Depressing day at secondary school tour

[2boysnamedR]

I are choosing a school for our nt boy for next year. The first thing the head asked me was if ds had any support in school. I was a bit confused but guessed he meant learning support. I told him he had reading help in year one and there was suspected dyslexia but nothing major. The head told me not to wastes my breath investing if he has. That some people go all out the help dyslexics and at the other end of the scale some people it's just "lazy boy syndrome". He sits in the middle of that camp. :0/

So I would like my dsypraxic boy to follow his elder brother into the same school ideally. I asked how the school deals with sen. ( at no point at all did I mention my kids have sen). The head said kids with sen are free to enrol but they will fail as the school won't help them :0/

A friends ds with asperges goes there and said the head is crap but senco is excellent.

I was just gob smacked. To be so blunt! I'm not shocked at all but I was :j0 at his frankness...

It is absolutely outrageous - but I'd be thankful that you know. As wrong as it is - they've made their position clear and I think that helps you.

You have a clear choice

(1) send them there - knowing that this is their (archaic and awful) views on managing SEN - send them there knowing that you will have battle after battle on your hands to get support.

(2) run for the hills and find somewhere more enlightened.

I know what my choice would be. They are in the wrong - they should be able to help your children - but I'd really think about what you want to spend the next 5 years doing and what you'd be inflicting on your child- even if you are prepared to make a stand and to battle the system on the principal that they SHOULD be willing and able to help them - do you really want your child in an institution who don't really want to put the effort in to help your child succeed?

I personally wouldn't want to go near a school who were this awful - I know I'd be shocked to hear this from a head - but I couldn't put my child there knowing this is their views.

I would only have a year of my nt and dyspraxic boy in the same school so it might work for the nt boy. But yes I'd rather cut my head off then send my sen boy there. Even if the senco and teachers were great it's the ethos coming down from the head. I bet he thinks dsypraxia is just lazy boy syndrome. This is how they got offted outstanding! "Sen cleansing..."

SEN cleansing indeed.

The only good thing to come out of that conversation is that you know now not to send him there.

Ofsted "outstanding" to my mind anyway means bugger all. When I saw that DS's former junior school got that so called accolade I did wonder how much money was put into the brown envelope.

I've been having the same responses when looking at sixth form options for ds who has been home educated since Y5 and wants to do A levels from next September.

One prestigious independent school (which would have cost us an arm and a leg) told me outright that they couldn't offer any specific autism/ADHD support but 'they'd deal with any situations as they arose' - no good at all, we need proactive measures in place so that situations DON'T arise, that's the whole point! But yes, it made the decision easier to make. Far less trouble to walk away from a school where you KNOW your child's needs won't be met, than one with grey areas.

Colleges were the same. Some singing from the rafters about SEN support but when we actually went there and asked proper, specific questions, we found that there was little available and it was obvious he'd crumble. One didn't even have the basics of a quiet room for autistic students to access at breaks. Tailor made for failure.

We have found ONE sixth form that will put high level support in proactively from the outset and withdraw when ds is ready. People, we have a winner .

Oh, and I've said for a long time that 'outstanding' on OFSTED reports just means that the HT is outstanding at pulling the wool over OFSTED's eyes and giving them what they want to see - on the day. My son went to two outstanding primaries and they destroyed him. It means nowt.