What the bloody hell am I going to do about school?

[Sahkoora]

DS (5) has just started year one, and school is just awful for him. Got a dx of ASD with possible ADHD over the summer. They struggle so much with getting him to do anything at all.

He won't sit with the other kids, he's loud, rude, violent, and this week he has started swearing. At the moment, his targets are just to do a couple of adult-led activities a day. He's a bright boy, but he's just getting no education, through no fault of school.

He was on a reduced timetable for most of last year because they just can't cope with him. Expecting the first draft (or whatever it's called) of a statement in a few weeks, but I just can't imagine what they can do that will help.

He already has full time 1:1, a first and then book, he can pretty much wander around the school as he pleases. He has a place he can go and hide, ear defenders if it gets too noisy, and doesn't have to participate in anything he doesn't want to.

He has to be dragged into school every day, and yesterday they phoned me to come and pick him up early under the guise that he was ill (he seemed fine to me).

Been up to our necks in experts but absolutely nothing has worked to make school easier. Things will work for a while and then stop working.

I am coming out of school every day in tears as it's just so hideous. Part of me just wants to take him out of school and home ed him, but I don't know if that's wise.

I haven't got the first clue about how to approach home edding, I worry also about the impact it would have on DS2 (2), as I really want to start taking him to playgroups etc and we've already missed out on so much as we've had DS1 at home all last year being disruptive and difficult.

Also, as selfish as it sounds, I need a break from DS1. I want to occasionally get the house tidy or watch some TV without it being shouted over. I also have an ongoing project that I want to finish, something that will hopefully lead to a career for me.

One of the professionals who was helping us suggested that maybe a special school might be the answer, but I don't even know what a special school is like. He has no learning difficulties other than being unable to cope in a school setting, would a special school help in any way?

Please, any advice wold be good, there must be someone out there who has been through similar. It seems as though all the pros are at a loss with DS too!

Sorry tumble, I'm not getting at you but have found in the past that 'can't afford' really means 'not a priority'.

Funding has changed to even the playing field. Some schools have more money, many have less. But the cuts are not to SEN funding. SEN money has however been included in the overall funds and not ringfenced so schools who have taken an overall cut might feel the 'less' money means making up the shortfall with the unringfenced SEN money, and they are entitled to if the SEN money goes unspent.

However this encourages a culture of denial about needs and a level of justification for not meeting them.

If I were a school, I'd make savings by not buying in the waste of space advisory services, send a couple of staff on evidence-based SEN education courses, have those people train up the TAs and allocate days for visits to schools with these kinds of practises embedded.

So it isn't about 'getting' funding at all.

But Starlight, it wasn't me who said we 'can't afford' to meet SEN needs! I have never heard the Head say that in a meeting. I think it is a massive priority and I have never said otherwise! It's simply a matter of working out where the money is going to come from (as I said above).

And zzzzz, I absolutely do not believe that the SEN funding should go elsewhere - I think funds spent on supporting SN children is of vital importance. I don't understand your face at all - surely we are in agreement here?!

I know exactly how and on whom the money in our budget is spent. Starlight, it does sound like you have more information about the overall level of funding (I only know the information about our school), so perhaps I was wrong to use the word 'cuts'. That is how it has been for us but perhaps other schools have been affected differently.

I don't quite understand why I am coming in for so much criticism on this thread! The SEN provision at our school is excellent IMO, and that's how it should be. The only point I was trying to make was in response to the OP who said she'd been told that schools benefit financially from SEN children. This is not the case in my experience. (Starlight it sounds you would agree with me there?)

tumble I haven't been critical of you but I'm sorry if I have caused offense.

I'm pleased to hear that you have never heard a HT say they can't afford a child with SEN. I have heard it in 5 of my child's 6 schools and many parents with SEN hear it regularly ime, and the frustration this causes can make us bloody temperamental.

No school 'cannot afford' to support their children with SEN adequately. It's their interactive whiteboards, expensive SLT, Friday Yoga coach, additional language teacher they cannot afford if it means the most vulnerable children are denied an education.

Also Starlight, I would be really grateful if you could explain to me how the new system has succeeded in levelling the playing field. Surely the new system of not ring-fencing funds is only fair if you have an average number of children with SEN? Surely it's obvious that some schools end up with a higher than average number (because the provision is known to be good at that school) and no extra money to support them?

Schools do not benefit financially from children with SEN. There was a time, when schools would benefit financially from having a child with overstated SEN and THAT kind of funding HAS been cut.

So, when the funding wasn't devolved to schools but given on a 'per child' basis, a child could progress to no longer need a 1:1 and a school would still submit paperwork implying they very much did so that the TA could be reallocated as a classroom TA and avoid the expense of one.

Schools are no longer able to creatively account in this way, and 'some' will see that in their budgets.

No you're right Starlight, most of the criticism came from zzzzz.

Sorry x post.

I think it is a bit difficult to answer as LAs are allowed to apply their own formulas for allocating funding.

Often, funding IS allocated on number of children with SEN as was identified the previous year (Jan I think).

Statements DO come with 'top-ups' where the child's provision costs more than £6k.

The way the playing field is levelled, is that the £6k plus the £4k APW, plus top up for a statement can be used to enable the child to access their education in other ways, i.e. a special school or independently.

Before, the Local Authority can say that the child costs nothing, because the place is already there and the staff are already being paid regardless of whether the child is onsite, and there was no actual 'sum' recognised as the cost of that child's education.

And my example above levels the playing field between the schools that were 'playing the system' and those that were not. Bigger schools were able to claim more SEN needs to get additional funding. Now they get the same amount of funding as everyone else UNLESS they can demonstrate to a panel (most LA's have set up cluster-groups with some of the available money to be spent more flexibly and for emergencies) or unless the LA has carried out a statutory assessment that identifies the child requires more than is expected of the school to provide.

That's how I understood things the last time I investigated, though things might have changed a bit since.

the SENCO really told him off for shouting at his 1:1. Completely unhelpful as DS wasn't being deliberately disrespectful of adults (as she said), he's a scared, disabled little boy who didn't want to leave his mum. It didn't help at all

I'm sure tumble's school wouldn't have this level of ignorance. And I'm sure she would understand that the near-universal discrimination against our dc is the reason so many of us feel like zzzz Sadly, despite the impeccable logic of what zzz writes about blue-eyed students, commitment to inclusion of dc with SEN is still so rare, that tumble does have to make a point of saying her school actually wants to meet its students' needs.

Well, thank you for apologising. I can't imagine how frustrating and depressing it must be for you to have to battle for your DCs to receive the education they deserve so for all of you.