I have become aware that DS2 year 2 and DS1's primary school until July 2012 has its own criteria for 'expected progress' for children with SEN. They use APS (average pupil score) to measure this - 2 APS is equal to one sublevel and so the expected progress is 12 APS for all children. Historical demographic data shows that expected progress is less by 0.4 for children on SA, 1.0 for children on SA+ and 2.4 for statemented children. The score for statemented children is very diverse as it includes SpLD and vision or hearing disabilites at around a 75% progress rate and PMLD at around 6% giving an average of around 45% which equates to 2.4 less APS.
The school is using this historical data of the failure of SEN kids to make expected progress to set individual targets of expected progress. The head states in writing (but not to parents) that expected progress for SEN kids is thus 3 APS per KS2 year giving an expected progress of 9 APS between KS1 and KS2. For non SEN children (and DfE and the rest of the education system) expected progress is 4 APS per year giving a total of 12 APS (or 2 full levels, or 6 sublevels). Historically, statemented children on average have an APS of 9.6. However children who are on SA are only expected to progress by 9 APS by my child's school. DS2 is on SA+ and I have never been told that there is a lower expectation of progress for him than his classmates. Even if it were legitimate to use twisted logic and use such data to set targets children who are on SA on average have an APS of 11.6. This new criteria for calculating progress is then used to produce data on the progress of SEN children in the school.
Surely this is legally as well as morally questionable practice. Who can I/should I tell? atm I am toying with the idea of handing out leaflets to parents at pick-up but this would definately make me look like a crazy woman. Perhaps I would look less crazy wearing a Wonder Woman costume a la Fathers for Justice but I really don't have the figure and it is rather chilly. The urge to shout it from the rooftops is pressing.
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Is this discriminatory??
21 replies
KOKOagainandagain · 23/11/2012 09:58
OP posts:
HotheadPaisan ·
23/11/2012 17:15
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