Gcse’s at Special School

[Verbena37]

Hi - not been on here for ages but just wanted to ask advice.
So do (15 next week) is in year 10 at a special school, having started there in year 9, when it opened.

The school offered maths and English GCSEs and have employed a specialist English teacher for him and another child.
Their form teacher does the maths (prior to going there from mainstream), he was doing really well in maths (set one in year 7) and then doing well at Interhigh during his time of school refusing.
Now however, he’s barely doing much maths and we are half way through the first gcse year! He’s only had 3 pieces of homework since September.

He asked me to chat to his teacher and say he’s not being challenged but I wasn’t prepared for her reply.
She said that she doesn’t have time to teach KS4, and two levels if KS3 at the same time and as they’re not yet an exam centre (still in application process), she can’t yet access the exam board syllabus and so is pulling stuff off websites she can access. He is currently having a GCSE hour a week and another other 2 non gcse KS3 lessons in a week.

She said she’s guessing that they don’t have any more funding for a specialist maths teacher.
Does anybody know if the EHCP Personal Budget would allow them to employ a teacher to teach them? I think it’s a notional budget so have no idea what sort of money it would be?

I explained that we based the choice of school on the fact the head teacher said they would offer maths and now it seems it can’t logistically be taught to the necessary standard.
My husband want us to fork out for a tutor but I don’t think we would need to if they employed a specialist teacher.

@TheFallenMadonna so his main class has 8 students but for English, just 3 of them go off to their English teacher and for maths, the 3 of them sit together as KS4’s even though for most of the time, they don’t have enough staff to do maths separately. There are usually 2 TA in the class though, with the teacher.

I understand about some science based secondary teachers also teach maths but they usually have to have done the SKE course if it’s not their main degree subject.
I think the teachers main subject was IT based but not sure if they’ve done a SKE maths course.

Given DS' ability in Maths and him doing quite well in English, is the school not offering another qualification? Computing/humanities/arts, whatever his interests and abilities are. And, why is he not doing GCSE science? From your posts it seems he would be capable.

What does DS want to do post Y11?

So they’re not offering gcse science and we asked if they would do a Btech Tech Award after someone on here suggested it, which they are doing. Although he’s missed a fair few of the lessons as they replace them often with stuff, like an event or something. They’re supposed to have 1 taught Btech lesson a week and 1 self study lesson - although DS finds self study hard due to his processing difficulties with planning time and not knowing how to begin.

Post Yr 11, he has no idea about what to do.
He isn’t confident in executive functioning skills and relies on me to do things for him - without me constantly prompting and coaxing him, he wouldn’t do much at all for himself.
He says he wants to a job that he can do at home but I worry about isolation. He is into gaming big time and likes the idea of making a lot of money at home on YouTube or something - I don’t think in a greedy way but because it would mean he didn’t have to interact with real life!
I worry about his future. He is a lovely lad but very introverted around others.

Doesn't his EHCP have anything in about independent living skills?

Do raise the issue of self study. The school should be scaffolding the lessons so he can gradually learn to become more independent.

I remember your thread last year now. It was IT/computing related? If it's the one I'm thinking of I posted on it under a different name. I remember it because I worry about access to qualifications for DS1 when he is older, and it shocked me that you needed tell the HT what to teach. Added to that thread the school's lack of knowledge about the maths GCSE is rather worrying.

Yes, I did post one about what it quals I could ask the school to teach, otherwise he’d have missed out on that opportunity as well.
We know that post 16, he may have to maybe study more from home - there aren’t any great special needs colleges near us really.

It’s all so stressful thinking of the future.
How old is your son? How is he doing?

I think it does Ellie - i’ll Check tomorrow.
He does cookery every Monday and they do have a room designated as an independent living flat but they’ve never used it! I might ask about that too.
I don’t think they are employing enough staff for the different mix of children. One can’t be left alone due to violent meltdowns so that automatically means they can’t always do things in groups and have to stay together as a class.

Our local fe college offers "Supported Learning" post 16 which is life skill based activities such as cooking and gardening with embedded numeracy and literacy. I think they also have the opportunity to take Functional Skills and progress onto btecs/nvq.

The school doesn't sound like it is meeting anyone's needs.

DS1 is 10, and has an EOTAS package because there isn't a suitable placement.

Nobody has to do extra training to teach outside their specialism. I organised it myself (it was fully funded). I think you need a frank discussion with the school about your differing expectations, and how you and they see his post 16 progression.

Mtg set up for two weeks time after half term. Hoping by then they might have sorted out a few ideas. In the mean time, we have now found a tutor who starts tomorrow. Hoping it saves his keen interest in maths before it’s too late!
Glad your son has a package sorted. I’m not sure what EOTAS is but guessing it’s a home school type thing?
fallenmadonna I didn’t realise SKE course were optional if maths wasn’t your main subject. I thought I’d read that if it’s not your degree you had to do SKE course.

Only if you want to train as a maths teacher. If you train as a teacher of another subject, once you have QTS you can teach anything. In England. I understand it is different in Scotland.

Really? That’s quite shocking in a way.
Take me for example, my degree is in geography and I have a B in gcse maths. I know I couldn’t confidently teach maths above year 3/4 probably as I just can’t retain it very well but can score ok in tests if I cram.
I defo couldn’t teach it up to gcse and wouldn’t try. I assumed all secondary maths teachers had at least maths A level and most of them a maths degree.

When we had problems with a special school not providing what they had promised in terms of academic teaching we went through the LA SEN team (after we were getting nowhere by ourselves). After all they were the ones paying for services that were not being provided. Not sure it made us any friends at the school but did sort the problem out. If they have said they will teach maths to GCSE (and why on earth not) then they really should be doing everything they can to do this even if it means paying for supply teachers to cover for permanent staff short-comings.

The school is also likely to be absolutely hammered by OFSTED if they fail to teach something as basic as maths to pupils who are capable of doing so. Infact given what you say about staff ratio's they are going to get hammered anyway.

Thanks OneInEight. The teacher has been away for two days and instead of getting a replacement in, they’ve used the 2 usual TAs so no teacher! He missed GCSE maths today (for about the 4th week) and did the work he was left, whilst trying to teach his other 2 friends the topic using a YouTube video. I’ll be bringing up staff shortages as well.
It’s a free school special academy - would this make a difference in how they do things...i.e. not having to have supply staff? I’m also assuming funding for maths staff would come from academy (Central govt like mainstream academies), not LA as in non academies.

I have no idea about free schools to be honest. ds's school was an independent special school and I suspect was charging the LA much greater fees than the amount a free school would be given. Regardless though if they have said they will teach GCSE maths and they are not it is not acceptable and I would still ask the LA SEN team for support because they are responsible for maintaining your son's EHCP. Although most of the time we seem to battle against them they can be useful when relations with the school are getting fraught. A solution might be the LA providing additional funding for maths teaching but they are not going to be happy with this idea.

I have just googled and free special schools seem to only get £10,000 per pupil as standard which if a high staff:pupil ratio is needed is not much at all. For comparison I think ds school fees were £90,000 by the time he finished so a huge difference. They did have a lot of pupils with challenging behaviour though.

I think the rules were relaxed. Academies and free schools can employ unqualified teachers without QTS. It is even more prevalent in indie SS.

EOTAS is education other than at school. DS1 has tutors and other therapies.

Oh my goodness! I knew independent schools sometimes hired non QTS teachers but I’m guessing it’s not as common as it used to be.
I didn’t know that SS schools didn’t have to trained teachers.

MS academies and free schools can employ unqualified teachers too.

I can't find anything official but lots of schools do employ unqualified teachers. It seems more children are being taught by teachers without QTS than previously. A google throws up numerous reports about it.

www.tes.com/news/too-many-pupils-are-taught-unqualified-teachers

www.tes.com/news/academy-use-unqualified-teachers-widens-inequality

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/education-40720697

That's not to say someone without QTS is necessarily rubbish at teaching, but on such a large scale I think it is worrying.

It’s definitely worrying!
Although to be honest, there are a fair few teachers with QTS who aren’t great at teaching (not teacher bashing just stating fact based on experience) so I’m not entirely sure what the solution is.

The bbc article you linked had an interesting part at the end from the HT of Brighton College. I think subject knowledge counts though. Yes, you might be a really ace teacher at connecting with kids, but if you’re teaching children the wrong information because of lack of core knowledge, that’s not great.

So quick catch up - had a meeting with school HT and SENDCO and they were lovely.
I explained we’ve hired a tutor anyway but they’ve now set in place twice weekly homework from Pearson’s 9-1 workbook and are looking into hiring a specialist maths tutor.

So we are really happy now they’re sorting it out. They said funding is fine - I just don’t think they realised they would need a separate teacher and that the current person could teach across two key stages, one being gcse - which is bonkers and not fair on her really.

Our tutor is assessing him over next few weeks to see which paper he thinks he could do - he seems to think higher as they don’t have to get as high a percentage to get a 4 or 5, opposed to needing like 80% for a 4 on lower paper.

I just wish he could sit both to maximise his chances. Does anyone know if special schools are able to do this? I have no idea why the exam boards set both lower and higher maths papers at the exact same time. It would give so many kids more of a ch ace at trying for a higher grade if they allowed them to do both papers.

Ofqual's advice is unless DS is able to get a 6 he should sit foundation, but you don't need to finalise which tier yet. Exam boards timetable maths for the same time to prevent schools entering pupils for both tiers.