Whengoingthroughhellkeepgoing ·
05/08/2025 08:23
DC is 8, after having a patchy educational experience with high levels of school staff turnover and multiple dropped balls on handover between staff. (3 heads in 4 years, SEN leads changing through the year, class teachers leaving after a single year without a managed hand over. 4 supply teachers this year ). This has been compounded by being bullied, and despite multiple meetings with school then it's not seemingly being addressed.
Over the last academic year we seem to have less bullying problems but more social isolation.
Things aren't going well and we took the plunge and got a private assessment at Easter. It shows a very high indication of ADHD, iq is all over the place with some concerning traits with extremely low working memory making it very difficult to function and learn.
The school reports show that DC isn't making expected progress academically. Which we have known for some time. Put in effort at home to support learning with an hour of online tuition every week, a couple of hours supported by us and then encouraging 30 mins a day of educational games a day.
We have met with the school and they will work on improving things for year 4, it felt like it was quite a defensive meeting from them. The class sizes are very big due to lots of new houses in the area and not enough schools. There's no TA in the class. DC is just lost.
We are trying to work out what to do. It looks like ehcps will be cut. DC just won't concentrate for any length of time, especially with distractions.
We have started looking at options
- Sticking with the school for year 4 and hoping it gets better now they have the formal diagnosis, reassess after Xmas see if it's improved.
- moving schools in the area, this would allow DCs two main friendships to be maintained.
I) state
Ii) private
- Move school and house (we desperately need more living space and an extra bedroom)
Options 2i&3 would probably take until Xmas. 2ii might be possible for September.
Other ideas we had included trying to come up with a hybrid arrangement with (a) school with may be being 50% in school (to maintain social connections and group activities) and 50% with a tutor at home. Targeting years 5&6 to try to get a body of evidence together that this is what he needs and some coping strategies in place before high school. With the aim to get an ehcp for Year 7.
We don't want to put DC through two school moves. I'm really dubious as to how much private school would help as there will will be distractions.
The next challenge is financing many of these options will be difficult. We will probably end up staying in this small house. It would involve a remortgage and DH taking a job abroad to fund DCs education. This will compound some of our marriage challenges.
It feels like I need to choose between taking a big bet on our marriage or DC education.