Refusal to assess and reason

[cardboardcactus]

Would love to hear another view on this. We are going to tribunal to appeal against a refusal to assess. The reason given for refusal was that the school could do more, that they were not fully using the resources available to them through devolved funding etc. The school has put in writing to the LA that they feel they are providing an appropriate level of support and won't increase it. It's an odd situation (or maybe not I'm not sure?) coz the LA are saying the school should do more for DS and the school are refusing. Do you think this gives us any leverage to get the LA to reverse their decision rather than go to tribunal?

[armani]

surely this would be a reason to need a statement? you can have a statement that doesnt come with additional funding from the la, it is still a legal document listing the provision that the school/ la have a legal duty to provide.

[Nennypops]

It could help - you could point out to the LA that they obviously feel DS needs more help and it could only help everyone to assess precisely what that is. But you need done expert evidence anyway to support your case.

[cardboardcactus]

Thanks both. We have some reports, none of them independent and some over a year old. But we do have evidence of a significant lack of progress despite the Wisc scores in the Ed Psych report suggesting that his underlying ability is fine, so it's clearly a matter of not being adequately supported. The school takes a very different view to us about his level of need. Does anyone know if there are any objective criteria for what constitutes 'adequate progress'?

[bjkmummy]

within the code of practice it does define what adequate progress is - this is the line my LA are taking that she is making progress but at no point have not quanitified it - she has slowly creeped up the NC levels but that means that the gap between her and her peers has widened. according to the NC levels it puts her 1 - 2 years behind but according the standardised testing its 3 - 4 years

found it :-

adequate progress could be defined as:
closes the attainment gap between the pupil and the pupils peers
prevents the attainment gap growing wider
is similar to that of peers starting from the same attainment baseline (but may be less than that of the majority of peers)
matches or betters the pupil's previous rate of progress
ensures access to a full curriculum
demonstrates an improvement to self help social or personal skills
demonstrates improvements in the pupils behaviour
is likely to lead to appropriate accreditation
is likely to lead to participation fir further education training and/or employment

[cardboardcactus]

Thanks for that bjk!