Tag Archives: Special education in England

UnSATisfactory Pressure

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Since the introduction of the National Curriculum to UK education in 1989 and the creation of the Standard Attainment Tests (SATs) in 1991, everybody has had an opinion about them and few are afraid to make that opinion known. For 25 years, controversy has raged about the value of these tests and who, in fact, the tests are really testing – is it the children or the schools? The one thing that is not in any doubt is that these tests put our children under a huge amount of pressure to perform well, even when their skills perhaps lie in a different direction and little allowance is made for those who find formal testing an unbearable strain.

Even though it’s been 2 years since G was in Year 6, I can well remember the stresses and strains that the prospect of the year-end SATs put on her. Small, but telling signs of the pressure she felt were revealed through changes in her behaviour at home and her already shaky confidence in her literacy ability took a further battering as she struggled to understand what the tests were demanding of her. Her homework steadily increased to ensure that all maths and literacy elements were taught, revised and well-established by the time the tests themselves actually happened and she spent Saturday mornings working with my 29Mum, a retired Year 6 teacher, to fine-tune those skills that were proving a little elusive to my school-loving child. Her hard work and focus throughout the year stood her in good stead and we were all proud of her year-end results, most of all because they rebuilt her belief in herself. Despite that previous experience, I knew that M’s start in Year 6 would herald a very different set of experiences and that’s absolutely proved to be the case.

M has been expressing his worries about the SATs since well before he even reached Year 6. He loves reading and his imagination and vocabulary are impressive, but the ongoing struggles with his handwriting and spelling due to his dyspraxia and dyslexia have really knocked his confidence when it comes to his literacy skills. This September saw the very real manifestation of the stress and pressure he’s put himself under and pieces of homework and classwork alike have left him in tears. I realised just how bad things had got when I received an email from his class teacher expressing her concern about his wobbles in the classroom. She knows him well, having been the school SENCo since he started at this school in Year 3 and also his Year 4 teacher when he had his NG-tube, so she’s fully aware of his additional educational needs and personality quirks and felt that his response was completely unlike him.

We have been working hard with M to develop the basic knowledge that is missing due to the delay in getting a diagnosis for his learning needs and are seeing a slow, but steady improvement. He attends weekly lessons at our local Dyslexia centre and his teacher there is working on his phonic and spelling knowledge in particular. We have agreed with school that he will only learn the spellings set by the Dyslexia centre as there is a greater need to ensure he has a good base on which to build his literacy skills, than worrying about the finer nuances of prefixes and suffixes for the time being. M uses the Nessy computer program, which was developed to teach reading, writing and spelling skills through a series of fun store_icon_nessyreading-01and interactive games and challenges. He has access to this both at home and at the Dyslexia centre and will soon be able to use it during some of his intervention group sessions at school. I have also just invested in the Nessy Fingers course, which will teach him to touch-type, a skill we are all agreed will be of huge benefit to him, especially when he moves on to secondary school next September. The ability to make notes on a laptop or tablet will ease some of the angst he already feels about the workload he will face in Year 7 and we are hoping to investigate some dictation programs that will also make his life just that little bit easier.

During Year 4, M’s occupational therapist came into school and taught a series of lessons focused on improving his handwriting and teaching him how to form his letters correctly. He now has the most beautiful joined up handwriting and, whilst it may take a lot of time and effort to do, he shows great determination to produce a well-written, well-structured and well-spelled piece of work. Even better, M recently received a certificate at school recognising his hard work with the diary entries he had been asked to write and congratulating him on some great ideas and marvellous handwriting. He was so incredibly proud of being awarded that certificate and his confidence and self-belief soared as a result. All too often over the last few years, M has been praised for his courage in dealing with his EGID diagnosis, NG-tube and food allergies, so it was great to see him receive recognition for the hard work he’s been putting in to improving his handwriting over the last 12 months.

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Truth be told, at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter what M’s SATs results are. They will not be a reflection of the bright, brave, cheerful boy that he is or of the huge strides he’s already made from an educational standpoint. They won’t show his breadth of knowledge on random topics such as the Illuminati, or expound his theories on anything Star Wars or his opinions about Brexit and the American Presidential race. They will never reveal the medical and health hurdles he’s overcome since the day he was born. Rather they will be a single snapshot of the ability of my 11 year-old to perform under certain pressures on a given day in May and will have no bearing on the journey he will eventually embark on for the rest of his life. They really are an unnecessary and unsatisfactory pressure that M and his friends could do without.

Where there’s hope

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“Where there’s hope, there’s life.  It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again”

– Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

This has been a quote that has resonated with me over the last week. As I wrote in my last blog, we have been struggling with a relapse that has left us all feeling despair and wondering what our next steps were destined to be.  Dealing with IT changes and financial year-ends at work, as well as M’s challenging behaviour at home, has left me feeling battered, bruised and emotionally fragile.

In the midst of the week, I desperately needed a little hope to remind me that there is more to life than the rubbish I’ve been dealing with recently and it came on Thursday, from what was, to me, a surprising source.

school

M is fast-approaching the end of his final year in Infants and will be moving up to our local Junior school in September.  G has been there since Christmas and has really flourished and we felt that it was the right place for M to continue his education.  We haven’t had the support we had hoped for or that we are entitled to from M’s current school and I have been concerned as to whether things would improve when he made the move.

On Thursday, I arranged a meeting with the Head teacher, SENCo (Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator) and class teacher to discuss all of M’s needs from the EGID to the newly diagnosed dyslexia and dyspraxia.  I spent considerable time reading around what we were entitled to in terms of support for all of these issues, spoke to our local authority about whether we could hope for any help from them and what exact questions I needed to be asking to make sure my boy gets the help he so desperately needs in the classroom setting.

meeting

I went to the meeting with the lowest of expectations as I know how hard the world of SEN can be from following the experiences of others and talking to those in the know, but I was quickly proved wrong.  The staff members were interested in M, asked questions along the way and made suggestions of how best to help him within the classroom.  They made copious notes about what small things we have already found help him and where we need to make improvements to support him more.

The SENCo had already put a phone-call in to his current school to ask for information from them about what procedures, if any, they’ve put in place for him and had read through the report from the Dyslexia Centre which contained the Educational Psychologist’s recommendations for help.  She checked whether we had made the referral to Occupational Therapy, which our GP did during the week, as she was happy to do that for us, but felt it would be quicker coming from the GP than from school.

Even before the OT referral eventually happens, the school are happy to support his dyslexia and dyspraxia by:

  • the use of a writing slope (provided by us!) in the classroom
  • the use of triangular pencils and pencil grips (again from us) in the classroom
  • photocopying or printing worksheets onto yellow paper as this helps M to see writing clearer
  • the use of lined, yellow paper when he’s writing or doing spelling tests, where practical
  • the use of a stress ball to warm his right hand before he starts writing
  • encouraging him to use a yellow overlay when he’s reading as this helps him track the words

Then we got to the biggie, the matter of M’s EGID, multiple food allergies and his current frustrations and emotional issues surrounding it.  I printed out a letter for the school, which I sourced from FABED and which I could personalise to highlight M’s exact condition, allergies, medicines and reactions.  Both his class teacher and the SENCo gave the document a quick scan and then listened intently as I explained the finer details of what this condition entails.

One of my biggest concerns was how they would handle it if M experienced a soiling accident at school.  We have been fortunate that over the last 3 years of his education, this has happened only a handful of times, but given his current relapse and all the anxieties of moving up to a new school, I wanted to pre-warn them that this could be an issue.  They instantly agreed that there would be a need for additional support for M in case this happened and wanted to discuss it further with the Head, particularly as they don’t currently have a shower or suitable facilities to make changing him easy.  At no point did I feel that this was an inconvenience and whilst I don’t expect miracles, or funding, to happen overnight, I am confident that they will find a way to make sure his needs are met.

ticklist

I had discussed the meeting with M the night before as I felt it important that he understood that the school wanted to help him and also to gain an insight into whether there was anything he was particularly worried about regarding the move.  M has had some issues in building friendships and he was worried that the other children in his class would ask him a lot of questions and then be mean to him because of the food allergies.  He is overly sensitive and as emotionally fragile as me at the moment and this was obviously playing on his mind a lot.

I raised M’s concerns and was thrilled to hear his class teacher instantly suggest that they discuss his food allergies as part of the circle time during the first week of term.  They will be talking about all the children and asking them to share something about themselves, so will be a perfect opportunity for M’s allergies to become known in a non-confrontational way.  M can choose to have as much involvement in that discussion as he wants and will help him understand what the other children are told about him.

The staff were concerned and interested enough to reassure me that they would do everything they could to support M in school.  They will be working on a health care plan as well as some short-term targets that will cover all of his health issues and educational needs.  They will ensure that all adults who come into the school, and not just those dealing directly with M, are made aware of his multiple allergies and that his photo, name and list of those allergies will be displayed in the staff-room.  Most importantly, they will maintain a strong communication link between us and them, to make sure that any problems that arise either from their point of view, or from home, are dealt with quickly and not left to develop into something worse.

hope

My difficult week has ended with some hope that, whilst I can’t control M’s health, we will be able to influence his education and that hope really has given me some courage and has renewed my belief that we are strong enough to walk this path.