YEAR 6 LEGOLAND TRIP - disability discrimination?
Year 6 is a significant year in a child’s school life. It marks reaching the top of primary educations, and also moving onto to new and exciting adventures at secondary school. Some schools plan special events to mark this transition and for my son it was a special class trip to the Legoland theme park in Windsor. This was meant to be such a treat, a memorable occasion and something to look back on in years to come, but what it turned out to be was something that is remembered for all the wrong reasons and something that opened my eyes to just how unfairly treated people with hidden disabilities can be.
Year 6 for my son began in September 2015. We were in the midst of an EHCP (Education, Health and Care Plan), battle with the local authority (LA), appealing their decision to send him to mainstream secondary school, and throughout which the school were wholly unsupportive of. In fact the LA had drafted in the school to stand against me at tribunal. My son’s needs were consistently unmet, he was regularly being excluded (both legally and illegally), and I felt constantly at loggerheads with the school over how to best manage his behaviour difficulties. I explain this to set the scene before the Legoland Trip even came about.
It was January 2016 when the March 21st 2016 Legoland Trip was added to the “Dates for your Diary” section of the school’s weekly newsletter, and anticipation of the trip grew week by week even though little information had been given about the details. In fact as the weeks went by I was getting increasingly aware that we had received no details other than the date. I wasn’t especially worried but when March approached and a couple of weeks in, just 4 schooldays before the trip, N had come home from school very angry and upset at having been told by his teacher that he was unlikely to be allowed to attend the trip, I immediately contacted the school. The letter I received in response was a shock to say the least, bearing in mind that this letter was dated 16th March 2016, with the Legoland trip scheduled for 21st March 2016 and was the first information I had received regarding ANYTHING to do with the trip!
”16th March 2016Trip to Legoland Monday 21st March 2016
As you are aware for a special treat yr6 are due to go to Legoland on Monday 21st March. This is a reward for gaining 15 special points in class. We do not usually award points for “expected behaviour”, but for behaviour or actions over and above the usual. All children are included in this trip if they have gained enough credits. N is extremely unlikely to gain enough points for ‘over and above’ the expectations but has recently made more progress with meeting basic expectations and therefore we are hoping he will achieve enough to be included. We hope over the next few days he will be successful in securing himself a place to Legoland but we are actually not prepared to take responsibility for his potential behaviour/actions on this trip without your support……..
The children have been working towards this target for many months and have all been aware of the need to achieve the loyalty points. Should N not achieve the required number of points before Monday we would of course expect him in school”
Honestly, I was speechless, furious and devastated all at once, so many things raced through my mind.
“what points system?”, “why didn’t I know so I could support him?”, “this has been going on for months?”, “how is he supposed to achieve ‘over and above’ if he is struggling even to attend school?” , “they’ve set him up to fail!”, “this is so unfair!”
I cried a LOT, which wasn’t particularly unusual at the time due to the amount of stress the LA were putting me under over the EHCP and meeting N’s needs, but this was different. It was painful and hurtful to a deeper level because this was hurting my boy directly. It felt mean and deliberate and I just felt so sad for him. Was this Disability Discrimination?
I happened to be in receipt of legal advise at the time due to the EHCP appeal that was going on, and I decided to put the situation to my legal adviser and ask that exact question. The long and short of it was that yes it would be if he ended up not going on the trip. That was something I wasn’t prepared to let happen.
The issue of the Legoland trip had been covered in a subsequent meeting with school, but the minutes did not reflect the actual situation, so I took the opportunity to respond and make my thoughts very clear.
“The Legoland points system was NOT successful. The system had been running for quite some time and N had lost several points, and failed to make enough up for the trip. I was informed of this on 16 March 2016 which was a Wednesday with the trip being on the following Monday. N had said that he had been told it was unlikely he would earn enough points to be allowed to go and he was very very angry and distressed by the whole situation as he thought he was going to be the only one not going and felt it was very very unfair, as did I. I felt that he had been placed at a disadvantage because the reasons for losing points (behaviour) meant that he was more likely to lose points than the majority of his peers due to his difficulties in maintaining acceptable behaviour, and emotional regulation difficulties. It does state in his EHCP that the use of rewards for using positive means to communicate how he is feeling and/ or for engaging with learning new skills is to be delivered more immediately than for others his age. Therefore a long term reward program is not an effective way of motivating him. Short term incentives yes maybe, but not at the risk of having so much to lose, as this creates demand and expectation and a fear of failure which all increase anxiety. Also the ways of earning points back over the course of the system also put him at a disadvantage as they were earned for going above and beyond normal everyday work. Bearing in mind N struggles to engage with and complete normal everyday work this put him at a disadvantage for earning his points back over the time, again creating fear of failure, huge expectation and demand on him increasing anxiety. The whole thing led to a lot of distress and upset and was wholly unfair. I have passed the information on to my solicitor.
I had also verbalised this in a telephone conversation with the Headteacher, and expressed that I would be going down the route of disability discrimination should N not be able to attend the trip on Monday.
Something strange and miraculous must have happened overnight! It was mysterious, inexplicable and downright weird! I had to check and recheck my emails to be sure I wasn’t seeing things. Can you believe it, as if by magic in the space of one night, having not even stepped foot into school during that time, N had achieved the extra points he needed to go on the trip on Monday! Crazy huh?
I was of course thrilled to be able to tell N that he could go, but he was understandably still reeling from the drama of the past few days. I was asked to go on the trip with him to support and I encouraged him to let go of his resentment at least temporarily so that we could enjoy the the trip together.
I am pleased to tell you that we went and he had a wonderful wonderful time, and N was impeccably behaved, as I had no doubt he would be, which couldn’t be said for quite a few others from his class. It felt like a massive win overall, but really we shouldn’t be needing to fight so hard just for out kids to be treated fairly. We shouldn’t need to “win” at anything to ensure disability discrimination doesn’t happen.