Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 103 Comments

Moody

It’s been one of those days. Lack of sleep, work piling up, house falling to bits, nothing seeming to go to plan. Mood level – somewhere between not great and moody. This photograph sorta sums it up.

Well Son went to school for the first time since he had his accident at school last week. He was still in a lot of pain but we decided to give it a go. Dosed up on child painkillers he was dropped off. School given clear instructions to contact me immediately if he was struggling with the pain and I would pick him up.

No phone call came from school so I assumed things went ok. If only.

Apparently during his first lesson the pain started to get worse. At the end of the lesson the class teacher noticed he was struggling and he was told to get his bag and go to reception. Reception then sent him to see a senior teacher – a teacher who has had no contact with our son previously. Son told him the circumstances, that he was struggling with pain and the instructions I had given school. The teacher went onto the computer and after a few seconds said something like

“You have had a lot of time off. Your attendance record is too poor for you to be sent home. Go to reception get some painkillers and then go to your next lesson.”

So he stayed in school, in pain and in his words not able to concentrate on any of his lesson.

Mood level now – pissed off.

Yes his attendance record has dropped below 95% – a Government target. Yet that’s because he has had two accidents AT SCHOOL which have required hospital intervention and medically approved time off. Take those out and his record is just about 100%.

So it appears that if attendance drops below 95% then regardless of pain level or illness, a child will not be sent home. However a child with an attendance over 95% would be sent home. Apparently today a girl fell over and hurt her knee. She was in tears and clearly in a lot of pain but was not sent home due to her attendance record. Yet a boy who had a sore throat was sent home because they had a good attendance record.

Mood level now – Apoplectic.

So tomorrow I will drop off son and then demand to see the Headteacher. The only reason I’m not doing it now is that son wants me to calm down as he doesn’t trust me at the moment. That is probably a really good call.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 62 Comments

I’ve got my eye on you

Currently we have 11 very wise sages (now 12) who want to be our new Prime Minister. Aptly my spell checker wants to change wise sages to sausages. Apart from Brexit what do they offer. No idea. All they talk about is Brexit. They play a game. Remember that guessing game. I will name that song in 10 seconds. Well I will name it in 9 seconds. I can name it in 8 seconds…. Well they are doing that with Brexit. I can get us out by December. Well I will get us out by November. Boris will get us out be October… Apart from Brexit we don’t hear much else. The chap who looks after the police for months he has been saying rising crime levels has nothing to do with resource cuts … well now if he becomes PM apparently he will give them more money because crime levels are rising. Figure that one out.

Anyway we don’t get a say in the new Prime Minister. Why should we, we only live here and pay our taxes. Basically the 330 Conservative MPs (the ones who have demonstrated a complete lack of any idea how to get us out of this mess) get the first go. If they can’t do something resembling Julius Caesar and his last night comeuppance then we go to stage 2. The 120000 Conservative Party Members then get a vote. So bugger the other 69,804,206 good people. So while the lucky few indulge themselves the rest of us watch the country fall apart.

My child is autistic. He wants to be like the other kids. He wants to go to school to learn. A Mainstream School is the best place for him to do that. But to do that he needs some additional support. Not asking for the world just a bit more support here and there. But the government and the council have cut the Special Needs Funding. We have been waiting 2 years to see a specialist. Our school won’t offer him a place. The council has cut his transport service. He’s been at home for months and now I’m told the only two options are a special school miles away or no schooling at all.

Not me another parent on the radio at the weekend. Over 1 million kids in England have some form of Special Educational Need. Yet Government policy is to ignore them. Assign them to the scrap heap. See them as an easy budget savings target. To focus on our son for a few seconds

  • Dyslexia Support – none
  • Aspergers Educational Support – some additional funding secured but this has to be used to pay for some additional non teaching support for the whole school and not tailored to his needs
  • Aspergers Health Support – did secure access to counselling support but due to cut backs he is now seen as a low priority and that support has dried up
  • Bereavement support – a couple of pamphlets and still on the waiting list – that’s coming up for 3 years now

The government principle appears to be it’s not a problem for the us, it’s not our job, it’s the parents job so just own it. So while the lucky few get to play a fun Machiavellian lets pick a leader game – Rome Burns for many. When we get a new leader – nothing will change. We might even pour some more petrol on the flames.

I really don’t know what the answer is. I don’t see things changing for the better. For the rest of our sons school years it is going to be a constant struggle. We will have to do our best and see what happens. Fighting our case. Trying to make our voices heard. Keeping our eyes on our so called leaders.

Maybe it’s time for the Gerbils to Assemble.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 32 Comments

Break time

Why had Captain Chaos adopted his ‘please don’t’ position. Not being threatened with a walk. Not been shouted out. No need for a bath. Bizarre.

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An item on the news caught my attention. Strangely it was not the ongoing brexit cockup. It wasn’t the story about some TV celebrity going out with somebody else I had never heard of. It wasn’t the recurring piece on the UK is about to have the best summer in 50 years – more chance of my football team winning something. Don’t start me on that one – 1969 for the last European trophy and 1955 for a domestic one.

No it was the story which got the least news time. ‘ School break times are becoming a thing of the past’. If you listened hard enough you could hear a few quickly presented facts.

  • 11 to 16 year olds now get 65 minutes per week less break time than they did 25 years ago
  • Just 1% of secondary schools now have an afternoon break time
  • 82% of secondary schools now have less than 55 minutes for lunch
  • 25% of schools have lunch breaks of less than 35 minutes
  • One in eight school children have a reported mental health problem (I suspect this only scratches the surface)
  • 22000 pupils in Year 6 are classed as severely obese but apparently this has nothing to do with the reduction in break times. Even though the Chief Medical Officer is calling for at least 60 minutes of moderate exercise per day – unlikely to happen when you are sat at a desk

A helpful person from the Government said it was nothing to do with them as it was up to schools to sort out the school day. Strangely he didn’t mention the strict targets his Government had placed on schools.

When our son returned from school today I found his uneaten lunch and unopened bottle of water. Apparently he didn’t get time to have them today. So no food or drink in 8 hours – that is clearly conducive to educational excellence.

His average school day seems to be a 10 to 15 minute morning break which is just enough time to get to the next class. A lunchtime of queuing to get into the canteen, then grabbing some food and making your way to the next lesson. Again in the afternoon a break just long enough to allow kids to get to the next lesson.

How can this be right. I can hear the howls about ‘kids are there to learn so that they can get good jobs’. But sorry kids do need to have fun. If they are enjoying school they will learn better. School is not just about feeding our warped society, it’s about preparing kids for life. It’s ups and downs. It’s work time and its leisure time.

Modern day schooling has become sadly dysfunctional.

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Food in the kitchen finally moved the dog. All is revealed. It wasn’t his ‘please don’t’ position. It was in fact the ‘all the socks from the washing basket looked too tempting so I pinched them and needed somewhere quick to hide them and lying on them is the best I can think of’ position.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 63 Comments

Spelling….

Some roads are straight and easy to navigate. Other roads are not….

A few years ago the U.K. Government changed the way children were taught and tested. To ensure that ‘children are better equipped for jobs a greater emphasis should be placed on spelling, grammar and punctuation’. As a result marks are now specifically set aside for these factor in exams. Labelled SPaG marking. It was argued that the previous inclusive educational approach was wrong.

The Government approach is to focus on a limited number of correctly spelt words. Let’s produce kids who can spell one word perfectly rather than have kids who can use an extended comprehension.

Where does this leave kids with dyslexia.?

Teaching Groups, Charities, Dyslexia Associations, Parenting Associations and Health Bodies objected. But what do they know….

Dyslexic Kids can apply for extra time in exams. They can apply for a scribe. They can apply to use a reading pen. They can apply to use a keyboard rather than pen. BUT.

They have to demonstrate a level of independence to gain access to the spelling, the grammar or the punctuation marks. If they can’t then the marks are not available to them.

Looking at our son’s case it probably means that when he takes his final exams if he opts for reasonable levels of assistance (as required under Equality Legislation) he will at best be able to access only 33% of the total SPaG marks available.

In my eyes this is wrong. But this is modern U.K. education policy.

Sadly it doesn’t stop there.

The Government decided to change the course content for Computing. Computing underpins everything now. The range of potential computing skills are endless. So many of our kids have passions and untapped skills here. The opportunities are boundless. Let kids tap into this. NO. The Government decided that the course should now focus on coding and structured programming.

Not often can I talk about a subject with anything other than guesswork, but computing I can get to amateur level. This is way beyond the dogmatic ideological buffoonery that underpins Government thinking. Why in God’s name have they picked the most uninspiring and regimented area to focus on. The approach seems to be let’s push out kids who can code rather than develop kids who can utilise the potential computers offer. Yes let kids have a basic grasp of coding then allow those who want to take it further the option to do so. I remember training in 3 programming languages – all becoming obsolete within 5 years.

AND yet again the Government – The Government which is on our side – have penalised kids with dyslexia. Coding and programming is built around specific commands and symbol patterns. Dyslexics struggle with this. So our son is stuck in a weekly computing lesson which focuses on programming. He flounders as he can’t spell the commands. His confidence gets battered. His struggles with spelling are cruelly exposed. His love for computing is fading. The school knows this but cannot change because it’s the set teaching method. Madness.

Sadly I could go on about other subjects and more Government interference. But the point has been made.

Education is so vital that it should not be left in the hands of our self absorbed and incompetent politicians. How about the politicians just focusing on screwing up Brexit and leaving education to the teachers, the parents, the area experts, the kids. In today’s language that probably gets me labelled as a dangerous socialist. A Traitor. Frankly I don’t care. What I care about is the kids going through our educational system. Clearly that’s something our leaders clearly can’t comprehend.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 76 Comments

School Dracula

This is the Hospitium a 14th century listed building in York’s Museum Gardens. These days it’s a venue for conferences, weddings and special events. Many years ago it was a support building for the Abbey.

St Mary’s Abbey was founded in 1088. The surviving ruins date back from about 1270. York is such a good place for kids to actually touch history.

Over Christmas our son spent a few hours here trying to imagine what life was like before it fell into ruin. Recreating the sounds, the people, the buildings, the life. Big scale creative play. I must admit I was lost in the world of dreams to. Mine was a world of ghosts, ghouls and vampires. I had almost forgotten how much fun you can have when you release your imagination.

This was the visit when the first seeds of home schooling started to be scattered. Last term had been grisly. No real sign of development. No evidence of school making any effort to provide an effective and supportive teaching environment. Most importantly a really unhappy and anxious child.

Our son loves subjects like history but not the way school deliver it. He likes the History Teacher, she is really nice. But being in the bottom set and given his encyclopaedic knowledge – he’s not learning anything. Plus regardless of which class you are in the teaching is so traditional. Text book after text book. Very dry and not very dyslexic friendly. Unfortunately it’s the set teaching approach dictated by the government.

Between my thoughts of ghosts and ghouls I also pondered with so much real life history so close to hand, why not bring the classroom here. Bring the lessons alive. That’s when the thought pinged, if school won’t teach here, why don’t I.

We will see.

The trip was completed with the required extra portions of ice cream. That night my imagination had clearly not been put back in its box yet. A dream about Dracula. But not the bloodthirsty vampire. This one was about a reformed Prince of Darkness. He had sold his Transylvanian castle and bought York’s Museum Gardens. He wanted to turn the gardens into the finest history school in the world. All the teachers were ghosts and ghouls. And Dracula was selling the ice creams and he didn’t skimp on the portions. Now that’s a school.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 77 Comments

Testing times

Our son’s school tests kids every couple of months (most schools do the same). Speaking with some of the other parents – most of the kids are getting stressed out over them. Maybe I’m old fashioned but these kids aren’t even teenagers yet.

My frustration is not only with the amount of testing, it’s with what is being tested. We currently focus on such a limited range of skills and are so inflexible on how the tests are operated. Not all kids are suited to the current testing environment.

I was talking to one parent whose child has really struggled to reach the set expected performance levels. However this child is brilliant. I’ve seen her paintings and cartoon sketches. Unfortunately we don’t have a test environment which allows her to demonstrate this brilliance. No government targets for painting.

Our son astounds me with his knowledge and understanding of history. He is scheduled to do a school test which is about the Battle of Hastings. He has a forensic knowledge in the area. Last night he spent two minutes explaining details of Bishop Odo who took part in the battle. The night before he explained in detail what William did after victory including how he persecuted the north. So if we could design a test environment so he could just talk for 30 minutes about the battle and then verbally answer detailed questions – then he could demonstrate his brilliance.

Problem is the test is to write a one page essay on the battle. Without help then he has no chance. Even with help he won’t be able to shine. This can’t be right. No government targets for developing autistic kids with dyslexia.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CAN WE GIVE ALL KIDS THE CHANCE TO SHINE

I always thought I was pretty good on history. I tried to show this off to our son.

“William the Conqueror brought his army to the field in October 1066”

My so called knowledge was shot down in one line…

“Dad it was the 14th and he was not at that stage William the Conqueror. He was called William Duke of Normanby or sometimes William the Bastard because his mum was unmarried. The Conqueror was first referred to in around 1120, sorry I can’t be more precise”.