Banned from practical lessons

[catpaws]

My DS has AS and has just gone up to secondary school. He is finding the environment difficult to cope with and struggles to manage his behaviour in most, but not all, lessons. He is statemented and gets 25 hours per week support. Because of his behaviour, and concerns about health and safety (which I understand), he is no longer allowed to take part in practical sessions at school. What should I expect from the school, ie what should he be doing when he isn't in these lessons and how can we ensure he still accesses the learning he is missing out of.

what type of practical sessions? What was he doing? Surely they should be making adjustments so that he can access the learning.

Are you meaning science lab sessions?
They need to enable him to access the curriculum, banning him isn't the way forwards.
They need to identify specific risks and find alternative ways to meet his needs within those sessions, or ensure that he can cover the practical work out of class in supported 1:1 environment. I'd want a clear plan in place within the next month.

Thanks for your messages. They mean any form of practical session, including science and cookery. Their only suggestion so far is that we could do the sessions at home - whilst we could cover cookery, it's not at all clear to me how we could cover science practicals, especially as I failed my 'o' level chemistry and never did physics. Their concern is that he will end up hurting someone else by accident because of his clumsiness and general behaviour so they won't entertain letting him do the lessons.

Then he needs to do the science practicals with 1:1 support or they are denying him access.
Inclusion team, Head, SENCO, Governors.
Go and make a fuss.

He should already be getting 1:1 support, but it doesn't seem to making much impact on his behaviour. So I want him to have full access to the curriculum but the school have threatened that he could end up with a string of exclusions if he continues to have access to practicals. You're right, though, I'll have another word with them. Thanks

If the reasons for the exclusions are specifically because his needs are not being taken into consideration, they can't do it, unless they have tried every possible strategy to support him and it has failed.
Exclusion should be the last resort.

My difficulty is in being confident they have tried every possible strategy. for example, I have asked to meet with the LSA to share experiences of what works (this request has been refused) and have also asked for information on what happens immediately before any difficulties so we can better understand his behaviour and how to manage it - this has also been denied. So I'm very wary of being in a weak position (ie lacking the necessary information) when it comes to proving they have tried everything, as I know so little about what is actually going on in the classroom. I would hate to force the issue and then have him excluded - as he really does not cope well emotionally with exclusions and we then have problems persuading him to go back to school. (His reasoning, as verbalised to me, is that he doesn't intentionally do anything wrong, and indeed does not always realise through his autistic eyes that he has done anything wrong, so he very much doubts he will be able to control his behaviour in the future. He therefore does not want to be constantly anxious at school about whether he is about to get into trouble or not, and so would rather stay at home and avoid the issue altogether. It might not be a sensible way forward but I can see why, in his eyes, this seems perfectly rational!). Thank you for your support, btw, as it is helpful for me to think through these things. We managed to contact Parent Partnership today and they have said they will call back tomorrow to see if they can add anything (as we are also struggling with other issues). I will definitely go back to the school anyhow, as your messages suggest.

He wouldn't be able to do practicals out of class unless it was with a Science teacher. A TA couldn't do that.

What is he actually doing the the lessons?

I'm not too sure, but he is prone to outbursts and wandering around so i can see that would unnerve a chemistry teacher when there are bunsen burners in the room

I am a Science teacher BTW. I would want to know exactly what he was doing, with his full time 1:1, in order to cause his teachers to be unable to carry out practicals with him in the room. Wandering around would not in itself be a problem. Outbursts - depends on the form it takes! I have never had a student with a blanket ban on practicals. I have had to modify what I do with some classes sometimes, certainly.

The law prohibits 'unofficial exclusions' - if he is being excluded from practical sessions, this needs to be done formally, each and every session. Then you need to kick up a stink with the LA, ask for an emergency statementing review, and work out what he needs to be able to access the full curriculum. Perhaps he needs 2:1 for practical sessions, so needs an increase to, say, 29 hrs on his statement. It can be done. There are children with physical needs in MS secondary with 77 hours 1:1 to enable two person manual handling, for example.

Presumably it will be a "go and work in another room" rather than an official exclusion. I do this when someone has been messing around to the extent that I am unable to continue with the lesson. It is standard. However, a blanket ban on any practicals is different, and I would be asking for a meeting, with representatives from Science and Tech and well as Learning support.

Thanks for this. I had pretty much given up on him being allowed to do practical sessions so it is good to know there are other options. At the moment, he isn't doing the practical sessions at all and it isn't really clear what he is doing with his LSA instead (his lack of communication skills make it difficult to find this info out from him so I will ask the school about this). The exclusions are being threatened because the school feels he is likely to do something that leads to this course of action(eg be dangerious with chemicals). His statement is fairly new so it's a shame if we need to revisit it, given how much hassle it took to get one in the first place. But if that is what it takes, then so be it. Btw he regularly chooses himself to leave classes (with a wide range of teachers) and go to a quieter area, and he generally gets more work done when he does this - he loves learning things at school so is sufficiently motivated to learn on his own. I therefore wonder whether there are more distractions/energy in a practical session, and this is what he is struggling to cope with. It is great to hear that you have found ways of dealing with challenging children - gives me hope!

But if it is a regular occurence, then it is an 'exclusion' as defined in law, and not allowed.

If he struggles in a noisy, busy environment, then he will struggle in a practical session, certainly. But that isn;t the same thing as not being allowed to try. I do think you should ask for a meeting, and do ask for a Science and Tech teacher to be there if possible. Because although I can't see myself ever doing a blanket ban like this, on the few occasions when I have had to exclude a child from a sequence of lessons, I have always wanted to explain why to their parents.

Thank you, I will try that

Good luck! Hope it works out for him and he settles in.

Just wanted to add as another science teacher, that a blanket ban on practicals is unusual. Certainly I have had on occasion had to remove a child from a practical session and I remember my head of dept once banning someone from practicals for a term, but that was for a deliberate malicious act by a child who did know better.

I've never known a child be banned indefinitly from practicals. This seems most unreasonable and I would think the school is on very shaky ground banning a student from practical work on the basis of what they may do. I would think there would need to be a history of very significant safety issues before something like this should be considered, and there should certainly be something else in place.

Ask ther school to state specifically why they are doing this, what has happened in previous practicals for them to react like this. I would also want the head of science/Dt to be involved in any meetings.

Good Luck

Thanks for this. Clearly I definitely need to get some more facts from the school about what is going on, and also what other actions they have already tried, and meet the head of science. I am also considering speaking to his ed psych as he may have ideas on what the school can do to help DS manage practical sessions.

It's not unique.

My son was disapplied from the National Cirriculum requirement to study Science while out of mainstream and in Hospital School / home tutoring.

We got the GCSE Chemistry and Biology distance courses and I taught him at home.

Fond memories of boiling up red cabbage to make litmus paper.

I'm intrigued about the red cabbage (I failed chemistry 'o' level - largely because I couldn't stand the teacher). Thankfully, my son is now being reintegrated back into science practicals so hopefully I won't have to try to learn chemistry just yet!