Bilingual Schooling Rant

I do question whether Bilingual Schools are coping well enough with SEN children. As I have mentioned before his last class teacher recommended we transfered Matthew to an English school. Why? Well for a start where his English reading and spelling has improved greatly, it is myself who has been working with him relentlessly for short bursts most nights in ENGLISH, his welsh reading is slipping back all the time which just proves to me that the teaching methods within the school are not appropriate interventions. It is the extra at home help that is the thing that is moving him on, otherwise we would see his Welsh reading and writing advance at the same rate.
He has a lot of help at the moment which we could not transfer to another school as he has not got a statement. With all the help he has surely we will should see advancements here.

The SENCO also being the headmistress really suprises and dismays me, but as she is the key to his support I cannot come out and express my disenchantment with this arrangement. I'm sure she does what she considers is enough but it is a specialist role and she simply hasn't the time to give it her full attention. Matthew's SEN file is very poorly kept, photocopies stuffed into a paper file, I have viewed it and there are no write up as to what she feels about him or any observations on a regular basis it is just a side role she is managing. She even told us that dyslexia was not a disability! this just shows how much she knows about SEN, we had to agree to disagree on that point.

Parents Evening

Firstly we visited the Language Support Teacher, who was very pleased with matthew's progress. She commented that when she first had him in Oct 2006 she had to sit next to him to egg him on, now she has given him work and wandered off, rushing back to find him keeping up and studiously doing it. She does dictation with the group, and sometimes he can't get it all down due to Dysgraphia and poor short term memory, but he is not doing to badly and getting the hang of it. He is getting all his spelling correct within the lesson.

The class teacher however knows there more than is coming out on paper. She is going to concentrate on him within a group of children she is going to target for the next term. Her best pupils cannot improve much more, so the others are to be pushed for their best. I am happy with this arrangement, she still wants us to try for 1:1 again.

Lastly we saw the SENCO. We gave her our concerns she has asked for 1:1 again, and is going to phone the Ed Psych for a within class/playground assessment to detail how Matthew learns within the class environment and how he interacts with the other children on the yard. She said if this fails we will have to apply for a statutory assessment which could lead to a Statement of Special Needs.