start asking for him to be assessed when he might not stay here. difficult to know what’s best

Further assessments will help whether DS stays in this school, attends another school or has other provision.

I would reiterate this. Our ds was at a grammar for years 7-11 and is now at a comp sixth form. He had much better support at the grammar, even though they weren't very experienced with ADHD, because he was probably one of the 'worst' of their SEN students. Whereas at the comp there are lots with more serious issues and he doesn't get a look in.

Thank you yes that’s seem to be case here. Now that ds has build himself quite a reputation and not in a positive way, they finally seem to take things a bit more seriously and rather than just giving out punishment they finally started to put help in place and reduced afternoon lesson for now until we sort medication out for him.
Ds is still adamant his main aim is to end up in a local school but accepts that for now we have to make things work here as i feel there is no chance of working things at comp unless we get his adhd somewhat under control