Special school has been suggested for ds1 who has Aspergers.

[defineme]

Ds1 has had an as dx since he was 4. He is now in year 4 in ms primary. He copes well with the support he has, but school feels he would struggle in secondary. He has 1-1 all morning and a lot of unofficial support in the afternoons.

We are applying for a statement.

The senco feels he may be able to get a place at local special school for secondary.
Ds1 doesn't have challenging behaviour, but is not academic either. He can't add 2 and 2 (though knows literally hundreds of people's birthdays) and his reading is ok but comprehension very limited. His social skills are limited, kids like/tolerate him but there are no friends as a nt person would see it. He enjoys football and swimming at his very inclusive mainstream lessons.

The ms secondary is very big, has a reasonable sn rep, but I also know of some bullying of sn kids there.It is a very good school in terms of exam results and pastoral care and I will have no qualms sending my 2 nt kids there, but I think exam results may well be irrelevent to ds1!
The special school has an outstanding ofsted and is loved by parents and pupils alike, it has a wide range of kids with some who have autism.

I think ds1 would miss the company of his peers from his school, but would find the changes of teachers/level of work/uncontrolled nature of breaks and so on very very difficult to cope with.

I have absolutely no idea what is for the best.
His senco and the person from camhs find him very hard to classify. I think perhaps because though he is firmly at the bottom academically but he can read and write.
He is very easy going at school when routines are kept to and he follows rules to the letter-so he's not difficult to have around. He is very popular in an almost mascot like way with staff.However, they know how upset he gets about staff being ill/routines changing without warning and he would be vulnerable to bullying in a larger environment.

I want him to be included in the world that he will be a part of as an adult, but I want him safe and happy too. I don't necessarily think special school will exclude him from society, but could it?-please don't find this offensive-I admit I'm ignorant about special schools. I think he is a borderline child.

In my heart of hearts I think ms secondary will be like pushing him off a cliff, but is that just because I'm his Mum and want to keep him safe?.
Dh is not taking the special schoo idea well because he can see ds1 is happy in ms at the moment.

This may well be a moot point, we may fail to get a statement and the special school may be full, but the professionals seem optimistic on both counts.

Please share your experiences if you got to the end of that.

oh, this is a hard one.
I have a son with AS - although he is older than yours.
He was dx'd at 6 just at the end of Yr 1 in ms school.
As he got older, there was the suggestion that sn school would be more suited to him BUT, he was academically very able so, in some ways, we had the opposite problem to yours.
Our solution, was to find a specialist Asperger school so a number of the boys are able thus there is a peer group but it is still a small sn school.
Disadvantages are many: still a specialised, small environment so not like 'real life' and it is boarding so he is away from home during the week.
Was it the right choice? I don't know as no parallel universe to co-exist in. We have done the best we can with the limited choices we had available to us - and I use the word choice loosely as it was a damn hard fight with our LEA. I do know that my son would be a school refuser by now and at adolescence that is a problem as we cannot simply pick him up and carry him any longer!
What I have said above is not really of much help to you but I wanted to let you know that we eventually took the decision on where we thought our son would be happiest (even if he doesn't realise it!).
Good luck in your decision

Could you take your ds to visit both schools, see how he feels about each school?

My dd1 (AS) is only 7 (so we don't need to think about it at the momment), she's doing well in MS and is academically ahead of her pears but i'm not sure how she would cope with a large high school (her school only has 80 children so it will be a huge step).

Your dh sounds just like my Dh .

I would be tempted to try MS and see how it goes, if he doesn't cope then the school will see this and help to get him a place at the sn school.

It is a hard choice.

Thank you for replying. I'm feeling a bit tearful about this!
That must have been a very hard decision for you.
I think you're right-I think I have to go with where he will be happiest in the short term and worry about the future later.
I can see him making a fuss about not going where his classmates are going too.
However, the idea of him potentially being dreadfully unhappy and lost is impossible to bear too.

Thanks again.

I will do that Marne.

I think dh loves ds1 so much that he can't imagine him not fitting in anywhere. We have come away from things with ds1 and had different impressions of how well things have gone! He's a good man to have on your side though.

Thanks for your replies

I know how you feel , we are trying to decide on moving both the dd's from their MS school, we have just moved house (well 3 months ago) and can't afford the drive to school each day. Dd1 is very happy at her school, dd2 has had a few problems (also ASD) but we don't want to loose her TA (she's so good with her). Dd1 wants to stay with her friends and doesn't want a change in routine, at the moment we are doing what dd1 wants (to save stress and upset) but i feel that we will have to move her soon because she will be split from her friends when she goes to high school (as the high school her friends will go to is too far away).

My dh is the same, i think they find it hard to think about their child not fitting in or being unhappy.

Are there any MS schools with ASD units nearby?

Would part time SN part time MS be an option?

Don't be scared of a SN school. Go look round it.

If he can't add 2 and 2 is it fair to him to stay in mainstream?????

There are no asd units attached to ms nearby, but there are ones about 15miles away. I have no idea if we'd get him in to one of those, but I'd be happy to look.

Part time mas/special is something the special school says it does for students doing exam courses so will ask them about that.

I know what you mean about not being able to add 2 + 2, but I'm a secondary school teacher (part time tutor at the moment) myself and that is not something the school won't have seen befoe.

He joins in with most things at the bottom level other than maths. He enjoyed the history topics, spanish songs, pe -everything they do really. I presume they do this stuff at special school too. Yesterday he wrote his thing about christmas and read it out to the class-just like everybody else. Lots of the kids had written beautifully paragraphed pages, but he was absolutely included and celebrated.

I just think secondary might be different, but then I've seen some excellent special needs classes. I have also been in riotous hell holes of lessons

I will gather all the information I can.

Thank you for all your help.

This is a hard decision. I wish Marne was right and if he doesn't fit in ms, 'school will see this and help to get hima place at the sn school.' My friend's ds, ASD and LD, was bullied a lot at school but only the other children noticed. Luckily, he comes from a small village and the other older children looked out for him during breaks and stopped the bullying. However, his parents were only told about it by one of the other parents - school apparently did not know there was a problem. When the older village children were not around, ie moving from class to class, I heard he was still bullied. In fact, DS1 told me on no account to send ds2 to the ms school. It is quite a good school, appx 800 children and staff do have experience with dealing with disabilities. Ds1 also said that the other children tend to be kind to anyone with an obvious disability...

From what I gathered, most schools only see suggest moving a child when he or she is causing them problems. Eg. my other friend's son is very good at maths and keeps shouting out the answers in class, and also at other times and school got him moved despite his parents wanting him to stay in ms.

Hi, I've never posted in this forum before but I saw this thread and wanted to tell you about my son's experience: He is 12 and was at a ms primary till the end of year 4. It worked ok for the early years but as he got older the differences between him and his peers became more obvious and some of the teachers struggled with him (he has ASD & ADD, sweet natured but chatty and very repetative, very little attention), culminating in one of them 'losing' him near the end of the school day and my friend finding him out on the road . It was at this point I started to look into mld schools. He started at an mld school at the beginning of year 5 and has progressed to an mld secondary, which he loves.

When he first started school I was adamant that I wanted him in ms but at that point I had no idea that there were different types of sn schools. The secondary he is at does not in any way 'baby' them and expects them to be very independent. I think if you visited some of the schools in your area you may be pleasantly surprised. TBH the thought of my son going to a ms secondary terrifies me and I'm so glad we got him a place where he is, but we had to fight very hard to get it (threatening legal action at them losing him etc.) Sorry its a long post, good luck.

Thank you for your replies.
I sometimes go to asd support group and have heard many horrific stories re bullying/safeguarding and so forth.

I'm really grateful you've shared your experiences.
I think I need to do some serious research.

I forgot to say that his social life has improved immensely too, with after school clubs and invitations. Most of the parents are keen for the children to see each other out of school as they all have had the same isolation in ms.

I guess it depends on the school and what support he is getting. I know each child is different and boys are different than girls but my dd1 tells me when she is happy/sad at school (she has been bullied and she will always be a target for bullying). I would go with what she wanted to do (let her visit both schools and if she wanted to stay with her friends then we would give it a go). The uppset of taking them away from their class mates could upset them more than the leap up to high school.

Just because he can't add 2 and 2 together it doesn't mean that he can not be great in other areas (art, music), a lot of ASD/AS children are great in one area but not in others. My dd'1 is great at reading and maths but at home struggles to follow instruction (more than one instruction at a time) and is useless when it comes to sport.

Thinking back to when i was at school (22 years ago), there were a lot of children like your DS (not great at maths, englist ect.. but they managed socialy and enjoyed school). I think if a child can manage in MS (with AS) then its better for their social skills (a lot of AS children are very sociable and need to be around other chatty children).

trying- my dd1 is the child who shouts out the answer in class , i would be very upset if the school suggested moving her.

Theres always a chance with any choices that you make that things wont work out as planned and sometimes we have to take that risk.

Follow your heart, if you feel he could cope with ms then let him go, just make sure the right support is in place for him when he starts (statement).

My DS was another child with ASD who went to a ms primary but then to a special ASD secondary school. There is no way he would have coped with all the timetable and staff changes in a typical secondary school, sadly.

It took some time for me to realise that he needed a special school. I visited a lot of mainstream schools and special schools before making the decision. It's good that your DS' school is discussing it at this stage, because it gives you plenty of time to research and visit the various options.

The advice I would give is to cast your net widely to begin with, and don't think of it as a ms/SN school split. E.g. a small, nurturing ms secondary could be more appropriate for your child than a non-specialist SN school - so forget about whether it's ms/SN and look at the staff, their experience and think about how your chld would fit into the school.

As another poster said, there are lots of differences between SN schools and also between ms schools as well.

I would try to get him in the right placement at transition time rather than hoping he might be able to transfer to SN school if ms doesn't work out. Most SN schools have a small intake and low turnover of pupils, so there might not be any places left if you decide later that he would be best served in a SN school.

You have pretty much described my son Defineme!
ASD, but gentle and passive, no behaviour problems, a wealth of random knowledge but academically well behind ... he doesn't fit mainstream but in some ways seems too able for special school...

Can read (well now..he is 13) but comprehension is patchy..writes like a 6 yr old...

Well we did go down the special school route and for us it has been an excellent decision. I now work there and it is frequently the case that pupil join us in yr s 4-6 because it is then that the gap REALLY widens academically and also because the children are expected to be able to cope with such a wide range of experiences. ..so your son would definitely not be unusual in joining SN school in the next few years!

My son has FRIENDS. They are all a bit odd socially and so very tolerant of eachother.. my son has obsessions.. but so do many of the other children. My son's 'best friend' doesn't talk very well (c.p) so DS helps 'translate' for him sometimes.. and they find eachother very funny.. I NEVER thought DS would have a proper friendship.
The pupils are integrated with the local secondary (shared site actually) and my DS is in a position where he is actually joining mainstream maths now in a yr 7 class (he's yr 9) , in the low ability group.. and doing very very well...

I think what I'm saying is the pupils we have.. many have moderate learning diffs and many ASD and they aren't SO far from 'typical' but they would not cope in MS secondary, where as in SN they have small classes, can learn at their own pace.. and they aren't 'different'..

I think it's a case for looking carefully at the special schools available and being open minded.. see what you think:)

I agree with the idea of looking at as many schools as possible.My son attends a SN school and though younger,I agonised over the MS V SN question when he was due to start school- Yes there are different types of SN schools,BUT where we live the borders are becoming blurred eg ds's school was SLD/pmld ,but now there seems to be more children arriving with,e.s.b issues rather than sld-this is happening in the nearby schools too- Your son sounds as though if you went down the SN route he would be best in a MLD school if there is one-take lots of advice-talk to staff,parents,children.I think it would be best to decide which option you are going to go for,as having to move him if things don't work out could be a negative experience and may well knock his self confidence- It is hard- good luck

Hi defineme

How far are you along the process in terms of applying for a Statement?. BTW if they say no, do appeal their crass decision.

This is something I would be going all out to get for your DS; it will help him as well longer term. If you were to look at either special school or a ms secondary school with unit attached he will need a Statement to access either.

Also something called a Transitional Review is done in Y5 if a Statement is obtained so it is important there is a statement in place asap. At that stage in Y5 the groundwork starts re secondary school education. The Statement doc is also rewritten at that time with regards to entering secondary school (although that would not come into effect till the start of Y7). You will name the school in this document (as that is left blank).

You know I have started my own thread about 5 times in the 5 years I've been on mnet and I'm, as ever, overwhelmed by the kindness of the responses.

We've literally just started the statement process and, having lurked on the sn board for years, I am girding my loins for battle.
So thank you Atilla that's very useful to know about the statement and transition to secondary.

My friend's bil ,who lives on my street, works at the catchment special school and I've arranged to talk to him about his opinion of ds1 fitting in there. I'll also ask if they do part ms and part them.

I agree with you intothewest I would say he had mld and I think the best place to ask about all the different schools is the asd support group I sometimes go to, as their kids go to a variety of schools. As sugarcandymix said I have to cast my net wide.

Medusa it is lovely to hear about your similar sounding ds and how well he is doing. I'd be thrilled to end up working in the same place as ds (may have to work on cutting those apron strings) .

Thank you all-I have the makings of a plan and have cheered up!

DS1(7) is being assessed for Aspergers. He is very bright. But I will check out SN schools sooner rather thna later for secondary.
Please go and visit. You will get a gut instict, right ? Better to decide now. Your ds doesn't even need to know you have visited, if you decide its not for him. No harm done. But you WILL regret it if you don't do it and leave it too late and then can't get him in.
What have you got to lose ?
Go and visit. And THEN give it some thought.