looking back at old school reports ...???

[smileyK]

been reading back on old school reports :

 

reception june 1995- kirsty has become better at joining in the other children's games inside school but does find more difficult at playtimes when outside she does tend to rush activities

 

year 1 june 1996 (english) - sometimes needs more complex instructions repeated

general comments - now more willing to share and tends to stay within smaller group of friends

i think she would benefit her if she could play more imaginary games particulary at playtime

 

year 2 june 1997 - gives her best even when finds things obviously difficult usually completes tasks in mature way depending on any distactions

 

junior school -july 1999 general comments - she is still caught up in her own world & relates what we do this

 

 

all way through have concentration & attention span difficulties keeping it - AS or dyspraxia? and struggling with maths concepts,handwriting/spelling???

clear of difficulties in all areas social etc all way through my report easy to see just put down to dyspraxia by junior school SENCO and paed feel deprived bitter angry of how didn't see what was going on?

 

do i have right? as AS wasn't 'out there' well known,aware? maybe i'm wrong? and do you think most of these teachers comments are down to A.S being unrecognised undetected do you think it mixture of A.S & dyspraxia?

 

XKLX

[Sally44]

Yes I did exactly the same thing with all the documentation relating to my son when I did a Freedom of Information Act search.

 

By that stage [which was over a period of about 6 years], I could see how obvious it was from the start that he would not cope in a mainstream primary school. But 6 years ago I did not know what I know now. But it made me very upset and angry because I knew that those professionals involved did know. They did know the implications of skills he did not have and how that would affect his development and prognosis. They could have saved him and the wider family alot of pain and heartache but they didn't.

 

But you have to move on. If that information is at all useful for you now or for your immediate future needs, then use it. But other than that you just have to get upset/angry and then let it go, otherwise it will make you resentful and bitter. You need to look to the future rather than looking behind you at what happened in the past.

[LancsLad]

I think we need to be realistic as to how change happens.

 

Given my age the number of people who were interested in a concept of Asperger's around the world for example could be counted on two hands in the period I went to school. Is it realistic to have hoped that one of them just happened to live in my home town and would have come across me? No is the answer.

 

Professional expertise is a developing concept and we have to accept that. I was fortunate to have been on the initial intake of this countries first 4 year honours level teacher training course in the early 1980's. Part of that excellent course was having to do placements in primary schools and special schools though I was a specialist in Design and Technology in the 11-18 age group. In that time we looked at a lot of areas in respect to what was then labeled 'special needs' the closest we came to anything near my own condition were example of children which we would describe with 'classic autism', thats where we were up to at that time. Did I draw ant conections to myself at the time no is the answer.

 

When I moved away from my course and London and went back to my own region I was light years ahead of what was happening in schools at the time. My partner I met at college who was a maths and music specialist in Primary was imediately highly sought after as a special needs teacher simply because of her broad training and after her initial 2 year probationary period in a normal classroom environment she always worked in the special needs area since.

 

I think we need to be realistic, new concepts and knowledge takes time to spread throughout the sector. Once qualified as a teacher the amount of follow up training is absoloutly negliagable. To their credit many teachers spend time developing their own skills in their own time out of a sense of professionalism. In the vast majority of cases there are no rewards for doing so rather it is done against a big backdrop of existing workload.

 

The best way to get expertise into the education sector is at source and that means in initial teacher training programmes. What I find desperatly sad is I bet there are few if any courses of the length I undertook which provided opportunities to explore a wide range of educational contexts. Instead succesive governments have made teacher training a sham, cutting down the length of courses and eliminating a lot of good practice. We have a culture where too many entrants to what was once considered a profession want in and out of qualification periods as quickly as possible so they can earn some money and start paying back loans.

 

I think the overall picture for ASD provision in this country is very patchy to say the least. I personally feel if I was to spend a lot of time looking at current best practice I would get very angry knowing what is available in my own area. To take that a stage further and to go back in time I feel can only be very self destructive for many people. My own strategy is to accept things are far from perfect in the world but we have to work with reality in our lives.

 

Just a few thoughts.

[Sally44]

I can accept that the primary school staff were working blind. But not the EP, SALT, Autism Advisory Teacher, OT. They knew. And I know they knew because i've read their file notes. And I know that some of them were told to keep their mouths zipped. And I know that they had a very good idea that we would end up where we are.

 

I have alot of evidence that what happened to my son and how he was treated was deliberate and entirely due to the funding implications. But what can you do. Just work your way through it, as we did, and get to the end goal which we finally achieved.

 

But one good example was that the SALT assessed using the CELF 4 standardised assessment, but did not assess on the sub-test called "forumlated sentences". Having found that out, and knowing that that was a difficulty I knew my son had, I asked her to assess using that sub-test, which she agreed to do.

 

In this subtest the child is told a word, and is asked to make a sentence.

 

Eg. SALT: "through"

Child: the man went through the door.

 

My son could not do that. He scored a standard score of 1, where 3 is classed as severe.

 

I did a bit of background research into the implications of that outcome and it appeared to me that that difficulty would have a huge impact on his learning in the classroom as well as in his expressive speech. Afterall all writing is about formulating sentences about specific topics as requested by the class teacher.

 

The SALTs response was that this subtest is designed to directly assess this ability as related to classroom learning.

 

The fact that she knew that he had those difficulties, and she knew that he would perform badly, and she knew the implications for the learning environment proved to me that her not using that sub-test had been deliberate due to the known outcome it would produce and the funding implications of a child receiving a standard score of 1!