Hi Tiki,

It always worries me when the first piece of advice when dealing with issues at school is to write a letter of complaint. It is confrontational and will do nothing for communication.

I think also parents need to remember in UK law it is the parents responsibility, not the school, to ensure their child get a suitable education. To my way of thinking it is therefor the parents responsibility to find out all the details before deciding what course to take.

Another aspect I find useful is to remember that teachers etc are professionals. By treating them as such and trying to maintain a professional relationship with them you are given respect back. Even with TAs.

If a TA is saying my daughter is just refusing to do her work, even if I know this is wrong I won't say so. I will explore what happened and offer other reasons why what happened did, but will not dismiss the TAs argument as they were there and I wasn't. I will discuss strategies to ensure she does her work, and how we can enforce this at home.

Unfortunately this doesn't always work but when I do write to a school on an issue they know to take it seriously. I have done this twice, the first time the teacher threatened me with legal action and I called her bluff as I could back up all I had said. The second time a teacher was removed and several parents were called into the school and told any further incidents and their children would be removed from the school.

The funniest incident was when I asked for a meeting with her SENCO and Pastoral Leader and told them I didn't care what differences they had I expected them to act as professionals and this meant sharing information that they both needed to help my daughter. Then threatened to bang their heads together if I had to speak to them again about it. But by then I had built a relationship with them and there was mutual respect for me to get away with it.

This does lead nicely to my last point. Teachers and schools do make mistakes and in general will try and rectify them. We had a target setting evening with the school this week and maths has become a weak point.

There has been a few problems with the maths teacher, changing room layout without warning daughter, sudden changes in routine like suddenly announcing a test etc. Small stuff but which do effect her and her ability to cope. That aside the low grade suggests she may be struggling with certain aspects of maths and I wanted to arrange a meeting with the teacher and bumped into one of the SEN staff and was talking. She is going to remind the teachers dealing with her some of the basic strategies that are in place to help her and they are expected to adhere to these. I did say that I understood from the teachers perspective with seeing perhaps 200+ different students a week it was not always possible to remember everyones needs. The SEN member looked disgusted and said that in her ability range there was perhaps two with specific strategies in place and it was not unreasonable to expect them to remember, or to refer to their sen folders occassionally. Plus if daughter was facing these sort of issues regularly in maths then that would explain the lower then expected grade.

Okay, exactly my thoughts, but at the same time I don't want to overlook that she may be struggling with some of the concepts because I'm blaming the teacher for not doing the 'right thing'. Besides I know by discussing her grade and what she is struggling with communication will be open and will lead to underlying problems and gives me the opportunity to explain Aspergers and how it effects her and how simple strategies, like warning her about changes in routine, will help her to improve. This way we are backing up what the sen department are saying and vise versa.

In some ways I'm rather grateful we didn't get a statement for her. It means I have to be focused on what we both want to achieve for our daughter and it means that I have to keep those lines of communication open. I'm not fixated on what the statement says and we can be flexible in our approach for her.

Sadly this doesn't work for all students and schools as things currently are.

Once again, thanks for all your advice and help, and the package through the post. The homework has been completed and if I get my head round how to, I will show you the pictures produced. Firstly I have to get my head round TMA05 for E111 and some pyschology homework of my own though, both of which have been on hold since this started !

Thanks again,

H