Hi toxteth,
I noticed your post whilst having a browse around the site and also noticed no-one had replied to you!
Well I attended marple hall school from september 2007 to july 2012. So I am currently 17 years old.
I struggled throughout my school life with bullies, depression, social anxiety and I also suffer from Aspergers like your son.
I cannot even begin to describe how fortunate I was to have the full support and backing of the pastoral managers, Mainly Mr. Woodcock and Mr. Cook. Whenever I felt scared, worried, or down I could go to either of these two and have a chat, I always found them welcoming and comforting. However my anxiety took a nose dive in april 2012 and my last 'offical' day of school was april 15th. I began to refuse to go to school. Now you would expect most schools to send a truancy officer of some sort round to your home, but not marple hall! The staff at the school had gotten to know me so well over the last 5 years that they understood what I was going through on a personal level. I was introduced to a member of staff called Mrs. Bruce, Now to put it short, I WOULD NOT have gotten through my GCSEs if it wasn't for this woman! Slowly but surely she convinced me to come into the school for one on one lessons. She took everything very slow so I could easily understand what my task was. I spent the next few months revising with Mrs Bruce in these one on one lessons so that I would be ready to sit my GCSES. Now since the school knew I was very uncomfortable around other students they placed me in my own solo exam room with my own Invigilator. To summarise, im not so sure how relevant this is to your own situation but I thought I might just shed some light at how marple hall supports special needs students such as myself. Hope you find this post of use
EverySeconds.
