Centre Academy London

[onedayatatime73]

Hi. Please can anyone offer any recent experience/ insight?
for DD with high functioning ASD
ashd
and processing disorder

i would really appreciate thoughts.

(we had a no from Burlington based on EHCP, awaiting on Abingdon)

thank you

I don’t have personal experience with my own DC, but from helping others, some love it and some hate it.

A large part depends on how DD presents. Some DC find the environment and other DC overwhelming. Some of their DC display behaviours that challenge as part of their profile of needs.

No experience of this school but it was on my list when we looked a few years ago for a child with similar diagnoses.

How academic is your child? What might they want to do in the future? Will the GCSEs offered get them to the next step?

What exactly is wrong with any current setting? Get a map of the school and get them to colour all the different spaces red, amber and green. Make notes on the map and quote what they say. Then get a list of all the teachers/staff with contact and get them to make them out of 0 to 10 with 0 being very worst and 10 very best and 5 OK. Again record quotes against each. Also record non verbal responses. Dont lead but as why do you say that? For very high or low scores. Try to do all teachers in one sitting. On a separate occasion do similar with the school day and break down every step - from alarm going off, lying in bed, getting up, getting dressed, …. Journey to school steps inc transitions like out of house, to bus stop, into car, out of car, etc as transitions are key points of difficulty. Similar with school day arrival at school, waiting, corridors, form time, bells, changeovers, etc etc then each subject (not the teachers themselves) and all the way home. Rated same scale 0-10 as before. Youll get a mine of info. To see what you can change/lose/adapt. Even if you don’t stay - Youll find out what the problems are for assessing the new schools against

After looking at all sorts of different special schools, it was ADHD meds plus a reduced timetable which meant we saved the existing placement in mainstream and he got 8 GCSEs at grades 7-9. He’d never have got them at a special school. It wasn’t easy and we had to take him/bring him home every day for 4 years which was exhausting. He’s now gone on to do maths and computing at 6th form - but a small, very ND mainstream setting. Able to commute independently. The hope is for uni but no idea if he can cope with the social parts of that.

all im saying is - try pursuing 2 options at once. Moving to special or heavily adapting existing. None are perfect options but a big transition like school change needs a lot of careful weighing up with all the info. Good luck

Hi. I’m not sure what you mean about a map of the school? Sorry I’m a bit confused and want to understand as I appreciate you responding. She definitely needs a specialist school not mainstream.

If you get a map of the current school and ask DD to colour different sections in depending on how she feels about the sections. For example, if she finds the dining room and corridors very tricky because of the busyness and noise, she would colour them red. And if she found the art room easier and safer, she would colour them green. It can help to understand a child’s difficulties. She might colour it all red, and that would be an acceptable answer to the task (although wouldn’t be acceptable she felt that way, obviously). It isn’t about right or wrong. Similar for the timetable suggestion.

A similar idea is asking the child to draw (and annotate if appropriate depending on needs) their ideal school.