Latymer Upper School

Our son has had an extremely dramatic experience in Latymer Upper School in his first (and only) Year 7. This review is a warning to all parents of children with autism and ADHD, or simply children that may fail to sit quietly, “behave” like a saint and do exactly what they are told 100% of the time, to avoid this school at all costs.

Our son is autistic with social difficulties and high academic abilities. After a first month at the school we received a call from the head of pastoral “care” - what an irony - warning us about severely disruptive incidents our son has had. Felt like they accumulated and documented them for a month, having seemingly decided early on to do what it takes to exclude him as soon as possible because he did not fit the profile. The most severe of these “incidents” was pushing a girl against a locker and saying “idiot” to a boy. In the months that followed, which saw us hiring a solicitor to oversee the EHCP application and help with ensuring the school is not beaching the Equality Act, we received a tremendous amount of letters threatening with permanent exclusion. Without the solicitor he would surely been permanently excluded very quickly afflicting irreversible damage to the young child’s self-esteem. By the end of the year (three months in!) he was finally offered “support” which mostly only existed on paper and in practice was a combination of policing and case-building, recording all further “incidents”, of which many were unproven or so mild that it was outraging. For example, making “your mum” jokes that everyone else at school was doing were recorded and added to the case, and kept popping up in letters. We saw very little, if any, of the humane, supportive and nurturing atmosphere their website and policies talked about.

The school claims that it offers excellent support for SEN children, with a dedicated team well-trained in autism. However in practice the “support” included forcing him to spend all his breaks in one of their “Academic Mentoring” rooms, being watched and singled out on lessons and escorted to and from the canteen, and prompts about considering medication. It did feel like the support staff on the ground did try helping, but it was clear that they were given an instruction to instead police and build the case, and they did not have the expertise to support autistic children with social difficulties.

Despite all that, our son loved the school and wanted to stay there. The sporting and other facilities were brilliant, and teachers were high-class.

The amount of dry letters threatening with permanent exclusion was killing us. This year has permanently scarred us as a family and changed us to be different people. Our son’s sibling had had their own mental issues intensified, blaming problems with our son as the primary cause of their mental health deterioration. We ourselves sank so low that my work was suffering and our relationship as a couple changed for worse. Thank god to our family therapist who managed to keep us afloat. The sound of the names of the headteacher and the head policeman (aka head of pastoral “care”) still wakes us up at night.

As soon as we received the EHCP, we withdrew him from this toxic atmosphere, and hoping one day to forget this dreadful experience. It is now months into the new term in Year 8 at a new school, and our son has settled well, enjoying the people there and people are enjoying him. It is like a different world now.

This school is brilliant. I have nothing to complain about. Brilliant art and music departments especially. Also science.