Mummy Told Me Not to Tell (27 page)

After I’d seen him out I set the washing machine going — I was surprised at how much washing the four of us had generated in only three days away — and then I wrote up my log notes for the time away, including Reece’s comment about secrets. Having finished the log notes I closed the diary and ignored the unpalatable fact that Tuesday 18 April, the start of the school term, was only four days away.

As if to underline that date, lest I should forget, in the mail was a letter from the head stating the arrangements for Tuesday morning. I was to bring Reece into school at 9.30 a.m., when Mrs Morrison would look after him while I attended the reintegration meeting, scheduled for 9.45. The head, Reece’s social worker, the head of year and I would be present, and the meeting was scheduled to last an hour.

When Reece returned from contact he seemed fine, although he did come in with a message from his mother: ‘Mum says you ‘ad better ‘ave me in school next week or else.’

I smiled sweetly. ‘You will be, darling. Don’t worry.’

‘
H
ave you had a nice Easter?’ Mrs Morrison said to us in reception. ‘Did you have lots of Easter eggs, Reece?

Reece nodded. ‘And I saw seagulls at the seaside, and I stayed in a ‘otel.’

‘We’ve had a lovely Easter, thank you,’ I confirmed. ‘Did you?’

‘Yes, thank you. The meeting is in the head’s room,’ Mrs Morrison said. ‘Reece and I will get on with some work. I know we’re going to have a really good term. We are going to use a table at one end of the canteen. Come with me, Reece, and I’ll show you.’

Good, kind Mrs Morrison was starting the new term afresh. I sincerely hoped her enthusiasm would rub off on Reece and ensure he did the same. I kissed Reece goodbye. Then I went along the corridor to the head’s office, where I knocked. He called, ‘Come in.’

There was just the head present, seated behind his desk and talking on the phone, talking to — I subsequently realized — Jamey Hogg.

‘Right, I’ll tell her,’ he tersely said, and replaced the receiver. ‘The social worker won’t be coming,’ he said to me. ‘He has been called to an emergency.’ He tutted. ‘I don’t suppose it matters too much. This meeting is more a formality than anything.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. I had attended reintegration meetings before, although not for some time, as all my recent foster children had been successfully in school.

‘The head of year can’t make it either,’ Mr Fitzgerald added. ‘He’s covering another class, where a member of staff is off sick. So it will just be the two of us.’ I nodded and waited. ‘I’ll start by going over the reasons for Reece’s exclusion, and the arrangements I have now put in place until he can be reassessed by the educational psychologist.’

I sat and listened as Mr Fitzgerald went over the contents of the report he had emailed to me, incident by incident, and then finished by saying that the ed psych (educational psychologist) would be observing Reece in school, retesting him, and once her report was available, a statement review meeting would be called. He added that he sincerely hoped the ‘arrangements’ he had put in place for Reece would minimize the chances of a similar incident taking place.

‘So will Reece be having any contact with the other children?’ I asked.

‘Not to begin with. If he settles down we will think about reintroducing him to the class, starting with a PE lesson.’

‘You don’t think he will become frustrated working one-to-one all day with Mrs Morrison? It’s very intensive, and not just for Reece.’

‘I have arranged for Mrs Morrison to have her lunch hour and for another TA to sit with Reece.’

There wasn’t really much I could say, apart from what the Guardian had advised me to ask for. ‘Could I have a copy of Reece’s IEP, please? It would be useful so that I can help him at home.’

Mr Fitzgerald looked slightly taken aback. ‘I haven’t got it to hand,’ he said. ‘In fact I’m not sure I’ve seen one yet.’

What! I thought. The school should be working from one, and also drawing up a new one, given the time that had elapsed since Reece had left his last school. The IEP is what it says: an individual education plan, detailed and tailored to the child’s educational needs i.e. what the child is working on now and what he or she will be progressing to in the future.

‘Reece should really have a current IEP,’ I said, aware I was probably making myself even more unpopular but determined to get Reece what he should be having in school: an education.

‘I’ll ask our SENCO,’ the head said, referring to the special educational needs coordinator. ‘But she works part time, so it will have to be tomorrow.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and continued with the next Guardian-inspired question, which was probably going to reduce my popularity even further: ‘Is there a behavioural management plan for Reece?’

The head looked at me completely nonplussed, as though he’d never heard of one.

‘It might be useful to have one,’ I continued, ‘in the light of what has happened. Then all the staff will be
working with the same strategies in managing Reece’s behaviour.’

‘I’ll look into it,’ he said, dourly, and made a note on a piece of paper on his desk. ‘Well, I think that’s all. Let’s hope the new arrangements improve Reece’s disposition, and that the ed psych comes up with something. How long do you think Reece will be staying with you?’

I had been waiting for this question, the ‘get-out clause’. ‘It’s difficult to say. The final court hearing is in September, so a decision on Reece’s future will be made then.’

‘Is it possible he could come back here in the autumn term then?’ the head asked, trying to hide his dismay.

‘Oh yes. I would imagine he will be with us until Christmas, whatever happens in court.’ Which wasn’t what he wanted to hear — not at all.

The head’s ‘new arrangements’, as he called Reece’s segregation, far from helping Reece made his behaviour worse. It was obvious from the end of day one that Reece was very unhappy about his exile. He had grumbled to Mrs Morrison that he wanted to be with the other children, refused to do any work and hardly eaten any lunch — which for Reece was unheard of. When I met him at the end of the second day, Mrs Morrison took me to one side and said Reece had been miserable all day, and despite her best efforts, all she had succeeded in doing was keeping him occupied; she hadn’t been able to teach him anything. I could see that she was as unhappy as Reece was with the new
‘arrangement’, but while she expressed her concerns to me, as a (new) TA she didn’t feel able to take her worries to the head (although I doubted it would have done much good).

‘Hopefully tomorrow will be better,’ Mrs Morrison said. ‘It’s still all a bit new for Reece, and the canteen is noisy with the preparation for lunch. I can’t do anything about the noise but at least Reece will be a bit more used to his surroundings. Another problem I have is that we can’t leave our work out, as the table is used for dinner. I have to pack everything away for lunchtime and then get it all out again for the afternoon.’ Mrs Morrison kept touching her head nervously as she spoke and looked absolutely exhausted; the arrangement was obviously putting pressure on her too.

Are you all right?’ I asked, feeling responsible.

‘I’ve got a bit of a headache,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing much. But I do feel this is unfair to Reece. He really needs to be with children his own age.’

I agreed, but there was little I could do, for I knew as she did that this new arrangement would have to fail before the head looked at any alternatives. ‘I’ll have a chat with Reece tonight,’ I said, ‘and try to get some cooperation.’ Though goodness knows what I was going to say. That it was for his own good? I doubted even he would have swallowed that.

What I did say to Reece later was that the head felt it was better he was taught separately for now, until he could be certain he would do as he was told and not get angry or hurt anyone. I thought it might give him some incentive if he knew there was an achievable goal. ‘If
you show Mrs Morrison what a good boy you are, then I’m sure it won’t be long before you are in the classroom again.’

How wrong could I be!

When I collected Reece at three o’clock the following day, Thursday, Mrs Morrison told me that an hour into the morning Reece had overturned the table on which he was ‘working’ in the canteen, then picked it up and was about to throw it when she had called for assistance from the kitchen staff. Between them they’d stopped him and calmed him down, but everyone had been shaken by Reece’s burst of anger.

The next day was even worse, and Reece was excluded for the afternoon, but informally, so there was no paperwork or reintegration meeting. I was called to the school at 12.15. Mrs Morrison was nearly in tears, blaming herself for the incident that had led to his informal exclusion.

‘I should have taken him from the canteen earlier,’ she said. ‘It was having to leave the canteen, when all the other children were going in for their lunch, that made him upset.’ It appeared that Reece had wanted to stay in the canteen to eat lunch with the others, instead of having it brought on a tray to the quiet room. When Mrs Morrison had said it wasn’t possible, Reece hit the boy leading the queue to come into the canteen. Obviously Reece shouldn’t have hit anyone, but Mrs Morrison saw, as I did, the frustration that had led to it.

That first week the incidents escalated, leading to exclusion; and the pattern repeated itself in the second week, when Reece was informally excluded on
Thursday for the rest of the week. In the third week he was informally excluded on Wednesday for the rest of the week; the same happened in the fourth week.

When it happened in the fifth week I’d had enough. I received the usual phone call from the school secretary telling me that Reece had hit/broken/sworn and that the head said I must come at once to collect him, as he was informally excluded for the rest of the week. The head was never around when I collected Reece; he left Mrs Morrison to bring Reece to me and explain what had happened.

However, now as they arrived in reception through the ‘welcome’ door, I said to Mrs Morrison: ‘I’m sorry, I’m not taking Reece home without a formal exclusion. Would you be kind enough to tell the head? I’ll wait here with Reece.’ For it had occurred to me that while all these ‘informal’ exclusions were keeping Reece’s school records cleaner than they would have been otherwise, they had become an easy option for the head. They removed Reece without having to do much about addressing the underlying problem: the management of Reece’s behaviour.

Mrs Morrison looked at me very anxiously and a little upset. I was sorry but I wanted this problem out in the open. A formal exclusion with the consequent reintegration meeting would give everyone a chance to have their say and, I hoped, discuss a way forward.

‘All right,’ she said, nervously, and she disappeared through the ‘welcome’ door.

It took her twenty minutes to find the head and when they returned, the head was clearly on the offensive.

‘He can’t stay,’ he said, even before he was fully through the ‘welcome’ door. ‘He has been running riot, shrieking in and out of the classrooms.’

‘No, I’ll take him home, but I want a formal exclusion,’ I said.

‘I can’t do it now,’ the head said. ‘The secretary is too busy.’

‘OK, I’ll wait.’ And I did. Fifteen minutes later the head reappeared with the formal exclusion letter, which is a standard letter printed off the computer, with a date for the reintegration meeting: the following Monday at 9.00 a.m.

‘I want his social worker there,’ the head said.

‘So do I,’ I said. It was probably the only thing we agreed on. ‘You need to notify him formally,’ I added. ‘I will email him the date and time as well. And I think it would be useful to have the ed psych present if possible,’ although I knew this was an option and not a criterion.

Mr Fitzgerald nodded. I sensed I had gone up slightly in his estimation, perhaps even forcing a grudging respect.

When I got home with Reece, I did as I had done following all the previous incidents: I told him off, told him what he had done wrong and stopped his television time. I’m not sure it did any good, for when he could remember what had happened he was always remorseful and willing to apologize.

‘I know you’ve seen your mother punch, scream and swear at people, but it’s not right, Reece,’ I said in
desperation, trying to seize on anything that might help him change. ‘You must forget all that behaviour. You don’t see me swear at or hit people, do you?’

‘No, Cathy,’ he said. ‘You don’t punch, scream or swear. You are nice, Cathy. I love you. I must say sorry.’

My eyes immediately filled. I was at a loss to know what to do or say to help Reece change his behaviour at school, and I wanted advice from the educational psychologist.

The ed psych couldn’t make the reintegration meeting but sent a letter saying she was in the process of reassessing Reece and would make her report available for the review of Reece’s statement of educational needs, which the head was in the process of organizing.

‘I’m calling all the professionals to the statement review,’ the head said to Jamey and me at the reintegration meeting. ‘The child is out of control and must be in a special school as soon as possible.’

It was the first time I had seen Jamey since I’d taken the school consent forms into his office for signing, although I had kept him regularly updated by email.

He turned and looked at me. ‘Reece isn’t out of control at home, is he?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He is continuing to make very good progress.’

‘Which is further evidence of the need for having him in a special school,’ the head said. ‘It’s clear that this is the wrong type of school.’

‘Possibly,’ Jamey said, in his laid-back way. ‘But most children with special needs are accommodated in
mainstream schools now. What provision have you put in place to manage his behaviour?’

‘I am in the process of drawing up a behavioural management plan now,’ he said. ‘Mrs Glass knows this. I will send her a copy as soon as it’s ready.’

Jamey nodded. ‘And one to me, please.’