DS underacheiving wrt NC levels in SS - grrrrr

[StarlightMcKenzie]

But his language and deficit areas in social interaction have improved hugely as has is engagement and ability to learn in a group.

What to do.........

[RinkyDinkyDoo]

I know what you mean and I know DS presents himself differently in school than when at home.
I know what a master of avoidance he can be and I know that on certain days he is not capable of his best.
So, what I tend to do, based on his CT asking me to, I video how I work with him and get the best out of him. I share/email with CT and she shares with TA's.
this works for me, as I get to show what he can do, they probably have a good laugh, but I don't give a shit.
He had never had a comment about supported writing, or any writing in sentences for that matter,until I sent in a video of him and I writing over the summer holidays, and now there are " DS tried really hard with his news writing today" in his home school book.

[StarlightMcKenzie]

Oh. I can do that. I can submit short videos.

Perhaps that is the answer.

Thank you

[cansu]

I think they are probably doing what they have always done. They use p levels as that is what the other children are on. I have experienced this with dd. Her progress seemed to freeze when a specialist teacher from a local special school came in to advise her teacher. The explanation given to me was that they were filling in gaps and really checking her understanding of number by presenting the work in different ways etc, etc I decided not to get het up about it but I did make a pointed comment about progress and asked about strategies for moving her on as she seemed to be stuck. This seemed to prompt a bit of action. when ds was at special school his levels were atrocious and as he is very severely autistic then that did represent his levels but they weren't that bothered and I got the impression that they were surprised when I asked about them; they thought it was irrelevant! Do you think they are levelling him as lower than he actually is or do you think they are not teaching him what he needs to make the progress? Does the gain in language and social skills make up for the lack of progress in other areas? Will this gain in lang eventually mean he could be taught in a mainstream environment?

[StarlightMcKenzie]

They are all good question Cansu. I don't know the answers.

It would be a lot more satisfying if I felt the school and I were on the same page. His progress has been really good on the ASD issues. Perhaps we just can't have both!?

Perhaps the progress on the ASD stuff means that they have not paid attention to his ability in the other stuff and have levelled him based on guesswork.

I don't know.

I wouldn't give back the social progress he has made, even for a level 3 in maths.

[cansu]

my ds now attends specialist asd school and has made masses of progress in all the asd areas too and I agree that this is worth more than the academics.

[homework]

Star are you any happier about what your going to do , I believe the school should be working both on his social skill and language skill . Plus increasing his academic levels . Find out what areas he's sticking at that's holding him back .
Never meet you but from what I've read of you , you got the confidence to ensure your child succeeds , having already fought your way though a load of crap . It's just another battle in the war that is ensuring your child achieves there full potential not just what overs think they can achieve.
Keep fighting , you'll get there in the end.

[StarlightMcKenzie]

No. I have no idea at the moment. He really likes school and has what he calls friends.

I am fairly long in the tooth though and know knee jerk reactions aren't sensible. There must always be a plan of some kind, and importantly a goal/outcome. It coukd be that there is one minor issue affecting his performance, or that he hasn't attended any academic lesson for 6 months while they work on his language. His SALT report showed good progress even by my high expectations.

[homework]

You need to go in have a meeting and get the answers to these questions and the many more that you know doubt have . These will all be important factors that can be affecting his education.
That in itself is the start to a plan cause without these answers you cant forumulate , any other decisions . So you have made some progress in fact that you have more questions , than answers to be able to move forward , at this stage at least .
Plans as well as goals can come in way of small steps , that change constantly as we have more knowledge . BUT I don't need to tell you this your already fully aware of it , reminder never hurts though .
Hope everything goes well for you . Ring Monday , don't let things lye , this is my mantour for gcse years to ensure my son succeeds .

[MariaNoMoreLurking]

Star, I think you're getting stuck going in circles. Doing well in SLT & social interaction, plus the P level scores are more or less accurate, you think... that's a good start.

And a million miles on from where you'd be with a typical mainstream ("oh yes mrs NoMore, DS is at level x in maths, level y in literacy"... when I know the local secondaries re-test everyone cos all the NC levels are fictional, not even just for the dc with sen).

The social-interaction and language skills are absolutely key to his ability to learn independently now, and forever. And i think you can get the school to raise their expectations. But If you do have to chose between soft skills, and NC levels, it's a no-brainer.

[MariaNoMoreLurking]

Relatively easy to pick up literacy/ numeracy in adult life, the basic skills classes are full of dyslexics/dyscalculics, EAL adults, grown-up ADHD-ers etc, and they usually do well. But it's virtually impossible to get targetted help for S&l and asd-impairments once you hit 11, never mind 18.

[homework]

Your son is only six and social skill , language are important at this age , as Maria has quite rightly pointed out , also if language unit , the language intense lesson and amount of these you will never get from just going for nhs lesson in clinic or them coming in giving package to TA in school to find time to cover. These will actually be done by speech therapist . Once he's a good level of language skill , social skill improve somewhat as he's easier to communicate with so will develop friendships .
Academically he needs this to progress as well , you find he has talents in some areas that you can fly with . My son first subject he took any interest in was history , we had gone to Egypt and he was enthralled , we then used this to move his education on , sparked an interest that he still has with history to this day . But it got him started , he went on to dinosaurs , can tell you facts and figures that will blow you away , moved onto space .
So you see he will have interest that he fixates on but is learning fom also.

[AgnesDiPesto]

I can pretty much guarantee you would have similar problems with lack of accuracy at m/s. The scores do sound low given your DS is same age as mine but yours is much further ahead with language eg ds is still on basic wh questions (and has been for 2 years) and still only asks wh questions very occasionally. But we have the opposite problem DS scores are too high (1c literacy - which is a total joke) and 1a maths (which may be right but conceals huge gaps with vocab and using numbers rather than just rote learning patterns). Teachers just don't get him at all - fail to realise how much is just a rote learnt string of information which he does not understand. We are still waiting (in 3rd year) for an academic curriculum which is even vaguely fitted to DS actual needs - Doomsday post resonates with me - we have to prove he can learn by teaching it at home for them to sit up and take notice - the work is either too easy or too hard so he switches off, and I am at the point of just accepting it is never going to happen - the m/s teacher is timetabled to the max and has no time for DS who needs work differentiated well below the level of the others in literacy, science etc. It would be quicker and easier for me to plan for him myself and send in my own worksheets for him but the HT will still be insisting the teacher is doing all the planning necessary and probably refuse to let me.

For us the ipad is our friend. DS has some of the montessori maths apps which he loves and 'maths builder - primary' by Paul Fowler - someone on here recommended it. It covers the maths KS1 curriculum. He went from P4 to 1c in about 4 weeks using this and then took his love of maths to youtube and BBC games etc and is now 1a. All this has been achieved by DS himself with zero input from a qualified teacher.

I am slightly envious about the way your school 'gets' the real life / functional / meaningful side - although I can see why you see this as low expectations. Much of what the teacher wants us to do with DS is not meaningful or functional at all, its just rote. At the moment she is anxious if he doesn't grasp tens and units fully he won't be able to do partitioning which is the (only) way they do addition for larger numbers. Now first I suspect DS can do tens and units and probably can do partitioning, but so what if he can't. Frankly when you have a brain that remembers lots of sums in your head and are likely to have a calculator on the phone in your pocket in future life what does it matter for DS if he can't add up using partitioning. I have A level maths and I never did partitioning. This is where mainstream goes Gove / OFSTED crazy and loses all perspective that there is more than one way to teach a skill and some skills are pointless for some children anyway. I wish DS teachers would grasp that going to the shop and using money is more important for DS than partitioning large numbers. All they can see is whats next on the curriculum and they move on even if 50% of the class hasn't got it.

I would also say that getting past NC1 is hard - more about abstract concepts, inference etc etc so actually by filling those gaps your DS will be better able to move up to level 2/3 whereas in mainstream those gaps would just be left. DS is increasingly being excluded from lessons because of the language barrier. The CT is just beginning to realise how big a barrier that is but goodness we are well into year 2 and the penny is only just dropping and even then we don't have any actual work set by the teacher to address this.

I think the choice is move to m/s and accept you will have to teach language, inference etc etc and make the work meaningful or stay where you are and do the academics at home. There are more ready made resources for the academics so I think it might be a case of the grass being greener...

[StarlightMcKenzie]

Thank you so much all of you for taking the time to post.

There are other factors at work which I haven't given (sorry to drip feed) but that still incline me to the removal of ds.

One is that his ASD progress has happened as a combination of the school's SALT expertise but not their behavioural, motivational and engagement expertise. That has been bussed in and paid for by me.

I'm starting to feel that they aren't all that clued up on how to teach him even the social skills tbh. It has worked, but I don't think it was the school really. Though credit to them for listening and working hard, but it was still a big effort to chip away and I still feel we are in very early days changing hears and minds. They still cling on heavily to the way they have always done things and insist that every time ds is disruptive in a lesson he goes outside for a massage or a bounce on a trampoline followed by re-entering the classroom to receive a sticker.

But, I do have the beginnings of a plan. Though due to past experience I know it isn't wise to put much of it here for the moment.

But I really am grateful for all of your points.

[AgnesDiPesto]

"They still cling heavily to the way they have always done things" - you know this will be the same in m/s too right? I think as long as you accept there is no ideal school. Its going to be about making up the shortfall wherever he goes, just the shortfall will be in different areas.

[StarlightMcKenzie]

Yes, I know that Agnes.

Perhaps I'll just give up and start my own school, in my living room, starting with my ds.

[StarlightMcKenzie]

You do know that I'm really not asking for ideal though right? Just something a bit, well sensible.

[Inclusionist]

Is youe SS ASD specific? If not, could you move to be near the NAS free school in Reading?

[StarlightMcKenzie]

Thank you for the suggestion inclusion but one of the reason Ds is at a non-ASD school is because I wanted to avoid the ASD assumptions and low expectations I have found in NAS IMO out of date educational model.

I fear it would be much worse. From what I saw of other NAS schools his needs wouldn't be met at all and I'd have the additional arrogance of staff NAS 'expertise' to battle as well. Though to be fair I have not seen Reading.

[MariaNoMoreLurking]

the school's SALT expertise

This is the reason he's there. And because they aren't likely to a) lie to you, b)make him ill, c)invent/imagine safeguarding issues

Sod choice, if a dc has SEN we're reduced to picking the least worst option. And if his language catches up, and there's (for example) a good ASD unit or maintained SS nearby, the least worst option might change.

[MariaNoMoreLurking]

think you need to send moondog into school really

[StarlightMcKenzie]

Oh God. I've begged her before, but she's too busy saving the world at a much higher level!

[MariaNoMoreLurking]

I wonder if she has any SLT-aba students in your neck of the woods...
A junior cloned moondog would do just fine

[MariaNoMoreLurking]

G'wan, try convincing them of his copperplate handwriting. Video demo. Fountain pen optional, might be overdoing it.

[StarlightMcKenzie]

I'll certain ask them what they think is going on.

One thing I came up with is that outside if numeracy and literacy they may not have taught any other subject due to possible intense therapy in the early year, until the start of year 2.

If this is the case then the TEACHING is a good year behind, rather than his learning. But if you thought mainstream schooling was opaque, you ain't seen nothing.

[MariaNoMoreLurking]

I reckon it's secondary school syndrome. You know, "We know what we're doing, this is all about subject expertise, your job as a parent is to ensure homework, dinner money, and sign the behaviour contract".

But it's occurring in primary, because the teachers do have specialised expertise and gets worse cos many of the dc will come via transport, rather than being dropped off daily by their nosy interested parents.