Hi lovely people
Desperately need your advice here. Following Friday's maths lesson incident (mentioned on the Friday night thread) I am going in first thing tomorrow morning to demand ask nicely to see the SENCO.
Have been on it all morning and am getting nowhere. To me, I'm making perfect sense and they are contradicting themselves, treating ds appallingly, failing to differentiate for his SENs and generally being well out of order - but - I am not feeling very clear headed or logical and am worried I'm not going to get my point across effectively.
Basically, the teacher/s are saying (and shouting at ds) that unless he produces more written work in class, they are going to move him down into the lower set for maths. They said, unless he produces a greater quantity of work, they cannot/will not keep him in top set, because they can't assess his ability properly - yet they also told me that the papers he was working on last week and got 17/20 on were level 4 papers (he is 9 years old in year 5). He tends to average answering roughly half the questions set, but in most cases gets 90/100% of the ones he does answer correct.
He suffers from low-confidence/low self-esteem around maths as it is, is more than capable of doing the work, but needs some extra time to process the information and needs adult direction to stay on task.
We had the same issue last year, but the teaching staff felt his place in top set was appropriate and only suggested moving him down if it would give him a boost to see how much more advanced he was than the lower set. In the end, the decision was taken that it would be seriously damaging to his self esteem to move him down a set and in his case, would not work as a motivator, as it had for one or two other children in the past.
As I see it, they have failed to take into account the following:
- EP report states that he suffers from ASD related 'zoning out' episodes, particularly when stressed and that these episodes were witnessed first hand by her during her assessments. She was, at the time concerned that she had witnessed 'absences', as were we and the final assessment of the episodes as 'zone-outs' was backed up by the Paediatrician who saw him in January of this year to rule out epilepsy related absence seizures.
He zoned out and failed to mark his test paper (which he actually completed faster than the rest of the group) on Friday and was yelled at in front of the whole class, told he was 'choosing not to work', 'opting out', didn't deserve his place in top set and was letting all the other children in his group down. 
- The EP also stated in her report that testing had shown that ds has a slow processing speed and that given long enough, he will complete a task and usually perform to a high standard. They provided evidence for this in terms of his WISC IV test results. For this reason is is supposed to be allowed extra time for tests and examinations.
- His WISC results highlighted that he is actually highly capable in mathematics and this should be seen as an area of strength for him.
- The OT who assessed him in February this year, sent a report to the school stating that ds suffers from hypotonia, with particularly low tone in his core, upper body and arms. The report states that this means writing at a desk is painful, arduous and tiring for him. The report also mentions his fine motor difficulties, which make it doubly hard for him to write for longer periods of time and affect his handwriting and drawing skills.
So we have a stressed out child, trying to cope with transition to new year - made worse by being yelled at and humiliated by his maths teacher twice in two days (bearing in mind he only has her two days a week, so this was only the fourth time she'd taken him) who zoned out as a stress response and despite having actually completed the work, was screamed at in front of the rest of the class, told he was lazy, choosing not to work and didn't deserve to be in the top set.
This came two days after his other maths teacher and I had discussed his lack of confidence and distress around maths and she agreed that based on ability he absolutely deserves his place in the class, so I then went home and spent a few hours doing my best to convince him of this.
In addition to that, the teacher either hasn't been informed (although the school says she has) or is choosing to ignore his other SENs which require her to differentiate her teaching style and offer him additional support. AFAIK, there is only one other child with a SEN in that group - he has dyslexia and actually sits next to ds, so in theory, this should be possible.
This morning I have been scanning SENCOP and reading a few other bits. Have typed up a report based on several things that have not gone well across transition and things that still aren't being done to support ds two weeks into term, but I am struggling to sound like a calm rational person who just wants what her son is entitled to, rather than a very angry and over-protective parent.
The only positive I can see about this is that it is more evidence for SA that they are not able to provide him with the level of teaching support he needs to access the curriculum effectively.
In my report I've pointed out that when working 1-2-1 with me, I have to make sure I get him on task, encourage him to read through the question/s, give him time to process and then spend the rest of the time prompting him to stay focussed and on task. I do not need to help him with the 'actual maths' as he is more than capable of doing it himself - what I need to do is make sure that he stays focussed, gets through as much work as he can in the allotted time and manages to get pencil to paper effectively. The only other support he requires from me is occasional help with using a ruler to draw tables and diagrams. Even with me doing all this, he still only managed to complete half of his maths homework this week, but every single question was correct and he understood totally what he was doing and why. (He completed 12 out of 24 questions, plus drew and filled in two tables in 45 minutes.)
They repeatedly argued with me last year and insisted that they were confident that he is making good progress and achieving well, despite there being little on paper to back them up. His teacher this year has told me he is able to do the level 4 worksheets they are currently working on, but she also said he needs to produce more work to protect his position in the clas. So how on earth can they be suggesting moving him down to the lower ability group, where they are working on the same things he covered last year? 
So, does anyone have any ideas as to how I can approach this? I feel like I'm going round in circles. 