Tuesday 4th October Blog
Today we had Alice’s first PEP (Pupil Education Plan) meeting in her new school. Every looked after child has a PEP and this should identify their academic levels, the support they need, where Pupil Premium can be best spent etc. We usually have a PEP meeting at least twice a year. Alice’s PEP is long overdue. It has been delayed partly because we moved house in May. Our new house is in a new local authority and because she didn’t get a school place straight away, the PEP had to be delayed. She started her new school in September and quite wisely the SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinator) of her new school wanted time to get to know her and to assess where she is at before she called the PEP. She also arranged for the Specialist Inclusion Support Services to come in to school to do some formal testing with Alice.
After being in our care for almost four years Alice has finally had some detailed assessments to find out what her academic levels are. We can now see where the gaps in her knowledge are and see what level she is working at. We now know that she is just over two academic years behind her peers. Although this is something we have always known deep down, it is really good to have the assessment because now school can identify the right interventions for her and give her the support in classroom that she needs.
As we also suspected she has some processing problems. We know that she struggles to hold onto her thoughts and finish her sentences. The tests at school have shown that she struggles with visual perception and has problems with sequencing and auditory perception. These are terms which I am going to have to do some research on.
It really does feel like we have taken a good step forward today in identifying where things are at. In the long term this will be helpful as she will start to get the right help.
A Less Ordinary Family Blog
