Sending a child out of the class

[Daredevil]

I've name hanged for this as school have found Internet posts in the past.

I'm a parent whose dh is s teacher. Dh has a strong opinion on an incident that happened with ds & I wanted to know opinions from other teachers as to what happened.

Ds (year 7) we strongly suspect he has an ASD but getting a diagnoses is virtually impossible due to funding. We were refused a referral when he was in primary despite the school nurse & senco appealing. We are currently waiting for an ed psych assessment.

Ds passed for a grammar school. It's been a difficult transition, he's had several meltdowns at school & each time I've been called to take him home but recently he's been doing well although he gets distracted/frustrated easily. He appears very young/immature for his age & he is incredibly disorganised.

Last week he fell & hurt himself & had to have a dressing on his hand but it started to heal nicely. However the one day it was bothering him (dressing off by this point) & he was distracting others because he was distracted by his hand. So he got a reprimand but unfortunately he'd had several reprimands about stuff that week forgotten kit, not handing in homework he had done etc) so it triggered a detention.

He got really upset about this as he felt it was unfair & started arguing with the teacher. Teacher said he was very rude & sent him out of the classroom (unfortunately ds doesn't always realise when he is appearing rude especially when he's het up about perceived unfairness).

Was there any way this could have been handled better or did the teacher do the right thing. His head of year says this behaviour is not acceptable & the other students can't see him get away with stuff.

Unfortunately the situation escalated & he's now in big trouble.

No Iguana, I'm not a teacher.
I find it sad that because of the child's reaction (hiding), it's assumed that it's not the school for him (although going by the OP's latest post, the school doesn't sound good at all), rather than thinking how the child can be supported better so he doesn't get to that point.
And it's all very well saying that the parents should be talking to the SENCO so the school can have better understanding, but IME it's rare to find a school that will listen to parents (or ASD experts for that matter) and try to introduce even minimal strategies to support the child.
Maybe it isn't rare, but over the years my DC have been to three primaries and two secondaries, we are yet to find anyone who will listen and support or high functioning children.
It's far easier to refuse support and insist the child isn't right for the school.

You don't need money to be able to give staff training on strategies for teaching children with ASD though.

Phil - my last post was mostly about our local comp (the head on sick etc)

But Sally, it doesn't sound like the OP's ds needs 1:1, just some understanding.
My own ds support needs are simple things like slight tweaking of language used, slight change of attitude (he's not naughty, he's anxious), just a bit of understanding. Without those things (which wouldn't cost a thing to the school to implement, and wouldn't affect the other DC being taught) he is more of a handful and arguably takes up more of the teacher's time.

I agree with what you say about specialist schools, but not all of our DC with ASD need to be in SS.

At our school we would organise for all the teachers of a particular child to meet to discuss strategies. But I don't think this particular trigger could have been avoided by the teacher. She wouldn't have known his current tally of warnings. I do think he should have been sent to a particular place.

You don't need money to be able to give staff training on strategies for teaching children with ASD though.

Who's doing the training? Who's covering classes?

I'm not saying you go back to specialist schools - only that the specialist have been lost!

Phil. It's exactly that sort of stuff he needs.

Help I see dd getting with no fuss or impact on others.

The strategy in my school would have been for the child to be aware that their frustration was growing and use their time-out card to go to the SEN base.

The argumentative child could not have been kept in the classroom while waiting for someone to pick them up as this often takes a long time (we are a large site). If the child was sent out to calm down and then absconded, I would send a message to admin that a child had gone AWOL and they would organise a search.

The child proactively removing themselves from the situation before it escalates is the best way to manage this. Is that possible, OP?

The other thing is that we only have the child's parent's perspective on the incident. Perhaps the teacher had carefully ignored or given non-verbal feedback (shaking head, redirecting, re-focussing) on several other disruptive things before the bandage playing. Perhaps some other strategies have been put in place (seat him with someone calm who can ignore; seat him at the front or at the side). It might not be the case that this teacher leapt cold-heartedly and uncaringly on the very first indiscretion.

Sally- at my school it would be me, the SENCo at a staff meeting.

No training needed at all to meet my ds's needs.
A simple:
Me: Instead of saying xyz, please say abc instead.
Teacher: ok that's fine.

Brilliant, job done.

But this doesn't happen. All I get is "but I can't see that this is ASD, I assure you he's being rude/naughty/manipulative (insert other negative word of choice)”

I do understand that not all children could get away with such minimal support, but there are lots that would, and their parents would be thrilled to be able to help out and do whatever they can do to help.
I'm on a support group on FB, with lots of DC who present like ds, it is very rare for a school to listen to parents, so instead it nearly always becomes a massive, banging your head against a brick wall, battle to even get to a point where anyone is willing to listen, let alone understand and even try anything.

It's listening to stories like the ones on here that make me realise how lucky I am to work where I do. It makes me worried for our children when they leave in year 6.

All teachers in mainstream schools should have a basic awareness of autism and strategies to support children in the spectrum. However the lack of awareness in some schools does not surprise me, owing to budgets being cut many schools are struggling to support special needs children. In answer to your question/point sallyhas this sort of training is often carried out during 'after school' sessions therefore no cover is required.

Daredevil sorry I haven't read all of your posts (I assume you are in the UK) have you or the school requested an assessment of his needs for an EHC Plan? You can do this yourself and if turned down you can appeal

I've worked in lots of schools and have friends who work across a huge network of schools - my perspective is that it is not "rare" for schools to listen to parents and try very hard indeed.

My school put on some after school training to raise awareness of ASD, I think it was similar to the one Phil mentioned above, as you got a certificate, it was sponsored by the DfE.

It wasn't compulsory, it was in your own time so hardly anyone attended. It was also only an hour long so was very basic, for people who had no knowledge of ASD at all. It certainly didn't give strategies like 'instead of xyz say abc', and it didn't even mention meltdowns.

Any decent level of ASD training would certainly cost the school. The next course up is a day. Budgets are tight and teachers rarely get sent on courses.

It is always going to be difficult. My ds has ASD (diagnosed) but has developed methods that mean is able to manage well enough that normal behaviour management is appropriate for him. My friend's ds has no ASD and no features to suggest it might be undiagnosed but suffers anxiety to the degree that he needs adaptation to the the behaviour management in order to function within school.

Children on and off the spectrum can have such wildly different needs and particularly in secondary school where they may have up to 15 different teachers and those teachers may teach dozens to hundreds of students over a week there can never be a perfect system. Computer based systems like SIMS may help and it shouldn't stop us trying though.

I've been chatting to ds about what happened/what he could have done differently etc etc. His version of events are

Hecwas shaking & blowing on his hand as it was hurting. He was given a reprimand for distracting the boy next to him (who was talking to ds presumably about what hecwas doing. Ds tried to explain (argued?) to the teacher he wasn't being distracting but his hand was hurting. The teacher wouldn't listen to him & Ds started to get angry.
The teacher shouted at him to "get out of my class". Ds left & waited outside - not sure how long 10 mins maybe. He said he was crying out there & feeling more and more upset.

The lesson ended & the teacher briefly left the room. Ds went back into the room & felt he just wanted to get away from everything so he climbed inside the cupboard. He says he fell asleep (goodness knows how).

I expect the teachers version of events is different. As far as he was aware Ds persisted in shaking his hand, argued with him about the reason for the reprimand which was rude & so was sent out.

Philphil and daredevil I am sorry you have had such issues with dx :(

Also excuse my ignorance - I guess you can only know how it is where you live if that makes sense.

But in any case, where I teach there are students with no specific diagnosis but we all know there may be issues and we have strategies to deal with them.

Sorry OP if I have upset you with what I said - not intended :(

Looking at yr latest post, the teacher should have followed up on the sending out an got your DS back in/told him to go to learning support. That's what I would be raising with the school.

Post meltdown my son often falls asleep on the floor. Sometimes he even does it mid scream!

There might not be a learning support department at the grammar school.

If a child is arguing with the teacher they have to be removed - there is no way a teacher can abandon the learning of 29 pupils to engage in argument with one child. In this situation I would definitely send the child out and tell them I will come out an talk to him privately in a few minutes. I will use the few minutes to ensure the rest of the class have a task to get on with, and the child outside can calm down. I will then go out an speak to the child separately. If the child is not there, I would call for someone to go and look for him - he would be considered to be truanting. If he was there we would have a brief chat so he can express the perceived unfairness and it can be resolved and he can agree to come back in and work without disturbing others.
Unless he has LSA support there is no other option. He cannot be allowed to disrupt the whole lesson for everyone.

At the last course I was on I sat next to a grammar school teacher who told me her school was getting lots more pupils with SEN now. This consisted of one pupil who was visually impaired and another with hearing difficulties.

IME grammar schools do not cater adequately for pupils with SEN- not because they don't want to but because they don't have the experience and the training is not a priority when they have so few pupils who belong to this category.

I know your local school sounds problematic. Are there any other comps he could fall into catchment for? Is his sister's school all girls?

Do any of you who are posting things like 'sorry your child is one of 30' have children of your own with Special Needs? As well as being a teacher??? Id be interested to know those peoples thoughts.