More House, Northease, Frewen, Slindon time again!

[Gillway]

More House, Northease, Frewen, Slindon: anyone got any recent experience of any of them? I'm a parent of a Dyspraxic, Dyslexic kid with sensory, anxiety, auditory, visual and social communication issues floundering at mainstream secondary. Been under a threat of prosecution for non attendance for a while. Bloody awful time. Ehcp process on its way. Son is sociable with no behavioural issues and has an extremely high IQ.

Can anyone please tell me about schools that might work for us within reasonable distance of Brighton? More House actively wants high IQ non behaviourally challenged kids, but is an onerous 1.5 hours away. I've heard kids do this but I've often wondered how they could be Sen because mine wouldn't be great with 3 hours travel per day.

We would however consider moving. Frewen is also distant and not sure if it is for children with challenging behaviours or just spld kids. Northease is close but has it recovered from its recent issues and is it academic enough for a child with high potential and who needs to learn the skills to pass GCSEs with dyspraxia? Slindon is also a knackering journey away but maybe it's good? My son could also manage a mainstream school with trained spld teachers, but a specialist school with in house salt, OT and all day long Specialist teaching, good facilities and a non disruptive cohort would be the best. After reading umpteen threads with some
Posts going back to 2004, I'm appalled that finding a school for a bright SEN kid is still a complete forking nightmare!

I live not far from you OP ( Shoreham-by-Sea) and am interested in your post. Northease sounds fabulous under new head - but only take kids from
10 yo and our son ( 7) I hope will be able to start sooner.

Have you looked at New Barn in Horsham? We were super impressed.

We've got a visit booked at Slindon next week, but had to send over paperwork for them to assess first.

Thanks Missfliss and lucky / clever you to be so quick to get your child sorted. Unfortunately I like others whose kids mask and whose difficulties are 'invisible' had no idea we would be in this terrible situation until it was clear that mainstream secondary would not work. This area we live in is a joke. Two specialist schools shut last summer and so more Sen kids are going to be expected to attend mainstream. The new asd unit at Dorothy Stringer will only take 20 pupils and they will be expected to be in mainstream classes 95% of the time. Yeah right. No thanks.

I'm not clever at all -I was lucky to have a great and proactive SENCO ( she herself has a teen with ASD) who worked hard to get him assessed by SALT, OT and paediatric team at Worthing in years 1& 2.

We are just at draft EHCP stage now and have already started to experience an LA who seem to be ignoring the expert advice and trying to wedge him in mainstream.... we have a long way to go too.

My son behaves beautifully at school ( masks well and carries anxiety until he gets home) which means he doesn't present the behavioural challenges that might otherwise help his case for specialised provision - we are relying on expert reports from private OT and possibly now a private Ed Psych to get that stuff sorted.

I hope things start to nice for you soon

Bumping this for post prandial SEN mums.

Missfliss, did you get assessments done by the LA and the NHS, or privately? If the former, do you feel they accurately reflect your child's needs? Will these experts be going to tribunal with you? Finally can you recommend a SALT, OT and Ed Psych because I frankly don't place much faith in Brighton. All roads seem to lead to the same people and one wonders how much they might be lent on by the LA. Everyone in everybody's pockets as it were. I do already have reports but they might be considered out of date so will have to get more. I do so love spending thousands on pieces of paper!

Hi OP, I'm happy to chat about More House. My DS (HF ASD but no behavioural issues) started there in Sept '18 (year 7). We also looked at Slindon College, which is a nurturing school, but in the end we didn't believe was a good fit for him. DS is musical and at the time we were searching for a school there were extremely limited opportunities in this regard at Slindon and no class music lessons (this may have changed). The headmaster (who has since left) told me they were in the process of becoming more of an ASD-specific school.

More House is wonderful. My DS loves it and settled in very quickly. The staff know each boy inside out and will support the pupils in whatever area(s) they require, in the way that best suits their learning style. From year 7 they are streamed for Maths, English and Science. All other subject lessons (except PE, where they're grouped with boys with similar needs) are in their form tutor groups.
They spend time in the Learning Development Centre for OT, SALT and ELS (effective learning skills). These are small group sessions, where they'll be matched with boys with similar needs/learning styles. There are some incredibly bright pupils there and it's a really happy, welcoming school. Although it's definitely not a "behavioural" school as such, the nature of the diagnoses of some pupils means that occasionally there's some challenging behaviour at school, but this is dealt with extremely quickly and appropriately.

Hope this helps, do PM me if I can answer any more questions.

Thank you I have sent a PM.

Slindon got a new Head (third in five years) and probably worth a look as seems to be getting back on track after a pretty rocky few years. It still needs “modernising” but depends on your DS’s specific needs tbh.

Thanks ianbury. It seems this narrative of specialist schools having ups and downs due to staffing issues goes on and on. Or is it simply the nature of the beast? That Sen kids are challenging and the type of staff drawn to Sen are sometimes either Sen themselves, or not sen enough to understand? After reading all the threads here it seems a major problem is that parents who go through the 1-2!year
trauma and financial wipeout of attaining an ehcp, don't want to rock the boat once they've got the la funding for the specialist school they need. So in a sense the specialist school is almost immune to criticism and change until it falls apart.

Gillway - you’ve nailed it!!!!

Thanks Gianticicle. Son is 12 yr 8 and we have begun the 20 week process with evidence dating back 3 years from highly regarded ed psych and OT. Therefore we could be 1-2 years away from an ehcp. So son will be 13/14 year 9 or 10 by then and herein lies the problem! However his IQ is in the very top percentile so the academic work isn't the problem. It's the executive functioning, the learning skills, scribing, typing, developing memory and organisational skills, conditioning his body with its weak muscle memory and 5th centile balance, learning strategies to circumvent his visual perception problems which languish in the 5th centile - these are the things he needs in an environment that isn't full of drama! Any advice most welcome

DS went to More House. I think it is amazing. I couldn't get state help, so I sold my house and downsized to help finance it. Worth every penny - even though I'd obviously rather not have had to. DS weekly boarded because we were too far away for him to commute daily and I had to work full-time to help pay the fees.

DS is ASD and has multiple specific learning difficulities, including severe dyslexia. He got 9 really good GCSEs and whilst he didn't do quite so well in his A levels, he did well enough to get into Uni.

Class sizes are small. Teacher turn over is low. They have all sorts of extra support for boys really struggling. Extra curricular stuff is good too and I found it friendly and welcoming.

There's a More House open day coming up end of Feb, would really recommend you go along if you're keen. We went last year and it was very helpful in making our decision as you see so much of school and have access to teachers at all levels.

For us it was just what we were looking for for bright DS who struggles to process language in noisy mainstream. He will go from September, in appeal situation with our LA at the minute but am hopeful. Even if we don't win, there's nowhere else I've seen quite like it, and DS loved it so will have to come up with a Plan B somehow!

Thank you Margolovebutter and Iamandler. What a time you've had Margo. I'm impressed by the robust spirit of you in selling your home and your DS in agreeing to board. My DS is a scaredy cat. Iamandler I've signed up for the open day because I figure even if we never get in, we will still learn about what is possible because at the moment no one at our mainstream has a clue about teaching spld and are parent blaming and telling my son to take responsibility for himself and all sorts of inappropriateness.

Gillway, DS wasn't overly thrilled by the idea of boarding when he started, but the options were either go to state school and endure years of torture or board at MHS and possibly be happy and get an education.

The boarding had ups and downs for him, but that was really due to his ASD and difficulties with peer relationships. The boarding staff were superb and I could always get hold of them, if that was needed. MHS also doesn't do any of that nonsense about boys not being able to phone home etc, so I was in touch with DS every day.

Margolovebutter, The fact you worked so hard and made those sacrifices, and the fact your DS overcame any ASD anxieties to board is pretty incredible. I'm having this discussion now - how far do we go with this? Do we move? Will our DS agree to move away from his small group of trusted SEN mates? Do we forget it and lose the chance of a life time? I'm no spring bird and upheaval at 50+ would be grim. I'm like a clockwork toy going about my routine. Uprooting might kill me! I have a Tiger mom friend with three daughters and she has sacrificed everything, taking in lodgers so she and her 3 girls, 12,14,16 sleep in one bedroom so she can afford their already subsidised private school. They got sports, music and academic scholarships. Every night they do homework while she supervises and cooks cheap pulse based meals. Every Saturday they trot off to relevant activities while she ferries and feeds. There is no tv in the house and computer time is strictly limited to homework. For fun they do watercolours or go to a classical concert at a nearby church. And there I am thinking thank god DS is on Fortnite so I can WhatsApp my friends while flicking between Come Dine With Me and Netflix! Shopping, laundry, cooking dinner while working AND researching an EHCP is sacrifice enough! Or is it?!?

Thanks Gianticicle. Watching my bright, Sen DS getting fat and unhappy because he is not being given the skills to master his anxiety, sensory, working memory, auditory & visual processing problems enough to manage the Victorian values and yet vicious student violence of his current mainstream school - thereby ruining any chance of reaching his potential... I can see why families move. Moving could in effect save the whole family from a lifetime of pain and heartache. As these things tend to run in families, they may well not want old patterns of failure and depression, even suicide, to repeat themselves. The stakes are high.

Gillway, you can only do what you can do - and I don't mean that in a flippant way.

I am about as far off a tiger mum as you can imagine. I am a single parent with two DC and I've worked full time most of the way through their childhoods. Mimecast was the thing when DS was younger and I was never more grateful for something that he enjoyed and could play remotely with the few friends that he had and I have no doubt that the jury of MN would have probably judged he spent more time than he should have done playing it.

He was so miserable at mainstream school and was starting to self-harm by violently throwing himself at walls and our concrete kitchen floor. He was barely literate, hated all his teachers, hated school and I knew it wasn't sustainable.

The transformation has been amazing and even though I am broken financially it has genuinely been worth it.

Margolovebutter, that's an incredible thing you've done. Clearly the mitigating factors outweighed any other concerns. Because my DS merrily masks all-a day long, the situation had taken a long time to unravel. There is no red alert. But based on family history, I know that unless he gets appropriate SALT and OT, and unless he achieves his potential, he will become a rude, bizarrely impatient, depressed, scary, jobless adult like all the other men in my family. And on that cheerful note, good morning and have a nice day!

Thank you Gianticicle, you too made a big commitment and apologies because Tiger mom talk was just an example of what some people will do to sacrifice and me not having the strength or wherewithal to do the same. We are going to open day.

I didn't take offence at the tiger mum stuff, I just didn't want you to think that I was one! I'm just an ordinary mortal bungling my way through parenthood, same as most other people. Tiger mums operate in a universe that doesn't exist for me, so I didn't want you to think that you had to be one.

It is really hard to know what to do for the best and usually there is way more than one factor to take into consideration - such as all those you listed.

DS only left last July and I really miss the school! More than him probably. For seven years, someone other than me and his sister 'got him' and had his back and that's what I miss.

Enjoy the open day.