Nairn Teenager calls to reinstate ASN support at school

Highland News & Media

Tom Rhind (13) is a student at Nairn Academy diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. He is calling Highland Council to reinstate additional support needs (ASN) staff at his school after being left without one-to-one help in August last year as part of a new policy to allocate resources.

Transcript

00:00The new criteria to us as a family of a child who's got dyslexia and an ADHD

00:11diagnosis, it just actually doesn't make any sense. So Tom has now lost his

00:16support because the criteria, he doesn't fit into the criteria that Highland

00:21Council have now come up with. It just doesn't make sense to us that you can

00:25create criteria like that. Surely if a child has got two diagnoses they should

00:32be allocated some kind of support. It's been a bit of a slow burner, he's been

00:36managing as best he can. The school have been absolutely amazing at putting in

00:40place what they can, changing things, delivering materials to Tom in different

00:44ways to try and help with that. But me and my husband kind of noticed that

00:49probably towards the end of the year Tom was unravelling a little bit, you know

00:54not sleeping so well, I was quite stressed, behaviour was changing in lessons and

00:59that's kind of continued to happen and my concern is is that will continue to

01:04happen if the support isn't brought back. I cannot fault the school in what they

01:08are trying to put in place and they're doing it with very little resource but

01:12they are doing a tremendous job but again it comes back to this whole criteria

01:16change. It makes no sense.

01:24So Tom wrote to the council himself just asking for them to explain to him

01:28directly why they had changed the criteria for the support and we haven't

01:34had a response to date. That was that was sent with a letter from the parent

01:39council here at Nairn as well. We certainly haven't had a direct response to us and I'm

01:45not aware of any response coming in so far. The parents are feeling the same as we

01:49are in that we're just kind of frustrated and again I keep saying the

01:53same line but it just doesn't make sense and I would really like somebody to come

01:57and explain to us how this new model was come up with and maybe maybe then

02:02we'll understand it but I don't think we will. Across the board you know schools

02:06are struggling and you know lack of resource less teachers etc etc and to then

02:11remove support just has compounded that you know teachers are having more to

02:15deal with in the classrooms the pupils are having more to deal with in the

02:18classrooms so yeah I think there's just frustration across the board and I dare

02:23say that's the same for the staff in the school as well. I am not one bit worried

02:28about Tom succeeding because he's super intelligent and he's funny he's quirky

02:32and he has everything that he needs to make a good go of whatever he wants to do. I

02:38think my concern is is that school shouldn't be this difficult it shouldn't be

02:41this hard and that's the frustration as a mum and it makes me upset to think

02:45that some days you know he he really struggles and he feels stressed and it

02:50shouldn't be like that because of this reason because of this new criteria.

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