DD was diagnosed on the autistic spectrum with mild social communication difficulties when she was 9. She has always struggled academically, during year 3 and year 5 she received additional TA help in class and this helped to improve her results slightly but when the additional help is removed DD goes from "average" or "just below average" to "below average" on her report cards. DD is easily distracted and finds following instructions difficult because she often misunderstands what is required of her. She has had speech and language assessments in the past with the results being variable. She tries hard at school and is always marked "good" or "very good" for effort and behaviour. Since year 3 she has seen a private tutor for an hour every week to provide additional help with literacy and maths which I feel has been very helpful for DD. School have offered lots of support for social skills, DD has good friends at school and is very sociable. Although she has benefitted from having additional TA support occasionally she is also reached an age where she doesn't want 1:1 support in class as it makes her different from her peers.
I've raised concern with the doctor who diagnosed DD about her academic progress and doctor suggested she may have a mild learning disability in addition to ASD but said nothing more than that and school haven't said anything. We've received her SATS results for end of year 6 now and she achieved a level 3 for all subjects apart from reading which was level 4. Clearly she is still below average and I desperately want to help her achieve the best she can for her. I feel a bit lost and not sure who to approach or what I should be asking for. I hoped that the school would offer me advice but I don't think the SENCO is very proactive to be honest. Always get the same thing of "she'll catch up" well I don't think that's going to happen on it's own. As she'll be starting secondary school soon is it better that I wait and see what they suggest or should I be pushing now to have in place measures to help her. I'm not really sure what those measures could even be. All the focus seems to be on her social skills however I feel her academic achievement is being overlooked, there must be something I and the school can do to help her in this area.