Unfortunately I wrote this blog post in October, and meant to post it for Down Syndrome Awareness Month… but life ended up very busy and so I am only just getting round to it now! As well as Down Syndrome Awareness Month in October, the Autumn brought Oriana’s 6th birthday, pumpkin picking, and half term. This quickly moved into festive activities and church services throughout December.
Now that we are back into routine and settled into the second term of Oriana’s second year of school, I thought I would give a little update on Oriana’s school placement! I will explain the type of setting we went for, how we made our decision, how Oriana is getting on there, and what else we continue to work on.
As mentioned in the introduction, this is now Oriana’s second year at school. She went into Year 1 this academic year with other peers her own age and spent a lot of the summer holidays asking if she could go back to school yet and pulling her uniform out from her drawers in the morning!
Last year (her first year) in Reception was the best start to school Oriana could have hoped for; she really enjoyed it and came on so much. So I thought I would break down some of what works for us and why.
What type of school have we gone for?
Options
We had a few options to consider when applying for school, and ended up looking into the following choices:
A specialist school for SEN children
Our large, popular catchment school
Much smaller schools in local villages that are nearby, but outside of catchment
Considerations
Before applying to schools, we took advice from Oriana’s preschool settings on where they thought she would do best. As you may remember, Oriana had two preschool settings - one of which was a specialist setting and another was a mainstream setting. We did this in the hope of Oriana having the best of both worlds (the peer modelling and socialisation of typical children her own age, and then also the smaller class sizes with specialist support and educational input of staff who had a lot of knowledge and experience in the SEN field), and so we could test how Oriana got on in both places. The feedback we got was as follows:
That Oriana was doing really well with what she was being taught at the specialist preschool - she had a grasp of basic phonics, numbers, could read her name using whole word recognition, joined in with activities and songs and focused quite well.
That Oriana often wanted to socialise with children at the specialist preschool who weren’t very socially motivated, and instead she then would spend a lot of time playing with the adults, which wasn’t really helping her build her social skills with peers her own age. However, at the mainstream preschool she had made one or two very good friends who she would look for and play with.
That Oriana could get ‘lost’ amongst all the children in the larger and busier mainstream setting (compared to the small class sizes at the specialist preschool).
That the SENCO at the mainstream setting (which fed into the local mainstream catchment school) had large concerns about how much support Oriana would need if she was to start school there, and worried Oriana was behind in terms of her development (of course we were aware that Oriana wasn’t tracking with her typically developing peers, and expected this in line with her diagnosis which can make learning some things harder).
That Oriana learns a lot by copying modelled behaviour, and had started to model some of the behaviour of her peers at her specialist setting (for instance, copying stims and non-verbal communication despite being able to talk).
Our decision
After weighing up some of the above points, we decided to go ahead with applying to a mainstream school. We hoped that a mainstream setting would provide good peer modelling for Oriana, provide more opportunities for socialising in a way that Ori enjoyed, and ultimately be easier to get a place at. Unfortunately the specialist schools near us are full to bursting, and with many children trying to get in and unable to secure spaces.
We decided not to go with the local catchment school, partly because of the large size of the setting which we felt would be overwhelming and take Ori longer to gain confidence and friends there, but also because of the tone of conversation that the SENCO had taken when discussing ‘concerns’ around Oriana.
Instead we visited and applied to a couple of small village schools that were a short drive from us. We felt that the smaller setting would allow Ori to find her feet quickly, allow her to make quality friendships, mean that she wouldn’t get ‘lost’ amongst the numbers, and allow her to focus on her learning more as there would be less distractions.
What help does Oriana qualify for?
The specialist pre-school had already started the process to get an EHCP (Educational Health Care Plan, this used to be referred to as a ‘statement’ for children at school) in place to document exactly what help and support would be needed for Oriana. This was a really lengthy process, with lots of evidence submitted from many of the various health professionals involved with Oriana, as well as her teachers. Based on this evidence, the local authority then decided how many hours of support the child should need/would be funded.
Our specialist preschool setting hoped for full time support for Oriana (32 hours a week), but instead we were only granted 25 hours. We were advised to start the school placement with this level of support, but to then appeal and apply for full time hours once the school had been able to collect more evidence.
We did this toward the end of last academic year, but still have yet to hear anything at all from the local authority (this is typical - very long waits, little information sent back to parents and school, lots of chasing, and often resulting in appeals as still no increase in hours).
Where are we now and what are we working on?
Happily, we were accepted at our first choice school; one of the relatively local, small village schools that takes us just over 5 minutes to get to in the car each day.
Overall, we are so happy with our choice to place Oriana at a this setting. She enjoys socialising and making friends, occasional attendance at breakfast club, the PTA fundraising events such as Sausage Morning, Movie Night, and Bake Sales, and she loves her teachers.
She is doing really well with her phonics and whole word recognition, and her handwriting has made huge improvements too. She has taken part in two nativities, class assemblies, and sports day, as well as going on a couple of school trips. The staff have been really supportive and have ensured she is always included and encouraged, and the children in the school have been so welcoming too.
As mentioned, phonics and reading are things Oriana really enjoys. Below are a list of things that she finds harder and that we are continuing to work on are:
Listening and following instructions - Oriana can be very focused on carrying out what plan she has in her head, and not always following the instructions of others. We are working on building up to being able to follow more than one task in a set of instructions (for example, ‘hang your coat up and then put your book bag away’) and learning about good listening.
Maths - counting past 30, less than / more than, more complex shapes,
Reading - whilst Oriana loves reading and quickly gets to grips with her reading books each week, we work at continuing to build up her understanding of sound blending so she can more easily grasp more complicated words
Working on independence with self care - encouraging her to brush her teeth / wash her face / name and clean body parts in the bath / get herself dressed (tricky as balance, coordination and strength are needed for a lot of this). In school this will help her with getting changed for PE, putting on her own coat and shoes (which she can do, but may not always be motivated to do!) etc.
Managing her energy/stamina - we have seen great improvements in this since Oriana had her tonsils and adenoids out (see this blog post for more information), but day to day life still costs Oriana more than a typical child as she has low muscle tone which makes physical movement harder and more tiring, has to work harder to grasp the same things other children of her age can do with relative ease, and can still have broken sleep due to being on CPAP at night. I try to pace our evenings and weekends where possible.
I hope this gives you a bit more of an idea of how we chose Ori's school and how she is getting on so far. We will keep assessing if mainstream is the right place for her as she gets older and take each chapter as it comes.
Now, please enjoy Oriana's first school photo... those sassy little hands on the hips!!
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