Secondary

Eeson moved to this school in the middle of his first year of secondary school.

Things had gone wrong at the first school we chose. It had a great reputation but I don’t know if it was just too big or whether they didn’t really want a child like Eeson. He kept getting into trouble when he’d always been a bit of a goody goody at primary school.

He has Asperger’s so my main worry was that he’d be bullied at secondary level, but the problem seemed to be that he wasn’t really supported enough for the big change that the move from primary to secondary meant, especially coping with homework. I didn’t hang about, I spoke to the school about his difficulties but I have to say, they didn’t really get it.

When Eeson was excluded for two days after he hit out at someone who had been calling him names, I started looking for another school and found this one, a bit further from home, but smaller, more focused on children with difficulties really. When I explained that Eeson had Asperger’s the SENCO seemed up to speed and said that a few children had ASD diagnoses.

She set up support for him right from the start. He had a buddy to look out for him for the first few weeks, his form tutor writes to me each week via his day book and he has made friends through computer club. He has a mentor who has helped him a lot with friendships and they talk about how he should act if he is called names or bullied.

The school puts homework assignments up on its website so I can check what Eeson should be doing and help him organise his time when he gets home. He can go to after-school homework club for help and the staff have been asked to go easy on him until he gets used to the routine.

This case study was provided by a member of the Talk about Autism community.