bit of advice needed please

[thriftychic]

ds2 (12) has been having problems at aschool and is under camhs. not yet diagnosed with anything.
before xmas i had a meeting with school , i wanted to know what was going on with him in lessons as since he is at high school its nigh on impossible to find out.
only the learning mentor and the deputy head were there . none of the teachers were there but they had emailed comments which the deputy had in his hand and read out to me.

Since then I have written to the school , giving permission to have ds2 observed and also requesting a copy of the teachers email comments from the meeting.

someone from school has just phoned to tell me that the deputy says he will not give me a copy of the comments as its not what they do and ds2 school report / asessment had comments from teachers on it anyway.( not the same comments , brief nothingness comments)

I am not happy. at the meeting i didnt even take in what they were saying as i was upset and dh couldnt be there so he hasnt heard it either.

i have asked that the deputy ring me.

I dont want to be a push over here. surely i am entitled to it arent i ?
any advice gratefully recieved ! :)

Yes you are allowed to ask and they should give them to you unless its a risk to your child.
Use words like "best practice" "data protection act" and "working within proffessional guideline" :)

thankyou. i cannot see any reason why they shouldnt send them to me , but they are a ridiculous school.

gave ds2 a dtention last week because I had forgotton to sign his planner/ diary

Under the freedom of information act (think that's the one) you do have a right to see everything that the school hold on your DS. My manager at work requested her DD and when it came it had 'pushy mother' written all over it! Have wondered ever since what my DS records says about me ha ha.

We have had the same thing with detentions at my DS school. He also gets detentions for not bringing books in etc etc - he has a poor working memory, below the 1st centile. I ridiculously thought that they might take this into consideration.

my ds2 has a terrible memory aswell , i glanced over at him when we were sat in the doctors waiting room the other day to see him still clasping our tv remote control lol totally unaware .
hes improved this year, he does actually take the right books to the right lessons nearly all the time but no one seems to notice that !

they say if i want camhs to see the teachers comments thats ok they will show them and they read from it while i was there but they will not send them out.
hmm

thrifty - funny. That's just the kind of thing my DS would do!

not sure I would take no for an answer regarding the notes. If you want CAMHS to have a copy of them then school should allow it. Should CAMHS want to refer DS to get a specific piece of work/therapy done, they may need that kind of evidence? Maybe someone else has more knowledge about that though.

thanks i have just looked up parental rights and it says that i have the right to see ds school records within 15 days but im not sure the notes are classed as his school records or that i am entitled to anything more than seeing them i.e posting them to me.
how old is your ds , does he have a diagnosis ? sorry if being too nosy

You are not nosy at all!. DS2 (11) has a specific language impairment, specific learning difficulty, moderate dyspraxia, mears irlen syndrome (we think). He is also under CAMHS, although now we have some diagnosis I think he is improving. As I said earlier his working memory percentile rank is 0.1, he has a reading age of 8.5 but a comprehension of 6.5.

Me and DH are coming to terms with us not realising something was wrong until he was 11. He has been with CAMHS since he was in yr3 with us not figuring out why he had severe stomach cramps, hated school, was losing hair etc. When we got some diagnosis last year it all made sense. DS2 is very intelligent in lots of other ways and we think he knew he was different and he has known this for a long time. Shame we didn't :(

Have you any diagnosis for DS2?

i was going to say dont beat yourself up but its what we do isnt it ! ds2 only started having problems at school when he started high school but looking back i was struggling with him a bit at home well before then not thinking anything was wrong but that he was just hard work.
i still dont know what the problem is , sometimes i am convinced there must be something he should be diagnosed with and sometimes i thnk its a combination of terribly low self esteem and being more immature or slow to catch up or something. Theres also the epilepsy (abscence attacks in the mix aswell.) camhs havent helped much . we have been put with a new fella now who agreed he should go and observe ds2 and would do it in the fist 2 weeks of january. hasnt happened yet though. off to ring them now..
glad to hear your ds is improving a bit . i dont know about you but i seem to walk around with a permanent feeling of sadness for my ds

Has he had any form of tests? Speech and Language ass, or had the Ed Psych seen him? Anything at all other than being under CAMHS? At your meeting did school raise any specific concerns? It took a very astute teacher in yr6 to notice something wasn't right with my DS. Not sure anything would have been picked up if it hadn't been for her. He appears like he can do all the work given to him, but in reality he is a fantastic copier - he brags that he can copy from a distance and even upside down

My DS2 also has very low self esteem, and school haven't exactly helped to be honest. Now we have a specific diagnosis we have been able to request that he goes to a MS school with a specialist provision. He starts in just over a week.