Struggling in Mainstream - can it get better?

[bed32]

Just at the moment M (Yr 4) is really struggling in mainstreamfor a variety of reasons - some sensory, some social and some emotional. Also he has not got as good a relationship with his class teacher or TA as he has in earlier years.

 

We feel that a lot of this is due to a lack of a proper understanding by the teachers, and a lack of specialised support in school and we hope that with experienced 1-1 support the situation will improve significantly.

 

But is it realistic to hope that things will improve enough for him to remain in mainstream after Yr 7 - in the sense of either a mainstream school or an ASD unit where a significant part of the teaching is delivered in mainstream.

I think accademic side of his education would be better in a good mainstream school than in a specialised school - but only if he can access the teaching in a mainstream environment.

 

As a parent I hope that the barriers to mainstream are minor and that good support on the social and emotional side should help he get over these but the impression I get is that things are more likely to get worse rather than better.

 

Taking him out of mainstream is a major decision as it will impact the rest of his life - probably the single most important decision we will ever take on his behalf. We don't want to do so unnecessarily, but if it is inevitable then probably the sooner the better.

[Sally44]

You have to determine what are his main areas of difficulty.

 

If it is sensory, and he cannot cope in a mainstream environment. Then that is your question answered. It doesn't matter how good the mainstream school is, if he cannot cope in that environment he will not learn, will become anxious and may refuse school.

 

Your child is struggling in year 4. That is young. It doesn't get easier, it gets harder. Demands both academic, social, communication and environmental get harder and more complex.

 

There are good special schools where the children do take GCSEs.

 

What you will see if you read through older posts in this forum, that many times the child struggles, but gets into mainstream secondary and may even cope there for a couple of years. Then as exams approach they collapse, refuse school and leave without having any examination results.

 

Some forum members have had their children go onto college and get qualifications after disasterous secondary placements.

 

But nothing is guaranteed is it. At some point you have to smell the coffee. Whether this is your time or not is your decision based on the evidence you have and the knowledge of your child and what his main difficulties are.

[Sally44]

I also wanted to add that qualifications on their own are not enough. You can have an adult with a degree, but if he cannot communicate, connect with others, or be independent in life skills, then they are unlikely to get employed.

 

If you have social skills, and life skills you have a better chance of getting something.

 

Some forum members have had their children remain mainstream, but have found that on leaving school they have absolutely no speech and language and social communication or life skills. That kind of makes it hard to get any type of job.

[bed32]

It is a hard situation. In terms of qualification I have noticed that in many areas if you are outstanding at what you do then you can get away with a lack of social skills that would be an impossible handicap in other circumstances. What I don't like about the way we are thinking now is that we are categorising M by his disability rather than his ability. He has the ability to be very good in certain areas and if he can fulfill his potential in those areas then he stands a much greater chance of happiness and independence than if he just drifts.

 

The problem of course is managing the transition from when he finds work enjoyable and easy to when he has to start stretching himself. So far it appears that his most significant problem is fear of failure - so he won't attempt anything that he might struggle to complete; so as school becomes more challenging he just opts out of those parts he doesn't find easy.

 

The problem is that by opting out of mainstream before providing the help he needs in social/communication you are assuming that that help won't actually achieve enough (unfortunately probably correct as it is hard to see how it can be provided effectively in a mainstream environment)

[Sally44]

You can always remain mainstream for as long as that is a realistic option.

 

What I found was that even with a strong Statement, in mainstream all that provision is 'additonal/extra/add on', and at every opportunity the LA/school/SALT/EP and OT all try to reduce their input, simply because they don't have the time to see everyone.

 

At my son's AR in 2010 the SALT recommended reducing his hours. When I emailed her and asked her to detail exactly how many hours she used, she replied and admitted she had used "significantly more" than those detailed in the Statement.

 

So why did she recommend a reduction in hours? Because her manager probably told her to.

 

At the Tribunal we subsequently had, I said that I thought the Statement was supposed to be a true reflection of a child's needs and the provision required to meet those needs. That had not happened with my son, as per the example of the SALT.

 

And this SALT was actually the best professional I have worked with. I even supened her to attend as my expert witness. Eventhough she had done that. I felt that on the day of the Tribunal she would be honest. And she was.

 

So it will be a struggle to get it in the Statement, and then a yearly struggle to keep it in, and an even bigger struggle to get more provision.

 

By deciding mainstream is not right, that does not mean you have given up on your child. It means you are being realistic.

 

What I want for my son is for him to enjoy learning. If that happens he will be happy to continue his education post 19, wherever that maybe.

 

At my son's school the majority of the students take GCSE's. Some have gone onto University. Some have their own businesses.

[chris54]

I would confirm that opting out of mainstream does not mean that your child will not receive a good education. Indeed the reason for opting out of mainstream is so that they can receive the best education possible. Well at least that is the theory. The challenge is to find the best option for your child. It is likely that there will always be some compromises. Unforchantly, LA have challenges of their own, which do not always offer the best outcome for individual children. I would not like to be the person who has to make the decisions.

[Kazzen161]

I agree with Chris. If you get the right school, it will enable your child to get a good education and also help with life, independence and social skills.

[justine1]

Its all about finding the best option for your child.THere are no guarantees in life, he could do well in mainstream with the right support or a different mainstream(as they really do differ) or even a unit attached to mainstream. OR he could suffer greatly at mainstream and flourish in special school where he will be able to learn more life/social skills.

 

I was faced with this dilemma last year, Sam had already been attending an ASD unit but we had to move. I viewed numerous schools,EBD school, 2 ASD units, LD school, mainstream(which he had been to 4 in total) and other special needs school(which had a good number of ASD kids on roll.) I then had to decide between an ASD unit attatched to a very good school (mostly excellent on ofsted) and a special school which Sam loved when we visited. I could see that Sam would be very happy at the special school and short term,at that point in time would have been perfect for him however the headteacher pointed out that the children in year 6 at his school were at the same academic level as Sam,who was in year 3 at the time. So in other words he would have more than likely remained at the same level for three more school years. I am sure he would have made progress in other areas but not academically, so I opted for the unit. I was so concerned as I really thought he would never fully integrate but a year on and he is integrating well. I am very fortunate in that the secondary school around the corner also has an ASD unit and he is likely to remain with the same friends. They do not push him to integrate and he has the same TA in both the unit and mainstream. He gets SALT twice a week,goes swimming with the unit once a week and the teachers in mainstream are also taught the same techniques used in the unit. He has 100% consistency. He has many friends and has had no incidents in the past year. Compared to four exclusions and attending school part time at his previous mainstream.

 

My advice is do what is good long term not short term,the short term hiccups can be resolved but long term if you make the wrong choice you may regret it.

[Sally44]

I think that whatever choice you make it is not written in stone. You just do the best you can. And if it doesn't work, you look for something that will.

 

Many of us posting are talking from hindsight. My own son went to the village primary school. When he did not cope there I moved him to another mainstream primary as a mainstream pupil because that school was termed "enhanced resource". It had a high proportion of children in each class who were on the spectrum, and they also had a Unit for more severely autistic children.

 

My son still did not cope due to his diagnoses and difficulties.

 

So make a list of ALL his needs. And think about the implications of them. For example, by the time we went to Tribunal I knew that my son's speech disorder had deteriorated from moderate/severe to severe/profound. He had a Sensory Processing DIsorder that made it impossible for him to access mainstream learning for any length of time. He had severe dyslexia and dyscalculia. He also had Dyspraxia.

 

I knew that he was around average cognitive ability. But I also knew that he was not learning in the mainstream model. He could not cope in the environment and he was very self aware. He does have theory of mind. He can see that he is different. He does have some social skills etc.

 

By refusing school he voted with his own feet. He simply could not take it anymore.

 

I think it is a much harder decision if your child is doing relatively okay academically. But remember what being on the spectrum means. What the typical difficulties are. Is a mainstream school addressing or supporting that?

 

When I got all the paperwork from the freedom of information act search I was surprised to find a couple of documents that really spelt it out to me. One was a file note stating that my son had become so distressed in class because he could not concentrate, that he took himself out into the corridor to do his work. He did that himself. He was showing that he could not complete his work inside the class. He needed the quiet outside to even attempt it.

 

The other was a questionnaire the SALT had given the teacher which listed a number of skills and asked him to state whether my son performed each skill better 1:1, small group or whole class. The teacher identified that he could not do any of the tasks/skill whole class. He did better in small group, and managed all of them 1:1. That really summed it up.

 

And for most, if not all on this forum whose children have ended up at an independent school, that has only been achieved because the other placement has totally broken down. So we've all pursued mainstream as far and for as long as we could.

 

By the time we went to tribunal I had absolutely no doubt at all that our parental choice of school was the ONLY one that could meet his needs. There was no plan B. He had been out of school nearly a year and there was no way he would go back.

 

Now he is happy to go to school. I've never had that before. Things are not perfect as he is really struggling with OCD at the moment. But it is better than it ever was before.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Sally44

[bed32]

As you may know from other posts, we are frustrated because we don't really like any of the options we can find at the moment. His present MS school is a waste of time - he is getting nothing out of it at all and is having a negative impact on other pupils. There is what appears to be a good ASD unit in a mainstream secondary school but that is two years away and we have no attractive options before then - unless the statemented provision does produce a marked improvement.

 

We aren't yet at the stage that the placement has broken down totally although his behaviour is such that the school would be justified in excluding him, and he also might start refusing to go at all any day (it breaks my heart to force him to go when I know it is doing no one any good). But on the present trajectory it will break down before Yr 6 - and if that is inevitable then it would seem better to acknowledge that now and move him early into a specialist school where he can stay until 16.

 

There is a good MS secondary school just a couple of miles away with an ASD unit that seems to be pretty good but he can't go there for another two years.

[Sally44]

I know how horrible it is to watch it all fall apart. But that is just how it goes. Keep the pressure on the school to demonstrate what they are doing in terms of hours of support and staffing and therapy. Because if you end up at Tribunal you need to be able to say that the school have done everything they can do and it still is not enough.

 

Ask school to write down any instances of behaviour in school. You need that in writing otherwise it appears that he is not having any problems at all - simply because it is not on paper.

 

Get Clinical Psychology and CAHMS involved, as that is further evidence of needs. And if he refuses school you need a letter from the consultant to say that it is due to anxiety due to his diagnoses and not coping in school.

 

And no it isn't fair that our children have to go into school every day in such a state. But you need to bring that to their attention. Have a meeting in school with the SENCO. Ask them to invite the EP and SALT and tell them how unhappy he is every day and how he does not want to come to school. Get the meeting minuted [do it yourself or have your partner or PP do it]. Again this is all evidence that the school have been informed and so were the EP and SALT. If they cannot attend ask the school to put that in writing. It proves they did not attend an important meeting.

 

And keep a daily dairy of events.

 

There are lots of children in part time education. I don't think your school/LA will be falling over themselves if he refuses to attend some days. They may suggest reducing his timetable etc. This is all evidence that they are not supporting him. They are just giving him less of what he cannot cope with.

 

As he is in year 4, I think you'll have your answers about which secondary school by the time you get to year 6. I never imagined that my son would deteriorate so quickly. We thought he was doing relatively okay in years 3 and 4. But in year 5 he moved to a different classroom, some different peers, different teacher and TAs. By Christmas he was so anxious he had 2 weeks off school. He returned after christmas and was in school for about a month and then refused completely.