meeting at school today

[joybed]

Hi all after my previous posts about Marcus being very stressed out at school (self harming, suicide threats etc) but school refusing to acknowledge theire is a problem they have suddenly changed their mind. I have repeatedly phoned school saying he is not coping with school, refusing to work both at school and his homework and the SENCO has always said he is coping at school and they have no problems. She even said he was trying to get my attention as he didn,t get enough of my time. We recieved his school report last week (they issue them 3 times a year so they can make changes if necessary) and as i expected it was terrible saying his attitude to learning was not good he could achieve more etc. They have invited me to school to talk about it and I suppose see what else i can do to persuade him to learn. I am so mad because i knew it would come to this and thay have refused to take me seriously. Also they appear to think i sit on my backside and do nothing to encourage him to work, this is an ongoing discussion in our house and we are getting nowhere . M has to come with me and i have so much to say I pity his poor tutor.

I have also been told by a friend of mine that M is being bullied, he has told me this and i have attempted to inform the school but it is much worse than M made out so much so that my friends son had to protect Marcus as the dinner ladies were too scared of these kids to do anything about it and he was extremely upset by the entire incident. I also have the home school liaison coming out tomorrow, I really hope we can get this sorted as provision in our area is very poor and thay seem to think mainstream is the only way but this is not working for my son. Will keep you informed.

[Moll]

It sounds like a horrible situation to be in firstly I'd access itemised phone bills so you can jot down all the times you have phoned the SENCO point out you have been aware of this situation for a while and you have tried to deal with it let them know that they are failing you and your son and ask them what they plan to do about it, as the SENCO has repeatedly told you there is no problem I would why the teachers have failed to communicate with her. Tell them their breakdown in communication needs to be addressed.

 

As for the bullying firstly ask the school for any incident reports, ask for statements from the dinner ladies and the children who had to step in to protect your son, ask what is being done to protect him and ask for the schools bullying policy and any risk assessments that have been carried out on the situation since it came to light, also state that if the school allow this abuse to carry on then you will have no option to inform the police and social services as they are failing in their child protection duties.

 

It honestly sounds like the school do not have a clue I would also copy all communication to the governors as they are legally responsible for the school.

 

I recently had a issue with my child's school I managed to get a policy changed by the end of the school day by being firm with the head teacher telling her her lack of action in the past constituted gross misconduct and child neglect along with breach of Health and Safety rules I told her she had till the end of the day to sort it, I phoned the school governors and told them the same I pointed out that unless it was done it was sorted I would have no option but to contact offsted, the Health and Safety Executive and their own insurance company. Sometimes you have to play hard ball, when it comes to childrens well being

[pumpkinpie]

How did it go?

[Clare63]

Joybed,

 

What an awful time you and M are having, no wonder the poor child is unable to work or even want to go to school.

 

Glad to hear they finally are taking you seriously and don't worry about telling them straight.

 

<'> <'> <'>

 

Clare x x x

[joybed]

We went to school didn,t quite go according to plan as i eneded up having to take the twins with me and Piers played up on the way their so all my planning had gone out of the window. When we entered the room his tutor said don,t worry its not all bad he is doing well in some subjects. She then pointed out how well he was doing in maths and IT and that their were just a few problem areas. PE was the worst so i pointed out to her that he has dyspraxia and hypermobility which makes PE difficult for him if not uncomfortable at times. She said that she was not aware of this (even though i have pointed this out before) and said she would make a point of informing the PE teachers. i also explained that team games were always going to be difficult for him due to his ASD and she said she was aware of this but he couldn,t be excused alltogether as this wouldn,t be fair on the other kids, she said they would find something fun to do which didn,t involve team games good luck to them. Next was history the teacher feels Marcus uses his LSA as an excuse to get out of doing work and distracts her so he achieves nothing. I explained to her that he doesn,t understand the point of history and finds it upsetting to hear about bad things that happen to people in history. She jsut told him he had to try harder and had to do it no arguments. I explained to her that we had this discussion many times (you know the one that goes we all have to do things we don,t like) and that it had achieved nothing he hated history and that was that. He said he would work harder and she was happy (but nothing has changed). Pretty much the same said for science.

With regard to the bullying they are informing the midday supervisor to watch over him and are finding him a quiter place to sit at lunch so one thing sorted. I complained about a couple of children who are making his life difficult and they were the next in her office so she was going to speak to them about it.

I have come away feeling a mixture of frustration and annoyance at myself. Frustration because although she was sympathetic and kind but firm with Marcus nothing has changed and he is still left floundering in lessons he finds difficult. The annoyance is because i was going to ask my father in law to pick up the twins from school but his phone has broke and i couldn,t get in touch with him and had to take them. Piers wasn,t happy because he was all set to do drama and I picked him up instead so he fought with his sister throughout the meeting and hit me when i tried to tell him off. My mind wasn,t really on the meeting and i forgot to say all sorts of things I had planned to. We still have the meeting from home school liaison tomorrow so hopefully i will be better prepared for that but just feel like a failure again I always go to pieces in these kind of things.

[pumpkinpie]

Why dont you use this opportunity to reiterate what you have said here about his difficulties.

Youve said that you are having to do over and over again the reason he behaves this way and it looks like staff arent really taking it in and making the necessary adjustments. mAYBE by thanking for their time and spelling out your concerns about all subjects and pp it to all involved will push things forward?

[loulou]

I hope the meeting with the liason officer went well and he/she actually LISTENED <'> <'>

 

Loolou xx

 

Kai also doesn't see the point in history. He says it won't be any use to him when he's an adult and he doesn't care about kings and Queens!

[joybed]

Home school liason were great. She listened to me and said that she agrees it is no use saying to Marcus you have to listen or else and that he is just saying to the teacher what she wants to hear. She suggested giving a reward system where if he works/ trys hard at school he gets a small token to put in jar (a penny) and he needs to collect a certain amount of tokens in order to get his pocket money, not enough tokens no pocket money. Not sure whether this will work as his grandparents literally throw money at him anything he wants he seems to get so not sure how much impact the loss of �3 will have but it is worth a go. She said she feels we are running out of strategies to try and if this fails our options are limited. I asked her what options there were then and she said limited as provision for HFA is poor in this area, we really need an asperger school but they are all out of area. i said i had found a school I liked the sound of but it was �8500 a term and she said she didn,t think that was a lot of money and that if mainstream was failing we would have a good case. She said she would target the bullying as a priority so we will see what happens, not holding my breath as we have been promised things before and they havn,t happened. Marcus says the PE teacher is having a think about how to accomodate him so hopefully some of it has been taken on board.