WWYD?

[hoxtonbabe]

All advice and support greatly needed here,

DS is in school from hell, as most of you know I have all sorts going on with them and LA, from JR's to DDA!. At last year tribunal school INSISTED they could meet DS needs and the specialist school was not needed, and also inefficient use of public purse so tribunal ordered that he stay put.

So roll on a year after tribunal, school and LA refuse to put provision in place and other than 1 provision which took me needing to have a meeting with the HT after his SENCO stood in front of a judge and said we (not LA) will do xxx, they reneged on it, he eventually received some of this support 4 months after, the other provision the school say they have done, but I am still yet to see the very specific programmes as it states in his statement, everything else I have in writing the LA/school did not do, so at best the LA and school put in place 2 out of 6 very specific provisions.

from early this year to date the school have been saying my DS is underachieving, I keep saying "why don't you put the provision in place so then maybe how wont underachieve" this goes through one ear and out the other.

following annual review a couple months ago, LA cease to maintain, (which I am now fighting so until that is heard the statement must remain) school support this move as they claim my DS is either on target and in some areas suddenly above his target.

I receive a letter from the head this week stating that my DS would have to stay behind after school to receive support as he is underachieving, and he expects him to attend at least once a week, and will be keeping a log of if he shows up or not..now this "mentor" is not trained in the difficulties my son has so is simply a teacher giving him so help to purley get through the GCSE's and teach him what he needs to know rather than making sure he fully understands the concepts etc which is what the statemented provision would do.

My problem here is:

DS is an hour from school, why should he have to stay behind and get home at 5.30-5.45pm so they can find the time to support him?!? He then has to do the remainder of his homework which will then means he is up till silly hours at night, when this has happened in the past and he then produces inadequate work the teacher then tell him off or detains him even though he has been up till 11pm trying to finish the work off!

The head states the "sessions" are also to refine his GCSE timetable : so is he telling me this cant be done during school time

The best part is the school have recently ( and I mean very recent) added in their school policy that:

Any pupil who finds it difficult, for whatever reason, to conform to the School’s homework expectations,
in terms of either organisation or content, will be placed on an Individual Work Plan. This entails the
assignation of a Learning Mentor with whom there will be meetings twice per week for the pupil in
question, as well as compulsory attendance at Homework
Support in the Learning Support Unit for an
hour after school from Mondays to Thursdays

DS gets some support at home after school that I have had to pay for as the school refuse to do it, DS now has a routine that he is comfortable with, due to his social communication difficulties he tends not to go out bar one weekly social event that he is obsessed with so naturally I encourage him to go, so now the school want to mess all that up because they cant meet his needs. What is more bizarre his homework is always marked 8/10 or 10/10, so what exactly is the issue? A child getting such high homework marks doesn't appear to be having trouble with homework, he is handing it in, and if the issue is organsation, well that is all part and parcel of what is in his statement, so surely one needs to be looking at the strategies in the statement for that before saying he needs to stay after school.

If a school is jumping up and down stating they can meet his needs, then I expect you to do all that you can within school time, including saying he still needs his statement if he is still struggling, not to say he is making good progress, remove the statement, but hey, we will keep him behind because he is in fact struggling, is the policy they have now put in even legal!?

I am seriously considering just pulling him out, but I know he will be distraught with worry as he is aware of the importance of GCSEs so he will probably be really peeved off at me, but I cant deal with all this anymore

IPSEA told me that it is extermely rare for a Statement to be ceased. So I expect they'll climb down on that one.

If the LA are not actually delivering all the support that's stated in the Statement then there's a template on the IPSEA site for complaining about non-delivery.

Don't give them the satisfaction of driving your DS out. Accept what is acceotable and refuse what you deem to be unreasonable. As long as you have a resonable explanation for taking whatever action you do you should be OK.

The cease part is in hand, its the school that are getting on my nerves.

They wouldn't drive DS out as he is a good boy, easily manipulated, passive. I personally don't think any of it is acceptable, I could fully understand if they:

1. did not side with the LA to cease the statement
2. Actually put the provision in place, that would help him to not underachieve
3. Didn't swear blind they could meet his needs

But to basically do nothing to support him and then say, stay after school to catch up is beyond anything I can understand.

There are now several online schools that allow children to do the NC range of GCSE's. Homeschooling no longer means a grim correspondence course, like the workplace, times have changed. I really do not think it's a magic bullet or that it would suit every child, but I do see it as a possible tool for the parent of the "square peg in a round hole" to utilise in certain circumstances.

If you pull him out, it doesn't have to mean the end of his GCSE journey. He could concentrate on his academics without all the stress of this school's BS.

If this school have shown over time they are unable/unwilling to implement the support outlined in his statement, then perhaps you could even get an online school named in part 4? (Briteschool seem to have the most ASD experience, but Interhigh have cornered the market in LA funding).

The online schools also seem much more flexible about timing of exam entry, so instead of doing them all in one huge stressful bundle you could stagger them, with his best subjects a year early/in November, and his worst perhaps a year or 2 late without him being made to feel a failure. Chronological age isn't such a big deal with this method of educational delivery, as it is with Brick built institutions.

I see no reason why any other specialist such as SALT etc can't visit you at home/the local library/their NHS clinic.

Just thinking outside the box as honestly, the energy expended on dealing with such unrelenting nonsense could be spent on helping your kid/a decent quality of family life.

That sounds good Bochead. Will look into this a bit more. DS is in final year of school so goodness knows what will happen, I just cant see how him staying there any longer is of any use to him