[SENco-forum] would this wording put you off?

My daughters statement has been in place for 4 years and successful up until
now.  GCSE years are just starting and my battle now will be to get exam
boards to accept that some children, including my daughter, need specialist
software with talking spellcheckers and predictive text in exam as this has
become their normal and accepted way of working in class.

This anomalous position came about when BECTA ran the Communication Aids
Project (CAP).  It was similar to what might be available under the Student
Disability Allowance in assessing students but only with a view to supplying
ICT solutions.  So some students now have laptops with TEXTHELP that made
them independent learners almost overnight as it enabled them to have any
text scanned and read, work read back, predictive functions to support
correct word choice and a talking spell checker to ensure that they had
chosen the right word (out of any given 5).

  Sadly the exam boards insist on the removal of predictive text and
speaking (or other spellcheckers) and any facilities such as grammar alerts
that my daughter relies on.  Great!  She has saved the LA thousands in not
having TA support, has become an independent learner with good grades (when
using her computer) and now is going to have difficulty accessing exam.  I
think this a good case for Disability Discrimination Act - watch this space!

Sharon
-----Original Message-----
From: kngbrndn at aol.com
To: SEN at tringham.net; lks1985 at hotmail.com; senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
Sent: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12.37am
Subject: Re: [SENco-forum] would this wording put you off?

Hi Sharon. After proposed statement is issued the LA have 2 months to issue
the finalised version. To override those time limits -- a widespread
practice known to virtually all SEN officers -- is to keep having
meetings/phone calls/email exchanges --  and issuing several versions of the
proposed statement (with very little text changes and still keeeping all
staffing provision vague) and so to avoid parents access to the appeal
process -- and avoiding the cost of provision for a year or more -- all
whilst the child remains floundering without sufficient TA support and
specialist tuition/therapy/mentoring. This dodgy practice is a matter that
distresses tribunal panel's most of all in my experience. Shaoron, your
experience of the tribunal panel castigating LA officers for these
unreasonable and often unlawful delaying tactics is not rare sad to say.
.......

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