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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 199410" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Leisa, I can't speak for other states, but we're in NSW. Distance Ed is part of NSW Dept of Ed so if your child is eligible, the cost is the same as for any other public school. In other words, nothing or minimal.</p><p></p><p>With his reading problems, what specifically is the issue? Can he read at all? How is he if he types his answers instead of trying to handwrite them?</p><p></p><p>If typing his answers makes it easier, he could apply to use a keyboard in class (Alphasmart Neo is a good piece of equipment which can be either bought by you, or by Dept of Ed Equipment pool, the keyboard will then follow him trough school as long as he stays in the state system). difficult child 3 was using his Alphasmart while in mainstream. He changed schools to another where the bullying was GENUINELY dealt with better, but we could still see problems that not even the best school could fix, so we pulled him out to Distance Ed - and the Alphasmart got packed up too, to come with us.</p><p></p><p>From what I can understand, Australia is covered. Anywhere at all. The process should be similar, wherever. I had a bit of a look at each website, it looks like eligibility criteria are similar across the country.</p><p></p><p>The eligibility criteria for us in NSW are for children who cannot attend a mainstream school for illness, anxiety, school avoidance/phobia, travel or performing arts/sports prodigies.</p><p>For difficult child 3, we had to provide letters from his treating specialist explaining why mainstream schooling was not working out. The letter had to list his diagnosis, how that diagnosis presented (in terms of problems with mainstream), had to include specific reference to difficult child 3's anxiety/school phobia (which in difficult child 3's case were very much due to his history of being bullied) and also had to state that the problem was long-standing, likely to be still a problem in six months' time. Or 12 months' time - it depends on the institution.</p><p></p><p>What happens, administratively - if you pull your son out of mainstream to transfer to Distance Ed, then any unspent support funding has to be sent back. Now, the school has probably already budgeted for the use of this funding. They HATE having to send it back. So if you get a very lukewarm reaction to your request at the local school, this is why. Funding is allocated on a half-year basis. So if you pull him out partway through a semester, the funds for the rest of that semester have to go back. After a certian point te school gets to keep what's left.</p><p></p><p>Not your problem, but it helps to know. It gives you an idea of what is motivating other people you have to deal with.</p><p></p><p>Support funding is given to the school and they are supposed to spend it to make the task of teaching your child easier. They hire an aide - but that aide is NOT your child's aide, the aide is allocated to the classroom with the student with the support. The aide may not be the one working with your child, they are there to assist the teacher. For example, the aide may go do some photocopying of bookwork in a larger size for a student with vision problems. The aide may sit with other students while the teacher sits with your child. And so on.</p><p></p><p>To access Distance Education (primary or secondary) look for the phone number of the Intake Officer. Call them. Ask them to send you the paperwork and then you fill it in. Or talk to the intake person, explain your situation and see what they say, especially about your concerns with his reading.</p><p></p><p>What I recall with Distance Ed Primary, was a lot of the communication with the teacher was over the phone or on cassette tape. difficult child 3 was encouraged to talk into a tape recorder, to record messages to his teacher. He could also call his teacher (and the teacher would call us too). The bulk of the set work was maths, or everything else. All written work, but then difficult child 3 is highly visual and a good reader. If your son is having trouble there, he surely wouldn't be the only one. And maybe at home with less stress and knowing he's safe from bullies, he may do better?</p><p></p><p>As supervisor, you wouldn't have to know the work yourself. All you need to do is make sure he has somewhere to work, make sure he has what he needs to work, make sure he has access to a computer and a phone. I also help him with understanding a question (if I can) and also call the shots when it comes to calling his teacher, if he has trouble.</p><p></p><p>Distance Ed Secondary have just tis year employed a Special Education teacher, who recently assisted with a Learning Team meeting for difficult child 3. She's liaising with his teachers to ensure that the work is set up taking into account difficult child 3's learning problems.</p><p></p><p>I can't compare my son to yours. All I can say is he IS doing better than he was, and I believe he is doing better than he would be by now, if we'd stayed in mainstream.</p><p></p><p>In the recent NAPLAN, difficult child 3 got into Band 9 for everything except spelling, which was right between Band 8 and 9. For Year 9, the report only ranges from Bands 5 to 10.</p><p></p><p>What we have found - Distance Ed is much more individual. The work can be customised to each student's needs.</p><p></p><p>Other things we found - when we began Distance Ed, we began to discover huge gaps in difficult child 3's education, topic areas I know were covered but which he simply hadn't absorbed at all. We had to go back and fill in these holes. Not good. He had no understanding of Geography, for example. Same age as your son now, and my son couldn't find Australia on the globe. Or anywhere else. We'd go on holidays and he would think we were in another country, when all we had done was drive to Canberra. (OK, no sarcastic remarks about our nations' capital, please!)</p><p></p><p>Problems with Distance Ed - the turnaround time with the work can be frustrating. You do the work, you post it off to them (they supply the envelopes and the "Reply Paid" stickers so even postage doesn't cost you anything) and you then wait until it's marked and returned. You DO need to file it all - I use a hole punch and put the work into A4 binders. difficult child 3 works on the dining table, which currently doesn't get used as a dining table, it's buried in papers!</p><p></p><p>With high school and different subjects/different teachers, I bought a cheap plastic drawer system from Reject Shop, one drawer per subject. When the work to be done arrives, I open the envelopes and put each subject's work into its drawer. I let difficult child 3 choose what to work on and I let him work on it for as long as he wants to - no need to put it away after an hour to get out a different subject. Not if he doesn't want to. However, if he's running behind in one area, I suggest he work on those areas as a priority. For example, he could be up to Title Page 14 with English but up to Title Page 9 with Maths. So I will suggest he concentrate on his Maths for as long as he can stand it. If he's stuck because it's a topic he doesn't understand, I call his teacher.</p><p></p><p>The teachers generally have been wonderful. It's like they hunted for the best teachers in the system and sent them to Distance Ed. We've only found one who wasn't too great - and even she was very nice, just didn't understand that we had to modify his work. So I went over her head to the subject master and Year Advisor, and we found another way. That teacher was gone soon afterwards.</p><p></p><p>difficult child 3 is now much more portable - we go away on holidays when we want to, take schoolwork with us. There is something really special about studying plate tectonics and vulcanism, in New Zealand! And glaciation, erosion, sedimentation, geothermal energy... so many things. We had told his teachers we were going there for a holiday and some of them modified his work for us to incorporate the work.</p><p></p><p>One huge advantage - no homework. because it's ALL homework, but it should all be do-able during school hours. So if he has any friends he'd like to visit, or you need time for him to have therapy of any kind - you have all the time you want after his work for the day is done.</p><p></p><p>So call the intake officer for either school and talk to them. I've found them to be very helpful people. With primary, we talked to Barbara. Secondary - Heather. When I had problems with the District Office Disabilities people trying to overturn the enrolment (which they can't do any more), Barbara fielded them for me. Her blood's worth bottling! So is Heather's.</p><p></p><p>I hope this helps.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 199410, member: 1991"] Leisa, I can't speak for other states, but we're in NSW. Distance Ed is part of NSW Dept of Ed so if your child is eligible, the cost is the same as for any other public school. In other words, nothing or minimal. With his reading problems, what specifically is the issue? Can he read at all? How is he if he types his answers instead of trying to handwrite them? If typing his answers makes it easier, he could apply to use a keyboard in class (Alphasmart Neo is a good piece of equipment which can be either bought by you, or by Dept of Ed Equipment pool, the keyboard will then follow him trough school as long as he stays in the state system). difficult child 3 was using his Alphasmart while in mainstream. He changed schools to another where the bullying was GENUINELY dealt with better, but we could still see problems that not even the best school could fix, so we pulled him out to Distance Ed - and the Alphasmart got packed up too, to come with us. From what I can understand, Australia is covered. Anywhere at all. The process should be similar, wherever. I had a bit of a look at each website, it looks like eligibility criteria are similar across the country. The eligibility criteria for us in NSW are for children who cannot attend a mainstream school for illness, anxiety, school avoidance/phobia, travel or performing arts/sports prodigies. For difficult child 3, we had to provide letters from his treating specialist explaining why mainstream schooling was not working out. The letter had to list his diagnosis, how that diagnosis presented (in terms of problems with mainstream), had to include specific reference to difficult child 3's anxiety/school phobia (which in difficult child 3's case were very much due to his history of being bullied) and also had to state that the problem was long-standing, likely to be still a problem in six months' time. Or 12 months' time - it depends on the institution. What happens, administratively - if you pull your son out of mainstream to transfer to Distance Ed, then any unspent support funding has to be sent back. Now, the school has probably already budgeted for the use of this funding. They HATE having to send it back. So if you get a very lukewarm reaction to your request at the local school, this is why. Funding is allocated on a half-year basis. So if you pull him out partway through a semester, the funds for the rest of that semester have to go back. After a certian point te school gets to keep what's left. Not your problem, but it helps to know. It gives you an idea of what is motivating other people you have to deal with. Support funding is given to the school and they are supposed to spend it to make the task of teaching your child easier. They hire an aide - but that aide is NOT your child's aide, the aide is allocated to the classroom with the student with the support. The aide may not be the one working with your child, they are there to assist the teacher. For example, the aide may go do some photocopying of bookwork in a larger size for a student with vision problems. The aide may sit with other students while the teacher sits with your child. And so on. To access Distance Education (primary or secondary) look for the phone number of the Intake Officer. Call them. Ask them to send you the paperwork and then you fill it in. Or talk to the intake person, explain your situation and see what they say, especially about your concerns with his reading. What I recall with Distance Ed Primary, was a lot of the communication with the teacher was over the phone or on cassette tape. difficult child 3 was encouraged to talk into a tape recorder, to record messages to his teacher. He could also call his teacher (and the teacher would call us too). The bulk of the set work was maths, or everything else. All written work, but then difficult child 3 is highly visual and a good reader. If your son is having trouble there, he surely wouldn't be the only one. And maybe at home with less stress and knowing he's safe from bullies, he may do better? As supervisor, you wouldn't have to know the work yourself. All you need to do is make sure he has somewhere to work, make sure he has what he needs to work, make sure he has access to a computer and a phone. I also help him with understanding a question (if I can) and also call the shots when it comes to calling his teacher, if he has trouble. Distance Ed Secondary have just tis year employed a Special Education teacher, who recently assisted with a Learning Team meeting for difficult child 3. She's liaising with his teachers to ensure that the work is set up taking into account difficult child 3's learning problems. I can't compare my son to yours. All I can say is he IS doing better than he was, and I believe he is doing better than he would be by now, if we'd stayed in mainstream. In the recent NAPLAN, difficult child 3 got into Band 9 for everything except spelling, which was right between Band 8 and 9. For Year 9, the report only ranges from Bands 5 to 10. What we have found - Distance Ed is much more individual. The work can be customised to each student's needs. Other things we found - when we began Distance Ed, we began to discover huge gaps in difficult child 3's education, topic areas I know were covered but which he simply hadn't absorbed at all. We had to go back and fill in these holes. Not good. He had no understanding of Geography, for example. Same age as your son now, and my son couldn't find Australia on the globe. Or anywhere else. We'd go on holidays and he would think we were in another country, when all we had done was drive to Canberra. (OK, no sarcastic remarks about our nations' capital, please!) Problems with Distance Ed - the turnaround time with the work can be frustrating. You do the work, you post it off to them (they supply the envelopes and the "Reply Paid" stickers so even postage doesn't cost you anything) and you then wait until it's marked and returned. You DO need to file it all - I use a hole punch and put the work into A4 binders. difficult child 3 works on the dining table, which currently doesn't get used as a dining table, it's buried in papers! With high school and different subjects/different teachers, I bought a cheap plastic drawer system from Reject Shop, one drawer per subject. When the work to be done arrives, I open the envelopes and put each subject's work into its drawer. I let difficult child 3 choose what to work on and I let him work on it for as long as he wants to - no need to put it away after an hour to get out a different subject. Not if he doesn't want to. However, if he's running behind in one area, I suggest he work on those areas as a priority. For example, he could be up to Title Page 14 with English but up to Title Page 9 with Maths. So I will suggest he concentrate on his Maths for as long as he can stand it. If he's stuck because it's a topic he doesn't understand, I call his teacher. The teachers generally have been wonderful. It's like they hunted for the best teachers in the system and sent them to Distance Ed. We've only found one who wasn't too great - and even she was very nice, just didn't understand that we had to modify his work. So I went over her head to the subject master and Year Advisor, and we found another way. That teacher was gone soon afterwards. difficult child 3 is now much more portable - we go away on holidays when we want to, take schoolwork with us. There is something really special about studying plate tectonics and vulcanism, in New Zealand! And glaciation, erosion, sedimentation, geothermal energy... so many things. We had told his teachers we were going there for a holiday and some of them modified his work for us to incorporate the work. One huge advantage - no homework. because it's ALL homework, but it should all be do-able during school hours. So if he has any friends he'd like to visit, or you need time for him to have therapy of any kind - you have all the time you want after his work for the day is done. So call the intake officer for either school and talk to them. I've found them to be very helpful people. With primary, we talked to Barbara. Secondary - Heather. When I had problems with the District Office Disabilities people trying to overturn the enrolment (which they can't do any more), Barbara fielded them for me. Her blood's worth bottling! So is Heather's. I hope this helps. Marg [/QUOTE]
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