TEACHERS who supported an adopted boy in the Devizes area have been praised for transforming his life and making him love going to school again.

Mother Claire believes the expert support in the classroom helped her 11-year- old, who suffered early age trauma and has ADHD, to become a confident and happy child.

His SENCO teacher believes Ofsted should do more to support children who have had early age trauma to succeed at school.

From needing his parent to be called into school daily to now sitting the same exams as his classmates.

From September he will go on to secondary school, where Claire says she is confident that his needs will be met.

Claire said: “It hasn’t been easy, but my son loves learning and that is because of the school. There is a teacher there who we call our fairy godmother. When social services gave him to me they called him a broken child but now he enjoys going to school everyday. At the beginning there were times that I would get called in nearly every day because there was some kind of episode and the teachers didn’t know what to do.When he started he couldn’t read or write very well but this year he sat the same tests as every other pupil in maths. That shows the progress he has made.”

His primary school’s Special Education Needs Coordinator (SENCO) said teachers do everything they can to help children thrive.

She said: “We have made sure he feels part of the school community. He can now see his marks rise which is giving him more confidence.There is a lot of pressure on schools to get academic results but we need to get the foundations right. Ofsted should focus on the needs of children as well as academics. More time and energy is needed to support children and then the academics will follow. We have worked with a range of external professionals so he got the right support. I am part of the SENCO cluster in Devizes and we meet regularly to share advice and help each other.”

Wiltshire Council has increased the speed that children are adopted. Between 2013-2016, it took on average 545 days for a child to go from being in care to being adopted. Last year it took just 326 days on average for children to be adopted. Cabinet member for children’s services Cllr Laura Mayes said: “When we’ve made the decision adoption it is the right decision for a child’s life, tThe sooner we can get that child adopted, the better their lives will be, more quickly.”

Becky White, is the schools development officer for Adoption UK and said: “All over the UK, tens of thousands of children are walking into their classrooms carrying an invisible backpack of the legacy of adverse childhood experiences which impacts on their ability to learn, and to behave like other children. These children deserve an equal chance in school, and their teachers deserve the support, training and resources they need to make sure that happens.”