The LA will tell the school that other schools support children with similar needs from their own budget and so the school must be failing in some way if it cannot. LAs can send in monitoring teams etc and make schools life difficult
Many schools won't want to spend £6k on one child - which is necessary to justify that more is needed - so will support the LA saying the child has much lower needs than parents say - so they can get away with spending £1k instead of £6k
Often schools don't have £6k - it is a notional amount and they would have to take it from other things e.g. cut the class TA in reception to give one child 1:1. They don't want to do this not least because the TA is their friend & colleague
Teachers are employed by the LA and don't want to go against their employer
My LA threatened to take staff who supported ABA for my son to tribunal as witnesses to make them justify why their own provision was not good enough - the staff felt they would be on trial if they didn't support LA
Schools work with LA staff for long periods and develop friendships
School buy in to the idea there is a limited pool of money and that giving a lot to one child will deprive others - sharp elbow middle class parent syndrome - you are greedy rather than your child being needy.
Historically there is a lot of parent blaming for SEN - there must be something wrong with the parenting etc
They tell myths about ABA - its a cult, fake promises, rigid, cruel, abusive etc etc. LAs are terrified of the truth that there is better provision out there getting out as they fear it would open the floodgates to all parents and schools requesting it
Some schools don't want outside staff coming in telling them what to do
But yes in practice if you win ABA its a win:win situation. Ours is funded direct to an outside provider so the school does not pay a penny let alone £6k - the school was cautious initially but now have a great working relationship with ABA staff - they felt it sounded very complicated on paper having outsiders come in but have been reassured that it can and does blend in seamlessly to the classroom. It takes away a lot of responsibility for school who only have to do academics with DS - ABA cover all his behaviour, language, social, life skills needs etc - a much smaller workload from school (and they don't have me on their back moaning when they don't do it)
My LA threatened the private nursery who supported us at tribunal with disability discrimination case - they alleged the nursery was not following advice given by their autism teacher but only the ABA supervisor - it wasn't true but as you will find out LAs are happy to lie to support their budget.
They also told the Tribunal I was a bully and the nursery staff were terrified of me and that this influenced the evidence the staff gave
They also told the nursery they would remove their under 5's funding for every single child if they supported me (which would put the nursery out of business).
The LA made the nursery witnesses go to a secret meeting apparently to review DS IEP 2 weeks before tribunal and when they got there there was a panel of 5 LA staff who grilled the nursery staff on their evidence for 2 hours - this was 2 frightened 20 year olds. The LA then wrote up a very biased and twisted account of what the staff said - all negative to ABA
The LA brings in outreach and SLT to support them - who also want to protect their jobs and services rather than parents having ABA - the SLT told us that using outside therapists with DS was abuse and we were depriving him of parental love and time at a crucial stage in his development - this wasn't true - we had given up work and were the therapists!!!
Usually its ignorance of ABA - try and get a Head to speak to another Head who has ABA in their school already.