The best educational practice for dyspraxic students would involve working closely
with parents to identify a child’s needs and challenges. Unfortunately this has not
been the case for our family. Motor skills are small part of the problem for our child,
and we find the problems of dyspraxia associated with planning, organising and
carrying out/completing tasks is the greatest problem. This is very challenging for our
child in all areas of her life, but is particularly difficult when she’s in a situation
where there’s distractions, stressors and she doesn’t have someone working closely in
a one-to-one manner following up with her about individual tasks. This makes the
school experience very difficult given the staff-student ratio, as well as the lack of real
understanding about how to support dyspraxic students.
It’s through our own efforts as parents that our child’s conditions have been
diagnosed via the local hospital’s services. We’ve had one very dedicated teacher
during Year 3 who was very good at managing the challenges for our child. We had
complete faith in their approach and that teacher ran a very organised classroom and
was very good at monitoring our child’s needs. This is particularly important as the
responses required can often be quite different.
Aside from this particularly dedicated, skilled teacher we’ve found that the two
schools we’ve been involved with and the teachers don’t understand what’s required
and the complexity relating to dyspraxia. It seems to come down to each teacher’s
own personal drive and commitment and this is not supportive for children.
Our 9 year old child has Dyspraxia as well as Generalised Anxiety disorder and
Sensory Processing Integration Disorder. She is very anxious about sticking out from
the other children and as such tries very hard to mask any difficulties during the
school day.
We have found that we have to push and follow up with schools regarding our child.
Schools do not seem to take the lead but rather it’s on the parents to push for their
child’s needs rather than schools coming to families to assist.
We’ve had a very bad year this year due to changes in our child’s classroom
environment to a ‘Modern Learning Environment’. This significant change includes
having an open plan classroom that connects two classes (approx 54 children moving
through the large combined space as well as their noise), the eradication of set desks
which have been replaced by a variety of other sitting arrangements, and perhaps most
seriously the change in teaching style which is using chrome books a lot and focuses
on students having more self-directed/regulated learning.
With our child’s dyspraxia, let alone the other conditions, it is very hard for her to
self-regulate and the more people and noise around her, and the more she has to
follow through tasks on her own, the more difficult it is for her to process things and
carry out tasks.
Her coping mechanisms in the past have revolved around her being fully focused on
the teacher and if she’d got lost she’d then observe other children and work off what
all the other children were doing. With the change in learning styles both of these
things have changed and her coping mechanisms no longer work.
She has been really unhinged by the Modern Learning Environment roll out at her
school and she has gone from loving school to being so distressed that she wouldn’t
get out of bed in the morning and when she was at school she had to leave at times
due to panic attacks. She stopped engaging in other out of school activities as she was
so overloaded by stress and her eating was also badly effected.
Our concern as parents is that there was not consultation put out in regards to children
with special needs such as Dyspraxia to work out coping strategies in advance for
such significant changes. There is also no ongoing evaluation or review for us as
parents unless we personally really push for it. The feedback we get is that these
Modern Learning Environments are what all schools will be doing and it’s considered
the best practice for teaching. The problem is that the way it’s been enacted at our
school makes it a very poor environment for our child’s mental health as well as her
learning and social wellbeing. These changes have discriminated against our child and
caused hugely detrimental ongoing effects. The only way to assist has been by
increasing her anxiety medication (Fluoxotene) by 50% in order to make her able to
attend school with the new classroom environment and learning style.
I would like to speak in person to the Select Committee. Myself and my child are
both covered by a protection order so it is essential that our details are not made
public in anyway.
Thank you