Daughter has been restreamed with no explanation

[Frazzled50yrold]

My 14 yr old started year 10 last week at her non selective secondary school. She' s been in one of the higher streams of the school since completion of tests by the school. She's been progressing fine, not the most academic ever but enjoys school and has some subjects she strongly favours. Her results have been reasonable with her last report being exceptionally good, many of her subjects were 90% plus. She' s been diagnosed as dyslexic during the year, the SENCO has left recently and i need to catch up with the replacement. On returning to school she was streamed to one of the lowest classes with no discussion whatsover, her teachers told her they'd no idea why she's been restreamed, year head, form teacher, vice principal and principal all told her the same thing. I've met with the school principal who tells me she will investigate the reasons why, 2 schooldays later I've heard nothing. Am I the mother from hell or does this make sense to anyone. Any advice?

No, definitely not the mother from hell! Call the school again. You and your daughter need to know why she has been re-streamed, and if they can't justify it - Her results have been reasonable with her last report being exceptionally good, many of her subjects were 90% plus. - she needs to be re-streamed again pronto.

These are her GCSE years. If she's been streamed into one of the lower groups, could it mean that she only does foundation level in some of her subjects, thus capping the grade she can get? (Don't know if this is still a thing, but it certainly was a couple of years ago.)

Does she have support in school for her dyslexia like a scribe or reader given by a TA? I had to be very forthright that dd was to be streamed according to her ability and not the school's desire to support others with her TA.

The proximity of the dyslexia diagnosis and her restreaming worry me . I've had very strong words with the principal around this and the lack of any transparency in their systems is really bizarre. You're correct around the foundation level issue also.

I've raised the lack of support for her dyslexia with the principal. Interesting that the principal had to ask me what stage she was at, what was being done for her etc. We're talking about a school with less than 600 pupils, she could have found out. The school has been having some issues and i know there's been a level of intervention by the education authority. I'm worried that they've tried to mix up the classes to improve the results ie: the recent inspection refers to a 28 boys achieving neither maths or English gcse.

I would definitely call and ask. I was put in the wrong stream when I moved schools and they decided the streams purely on foreign language abilities and as I was 3 years behind on French (I only started it the year I moved) they put me in the bottom stream for everything. My dad called up and pretty much just told them I'd be moving up to the top stream and that was that.

I'm no particularly strong views on streaming and to be honest I've never had to even think about it before but the lack of any justification for it to date really concerns me. I've reminded the school today that I'm awaiting a response. If they try to justify the process I'll want to see that 30 children in her previous stream did better than her.

If no one knows why then it's probably an admin balls-up, hopefully they'll sort it quickly!

How can nobody know why, who makes the decisions? What is the chain of decisions & accountability, have you directly heard from teachers or staff? It sounds like an admin error, maybe a mistyping.... or your DD isn't taking some info in that she was told. Fair enough to ask.

It's a school with a 40% take up for free school meals and to think that they could possibly have made that sort of blunder is really worrying. My daughter had 2 teachers come to her and ask why she wasn't in their class, you couldn't make it up.

I've met with the principal and basically went and sat in reception until she met me. The message was that my child had been down streamed and that she would investigate why, also acknowledged that my daughter had asked her why this had been done. She accepted that her report had been good and that they've made a mess up somewhere. I've said the link between the dyslexia diagnosis and the re streaming seems quite a coincidence and they're keen to distance themselves from that. I was so angry that I think it's actually delayed the response as they're struggling to justify it. Will update when i hear from them.

So restreaming can happen without any consultation with the year head, form teacher, vice principal or principal? Who is in charge of these decisions?

Yanbu to question this. It sounds like someone lazy actually thinks that all dyslexic people belong in the bottom stream, none of them have the capacity to work at a more advanced level. Don't let this go.

I spotted a kid today who had been put in completely the wrong set. No idea how it happened, must have been an error when transferring data from a spreadsheet to SIMs. If I hadn't spotted it, no doubt this kid's parents would have been in demanding answers, but there wouldn't be any!

Heard from the Principal in the afternoon and she acknowledges the mistake, the lack of consultation etc. They've apparently integrated some of their classes together as a cost saving exercise but acknowledge that there should have been no changes to any groupings without consultation. My daughter had changed class completely, not just in a few subjects so I'm not sure this is 100% correct. Profuse apologies have been given and she's being moved to her old class tomorrow. It''s worrying and I'm just going to have to keep a very close eye on her education. She acknowledges that the Head of Year should have consulted but the lack of knowledge from a principal really worries me.

Good for you for sticking to your guns and following it up. Someone less clued up, or thinking that the staff must know what they're doing, might have let things drift, and who knows if anyone would ever have picked up on the fact that they had put a child in completely the wrong stream. Glad it's been sorted out.

There's absolutely no way that a high performing kid being stuck in a low set woudn't have been picked up at some point. It would be to the detriment of the school to have a kid working at a lower level than targeted and having GCSE achievement capped. It would also have been to the detriment of the individual class teachers who would have been faced teaching a child with targets way higher than the rest of the group - their pay rises depend on meeting these targets.

Dyslexia or no dyslexia, there is no way that anyone did this deliberately. That's why no one can justify it!

DD school has lower classes that have all the support - could be anything from behavior to SEN to medical -

I think her diagnosis put her there without reflection on their grades

At least you sorted it

Well done

The lower classes tend to get the support, but that doesn't mean that's where all the kids with SEN go. I was looking at my new classes for this year and noting their SEN info. All my classes have kids with SEN in, from top to bottom. Most classes have a pupil with dyslexia, one or two with ASD, ADHD and so on. Top to bottom including sixth form.

I understand that getting a diagnosis of dyslexia is a big deal for a pupil and a family, but for a school it's pretty much business as usual. Certainly not a reason to suddenly change all their classes.

Glad you got to the bottom of this OP. It's very concerning to think that pupils get downgraded without any consultation or explanation and sometimes due to an admin error or typo. These decisions have big consequences and can be extremely upsetting and demotivating for the students concerned. More care needs to be taken.

I've just reset close to a thousand students. I understand why parents get anxious about this, but there is no way you can consult widely with heads of year and form tutors for whole year groups. We used the data and the opinions of their teachers, and it will be open to review later in the year.