The two remaining themes, namely parental involvement in assessment and IEPS, and communication, overlap to some extent. Parental perceptions of a lack of information about the assessment process is a key issue emerging from the data, despite the fact that parents were very positive about communication with the school in general. Formal communication received 29 such mentions and informal communication received 31 comments. Eight of the parents we interviewed made comments about the initial process of assessing the child’s SEN and the majority of these were negative. One parent notes her lack of awareness of how to get her child assessed:
Now at this point I had no understanding that there was the National Education Psychology Service and that it could have been done through the school, we knew nothing about this, and the teacher just said to us afterwards well if you feel there’s a need but it will cost you so we presumed we had to go privately then so I rang the educational psychologist and gave her the results and she said if I were you I’d definitely have him assessed, you know he shouldn’t be that down, like he was down below the first percentile so she assessed him privately within two weeks and at the same time, a couple of days later when we were waiting for the assessment, the school offered us learning support which naturally we took straightaway so he kind of started the learning support before the actual psychology assessment but I think to be honest it was just his class teacher, I think it was her first year teaching here and I don’t think she was fully in tune whereas probably if I’d gone to the Principal and asked I may have been
told well it could be done you know through the school but we didn’t know that. (School D, parent D1)
Another parent stated:
Well I actually instigated a lot of it myself because I just found there wasn’t a lot of information there and it took, initially when I sent the letters off and got the referral letter and got letters from paediatricians, etc, etc, it probably started, he started in the September and by the following February his assessments would have commenced. (School B, parent B2)
These particular statements provide examples of the parent being actively involved, and in at least one case chasing up on it, to ensure that an assessment was conducted.
6.3.3.1 Parental involvement in IEP meetings
Despite the fact that the parents we interviewed experienced good communications with the school, there was little evidence from our data that parents were directly involved in drawing up an IEP for the child; indeed only one parent spontaneously mentioned the IEP.
One teacher, who was responsible for co-ordinating special needs provision within her school, did describe a planning meeting for the IEP involving the child’s parents:
It would be. We usually get together, myself, the SNA, class teacher and D2’s parents, the mam came into us. We sat down and I suppose had a chat about what she feels are his main needs and his progress and whatever and then I put the IEP together, showed it to the class teacher and if she felt there was anything she had on it because there is a review date on it, the review date is Christmas, so I’d be always looking at it and adding on bits or if things have been ticked then I take them out and pick a new thing but we would get together on that and we would meet up even at the door some days, there’ll always be some kind of chat about him but that’s basically it. And the IEP, the mam came in recently just to sit down and she felt he was doing great and she’s delighted with his progress so it’s good. (School D, resource teacher D2)
The iterative process for drawing up and reviewing the IEP described by this teacher is laid out in Figure 3.
Figure 3 IEP Process in School D
Meeting of parents, class teacher, SNA and SEN coordinator/resource teacher focusing on parents’ view of child’s main needs
Draft IEP written by resource teacher
Draft discussed with class teacher and amended if necessary
Ongoing review and updating
Formal review of progress and targets with parents
Only one clear example emerged of a parent talking at any length about their own involvement in the IEP:
They have plans, yes. I wouldn’t call them individual education plans but they have a plan which covers the vast majority of things and there is a meeting once a year with the whole team so it’s not fully documented because the school haven’t been trained in how to do it but they have explained it and what the teacher does is far more, I think, beneficial than the individual, I sometimes think the individual education plan can be on paper but if they’re not doing the work behind it – it’s not worth it. (School H, parent H5, H9)
A number of other parents spoke about communication in relation to the child’s programme, which could have been references to the IEP process; for example:
We discussed that. I met with the resource teacher and his teacher, with the principal and I mean the first year was just all meetings with the school. (School B, parent B2)
The occupational therapist came to the school as well and the speech therapist came, met the Principal, her class teacher, the resource teacher and myself and we had a meeting and they put a programme in place to be done during her learning support in school, and also I had stuff to do at home with her. (School D, parent D1)