Head's comments on report - am I being insensitive?

[debs40]

I'm a little annoyed.

My son is 7. He is being assessed for Aspegers/ASD. He has a working diagnosis of ASD and also has DCD.

School have been very slow to catch on because he falls into that 'average' bracket and doesn't cause any disruption for teachers.

They have started to accomodate his needs after much intervention from health practitioners and an Early Bird Plus course run by the LA.

Anyway, I got his annual report on Friday and it showed moderate progress (described as good). He has barely gone anywhere in a year. In addition to the grades, the report assesses things like concentration, working in a group, self-correcting etc.

All those marks (and there are probably about 20 individual marks) have moved from the 'always does this end' to the 'rarely does or sometimes does' end. How is this progress?

Further, the Head's comments - in addition to 'good progress' - are that it is hoped he will show resilience as he moves in to the junior school.

Now, am I being insensitive or is this demonstrating, again, a complete lack of understanding of the problems he faces just being in school. I think he shows great resilience to be there in the first place!

I am seeing the Head this afternoon. Should I comment on it? I was going to ask her directly what her personal experience of ASD is too.

Its hard to read between the lines isn't it? I read this as meaning the HT is aware that progress has slowed and the transition to juniors may be challenging. Good idea to discuss it and how the school intend to support your son and foster his resilience.

i agree with magso, but it is also good to let them know how you feel, ask them how they think he is progressing if his marks ae geting worse.

Morning Debs, always to rarely is seen as an improvement, they will probably quote 'this means that strategies are working, but results wont happen overnight'. This could be the case if you have a good school.

In reality i would guess always to rarely means strategies are not applied all the time.

I would be asking Head what is this 'good progress' based on ie how is it monitored.

Even if you ask the Head what her experience is, it wont achieve much. As tempting as it i wouldnt bother.

Thanks for your help. I had a very productive meeting with the Head who admitted her knowledge of ASD was limited and was very helpful.

She could see that the 'learning skills' assessment on DS' report was vastly different to that of last year and that, given the grades, he might be underperforming.

We have set up a multi-disciplinary meeting for next term and will look at things again then.

Thanks so much for listening and advising!!

Claw - the always was a good thing e.g. listens and concentrates (always) whereas if marked rarely, this clearly means something is going wrong!! The Head could see this.

oops i read it wrong and there was you saying the school are slow to catch on!

Glad you had a positive meeting and that the school appear to be taking it on board, that is good news.