First visit to special school - what to ask? what to look for?

[TheTimeTravellersWife]

We are starting to think about DD's secondary school transfer.

She has ASD, MLD, dyspraxia, speech and language difficulties and receives OT and SALT on a regular basis in school. (All of which was hard won by going to Tribunal!!)

She is currently in a small mainstream primary, with 25 hours 1:1 support, which is working well, but I cannot imagine that she will benefit from being educated in a large mainstream comprehensive. There seems no point in her attending a school with other children studying GCSEs when she cannot even read or put her own socks on yet, and the curriculum has to be very differentiated for her to be able to access it.

I will also be looking a mainstream schools, for a balanced view, but at the moment, I am leaning towards a special school for secondary.

So, I am going to look at a special school for the first time.
What questions should I ask?
What should I look for in a good special school?
I would be so grateful for suggestions.

We are starting a Special School after Easter, as DS3's primary was struggling to cope. He is Statemented up to the hilt, but even so I could see that Year 1 was going to be a disaster. We took him with us to look at all the local SS's and he "chose" this one. You will just know which is the right setting for her. We were assured that they will tell us when he has made enough significant progress to move back into MS.

He is ASD, deaf, has no communication and is lovely!

Hmmm. I can't come up with a "list" as it were. Some random thoughts though:

• what is their experience with your child's conditions/needs? What experience will the teacher that has her first have?
• what approaches do they use?
• what training/experience do the non-teaching staff have?
• what is the academic range? How many will sit SATs?
• how big are the classes and how are they grouped?
• what will they do with the therapy support? Will she continue to get hands-on or will it be taken from her and used to "train" the classroom staff while the therapist has "oversight" (read: never sees her. Though tbh you'll get this with most special schools if not all.)
• how do they measure progress, and how is it communicated to parents
• can you see an example IEP (bits will be blacked out, of course) All the kids will have them and they will give a good idea of how the school works to targets.
• how do they do against other similar schools (there's a govt benchmarking programme: because it's hard to assess a Special School's value-add, they send their results away and the govt finds similar schools to match them with and compare)

I'd say in a good special school they are very much aware that they are chasing a moving target: the profile of intake is always changing, there's lots of research in the special ed field and as a result the curriculum changes and there are always various programmes on the go to try to address this or work with that. If you ask to see the curriculum or the MTPs or whatever, someone always has them out for amendment. I'd be suspicious of a school which hasn't changed anything for a couple of years, and I'd be asking how close the Head is to retirement. Ime, Heads close to retirement can sometimes coast in Special Schools: it's harder to measure the effect on the kids so they get away with it.

I think it helps to make sure you see a few schools so you have something to compare to and also to go back to the one you decide on just to make sure you get the same feeling again before you inform the LEA. Agree with r3's list, it was important for us that dd3's school had children like her and as her therapy needs are quite high we also wanted onsite therapists rather than ones that visited once or twice per half term.

Thanks for that! Lots of ideas that I wouldn't have thought of myself. DD has 1:1 support in her Statement, I presume that she wouldn't need this in a SS with small class sizes.
She also has her OT and SALT specified in her Statement - I would want this retained, to ensure that she continues to get the therapy in a SS.
I also think that her peer group is very important to know about.
Sorry to be thick, but what is an MTP?

Oh no, you're not remotely being thick: sorry, I dropped into jargon there. I only came up with all those questions because I am a parent governor at DD1's Special School so I'm sort of on the inside - but not. MTP is a Medium Term Plan which is just the documents our school uses to fill the gap between a curriculum and a lesson plan. It basically says what you are trying to achieve in a set of related lessons and how you will go about it, without dictating to the individual teacher. So a literacy one wouldn't say what books you would use or what props. But it would talk about the sort of things you were trying to achieve and what most pupils should be able to do afterwards. I found it gave me a big insight into what went on in the classroom, and why.

Aaah! Thank you for explaining! I can see that a MTP would be useful to see.

The other thing (sorry, I've been thinking, always dangerous ... ) I'd ask is: What About The Curriculum?

Obviously, a Special School isn't going to teach exactly the classes you'd teach in Mainstream - or else why go there? But in most cases, they do still stick to the National Curriculum. Sometimes they opt out of specific subjects or exams, and sometimes there is a degree of fudging (surprisingly, there seems to be less fudging at the SLD end because you end up teaching via eg sensory experience so you can cheerfully do the Tudors by dressing up in costume and playing music etc - the past is another country as it were.) But however they do it, if you are trying to understand what your child will be doing, day-to-day, asking them to explain what they do with The Curriculum usually gives you an insight.

That's another good point. DD follows a "highly differentiated" (as the school describes it) curriculum, in order for her to be able to access it. She is in Year 4 ( but I want to make the right decision, so I'm starting to look early) and her class teacher tells me that the gap is widening between her and her peers. I get the feeling that it is becoming increasingly challenging for her school to provide her with an appropriate education.

Hi, my dd is 10 and is due to leave junior school this summer, after a long hard decision we have decided for her to go to the nearest sen school instead of a ms high school. now this is how we made out final decision.

dd has severe SLI, with no short term memory, her understanding and learning levels are that of a 5/6 yr old. She has a statement of sen for about 12 months now and has made no progress what so ever, if anything she has dropped on some things. she has a lot of ASD traits but im still awaiting her testing for it.

the other things we had to think about for her are.
can she cope with the constant change of class/ teacher
managing herself and organising books, pens, equipment ect,
getting to school and coming home.
keeping up with the rest of the class
not feeling overwhelmed by all the lessons.

also,

can the chosen school deal well with her needs,
how many is in a class,
how they deal with meltdowns, behaviour probs ect.
what teaching ways have they got to help her in making progress

To be honest id not really bothered looking at the sats or gcse grades, for my dd is exempt from sitting her sats due to her sen, but i was more focused on the fact where she will be happy and making progress in her learning without being pressured or bullied.