CY is still doing very well going in for his three allotted days. Very happy in himself, behaviour as near to perfect as it gets :)
Am writing this in anticipation of the meeting with his school EWO on Thursday.
Tuesday 10 November 2009
Tuesday 3 November 2009
Unit
I rang the afternoon after the meeting about CY's place in the Vulnerable Pupil Unit as we didn't hear about the decision either on the day of the panel hearing or the day after, when we has been assured we would. I was told that his place had been approved and to wait for further details. After a week I hadn't heard from anyone re: CY's place at the Vulnerable Pupil Unit so rang the Ed.Welfare Dept myself. I spoke to CS's line manager and politely said, "Hello, this is CY's Mum, I'm just ringing to see how things are progressing with his place at the **** school." The lady in question very rudely said, " Yes CS is going to speak to Steve ok." and put the phone down on me!! I had no idea who Steve was/is! So I waited another few days and still didn't hear anything so rang the school myself and asked to speak to 'Steve' and finally got through to a very nice bloke who invited Joe over to the school to have a look around.
We went over the following day and were made very welcome by V and Y, two of the teachers in the unit. They showed us around, reassured Joe, and chatted for a while. They said he could go for a trial morning the following day which he did!! He actually went to school! Yay! Steve asked me to fill some forms in and as we did it became clear that he hadn't been informed of the decsision to accept CY - he thought we were waiting for the NEXT panel meeting! So, if I hadn't have rang him directly, we would still be waiting, presumably, because he didn't know anything about us.
Anyway, once they knew that the decision had been made already, they were very happy to have CY join them and he's been going three days a week since. He loves it, it's a very small group (one other boy with Asperger's and two girls with school phobia/ bullying problems) and seems much happier in himself. So his attendance has gone up from 0% to 60% (because he's in three days out of five). He is supposed to do Accipio on the computer on the other days but it is DIRE and doesn't appeal to him at all. Like all kids with AS he has to be interested to do something, he won't do it just to keep the peace or get higher attendance so I don't go to jail! And he just hates it, so he won't do it.
Today, I had a phone call from his school mentor to see how he's doing. As he's dual registered at his mainstream school and the Unit, she said he can only get his attendance mark for mainstream school if he does Accippio on those two days he's not in the Unit. But he won't, so for those two days they will mark him as TRUANT(!) apparently!! Now, it can't be 'truant' because that is misleading - I know he's not in, so by definition he's not 'truanting' and I won't have that word on his records. He's refusing to work because it has no relevance/ interest and doesn't address his learning needs. I asked if he could complete other work and have that count but she said unfortunately not because it wouldn't count as a lesson - even though I am a teacher and could do a 'lesson' for him and give them the work. They said it has to be Accippio or it doesn't count. Never mind that the Accippio lessons I've seen are so dull they wouldn't pass OFSTED... I asked if MyMaths work would count but apparently that wouldn't either. I've explained it all to CY who said, 'Tell them I'd do it if it wasn't bullshit...'. And I'm not putting too much pressure on because the next thing would be he's refuse to go to the Unit as well, which would be a tragedy as he's doing so well there - he's doing GCSE level maths, some English (which he normally won't do) Art and Science. I'm not risking his great progress just to get 100% attendance.
We have a meeting soon with CS et al to discuss attendance, among other things, during which we are also going to have to refuse to accept the last minutes, so this will make us even less popular. The last meeting was so patronising I could have cried.
So, again, we go from being really pleased with his progress to being brought right back down again because no matter what he does it's never good enough for Ed.Welfare. We can't just pull him from the system because then he would lose his place at the Unit so we are stuck at their mercy should they decide that 60% attendance is not good enough and take us to court. Very depressing when we should be feeling really happy that he's found something that works for him.
We went over the following day and were made very welcome by V and Y, two of the teachers in the unit. They showed us around, reassured Joe, and chatted for a while. They said he could go for a trial morning the following day which he did!! He actually went to school! Yay! Steve asked me to fill some forms in and as we did it became clear that he hadn't been informed of the decsision to accept CY - he thought we were waiting for the NEXT panel meeting! So, if I hadn't have rang him directly, we would still be waiting, presumably, because he didn't know anything about us.
Anyway, once they knew that the decision had been made already, they were very happy to have CY join them and he's been going three days a week since. He loves it, it's a very small group (one other boy with Asperger's and two girls with school phobia/ bullying problems) and seems much happier in himself. So his attendance has gone up from 0% to 60% (because he's in three days out of five). He is supposed to do Accipio on the computer on the other days but it is DIRE and doesn't appeal to him at all. Like all kids with AS he has to be interested to do something, he won't do it just to keep the peace or get higher attendance so I don't go to jail! And he just hates it, so he won't do it.
Today, I had a phone call from his school mentor to see how he's doing. As he's dual registered at his mainstream school and the Unit, she said he can only get his attendance mark for mainstream school if he does Accippio on those two days he's not in the Unit. But he won't, so for those two days they will mark him as TRUANT(!) apparently!! Now, it can't be 'truant' because that is misleading - I know he's not in, so by definition he's not 'truanting' and I won't have that word on his records. He's refusing to work because it has no relevance/ interest and doesn't address his learning needs. I asked if he could complete other work and have that count but she said unfortunately not because it wouldn't count as a lesson - even though I am a teacher and could do a 'lesson' for him and give them the work. They said it has to be Accippio or it doesn't count. Never mind that the Accippio lessons I've seen are so dull they wouldn't pass OFSTED... I asked if MyMaths work would count but apparently that wouldn't either. I've explained it all to CY who said, 'Tell them I'd do it if it wasn't bullshit...'. And I'm not putting too much pressure on because the next thing would be he's refuse to go to the Unit as well, which would be a tragedy as he's doing so well there - he's doing GCSE level maths, some English (which he normally won't do) Art and Science. I'm not risking his great progress just to get 100% attendance.
We have a meeting soon with CS et al to discuss attendance, among other things, during which we are also going to have to refuse to accept the last minutes, so this will make us even less popular. The last meeting was so patronising I could have cried.
So, again, we go from being really pleased with his progress to being brought right back down again because no matter what he does it's never good enough for Ed.Welfare. We can't just pull him from the system because then he would lose his place at the Unit so we are stuck at their mercy should they decide that 60% attendance is not good enough and take us to court. Very depressing when we should be feeling really happy that he's found something that works for him.
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