Private schools extra holidays - how does this not harm outcomes

It was a prep school feeder attached to a public school

Most public schools don't teach 4 year olds at all!

Not all mainstream schools can meet send needs - the difference with the private sector is they can just say no, while the state sector can be forced to keep children they cannot appropriately support. There are also bad players in both sectors who are discriminatory against children with more modest support needs. But there are also many mainstream private schools with a very long history of proactively supporting send. We are in a mainstream private that doesn’t particularly advertise its support, but when you look at numbers you see that they have about 2x on their send register as local state schools.

I don't doubt a child was expelled, but it might be the behaviours exhibited, or that the school was incapable of meeting that child's particular educational needs. One child in DCs' year 7 class was expelled. He had ASD but he also broke another child's nose with a cricket bat - on purpose. The parents claim it was solely due to him having ASD and tried to sue the school for discrimination but without much luck on that front.

There are ways but this government won't look at them because they are stuck in an ideological rut that independent schools are "bad" and should be destroyed, rather than looking at how they could be used to alleviate the crisis within SEN + state sector

I think there are many ways that the private sector (mainstream and specialist) could be helpful in supporting send children, and in some cases that might even work out cheaper for individual children. unfortunately the government are heading in the opposite direction wrt strategy (inso much as one can guess given lack of tangible plans) and LAs have mostly painted themselves into a box by denying all requests and delaying all aspects of statutory the process in the hopes of wearing as many parents down as possible. Sadly I don’t see much motivation from any corner of government to actually tackle the send crisis.

Public school ie highly selective + elite, or independent school? Because there is a fundamental difference

I had a friend who had her child expelled at 4 due to ASD, from a public school - it happens sadly

@Labraradabrador

I wonder if there could be a solution there though, LA’s working with private schools that are struggling financially - to support the SEN crisis.

@HRHTheQueenMuffinTop

My DS was awarded his EHCP just before he was due to start reception and I had to battle with state to get his place, with one (faith) school refusing his placement.

I don’t know what would have happened if his current school had stated ‘cannot meet needs’, but I think in terms of cost to the LA (transport, a special school placement) - I think a place in our local private school would have been a cheaper option. I would have been willing to part fund this with the LA.

And the children with additional needs at my current private school are very well cared for, and with great progress made. I get the impression that state see SEN as a burden because they are stretched, whereas private want custom so will do their best to support those needs.

@TwentySecondsLeft it is generally all or nothing with LA paying for private schools - either the school is named in the EHCP and the LA is on the hook for fees or it isn’t and the parent is responsible for fees and VAT.

When I was at private school we had longer holidays but the school day was 9-4 Monday- Friday and 9 -12:30 on a Saturday unless you were in a sports team in which case you had PE on Sat afternoon making it 9-4 6 days per week.

I think that's a brilliant idea. I did say to our SENCO she was free to pass my details along to anyone else who may have asked. But your idea is better and more proactive- I'll look into it thanks!

We have a parents of send support group at our school and it is incredibly valuable. It is open to all - I think it was originally started by a mum who convinced the school to give her a private space for an hour and put a note in the newsletter. It is all voluntary, so the school isn’t disclosing anything about individual students. Sometimes they have someone from the send team there and sometimes it is just parents. If this is something you want there might be a way around the school’s concerns.

As i understand it, currently @TwentySecondsLeft (and I don't disagree with you just to be clear!) currently pupils at a private school with an EHCP that specifically names that school as being the only one that meets their needs are exempt from VAT. And I think this means the LA has to pay the fees or at least part of them - at least this is the case for one student i know whose mother is a good friend of mine and who explained their situation to me. Which is a bit of a red herring in many ways because very few LAs will now accept EHCPs nominating a private school this during a time when their own finances are stretched.

Also, like many other parents we never went down the EHCP route because why go through the bother with the LA (and indeed expense just going through the process costs TO the LA right from the beginning) when we could pay for private ourselves and just went ahead and did that?

I think it would make sense (among other things) that if instead the current government put the incredibly rare 'if you have an EHCP you are exempt' proviso on it they also alleviated VAT on students who are in receipt of DLA- which one of my DCs is. But that would mean the government would actually have thought things through and would have shown some sort of duty of care to SEN students failed by the state sector, when in reality - to my mind at least- they actually just want to punish those 'sharp elbowed private school parents' as Bridget Phillipson calls it, and to destroy the private sector entirely by stealth.

I think an area where private schools shine is with SEN provision.
State schools are full so they try to off load SEN pupils.

Private schools are trying to fill places.
I really think this could be a solution for private schools and the VAT hit, as I think SEN pupils would be partly funded by the LA so not so much cost to the parent.

The idea that there are no SEN in private is categorically untrue and has already been dealt with on the thread. PP might not have 'observed' any SEN but generally speaking you can't 'see ' autism, ADHD, dyslexia etc by watching children running around a playground. Nor will you be told as a random parent who those children might be. My Ds has autism, adhd, tourettes and global development delay and he looks like any other child. And when I asked the SENCO if there was some kind of support group for parents with SEN in the school she explained simply that there was not and they were not permitted to identify any such children to others due to this being private medical information. As i said upthread our school's ISI report states there is just shy of 30% of children with SEN in the school. That's circa 200 children.

Wow that is crazy but I can't imagine that there are many such cases?

@twistyizzy

www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ymj2l8ye6o.amp

@MikeRafone

Wow. Yes there will be children with SEN and EHCP’s…

Where have you seen that because an LA loaning an independent school sounds incredibly incorrect

There will not be SEN in the class - so the averages will be better
The parents input will on average be greater
Smaller class size with higher ratio of teaching staff and no SEN. They'll take each child out of classroom daily and stuff like that, which enhances reading - regardless whether reading is being done at home.
Longer school day and shorter terms times so they will still get the correct amount of hours in each term but in a shorter time frame. The more you pay the more holidays you get.
The longer school day will include sports/games which is often shown to enhance desk learning and academic results. The children will have run off their energy before sitting down to learn so don't have ants in their pants

these are just my observations of a public primary school and just some of the things I have seen which may lead to better outcomes.

@Newusername3kidss

Think that’s why I came here to post!

The most disruptive children and worst adult to child ratio I’ve had is in private.

Smaller classes, longer school day and less behaviour interruptions. I teach in a state comp and have been saying for years that educational outcomes would massively improve with smaller classes.

Smaller classes, less disruptive children, engaged parents, normally 1/2 TAs as well as teacher per class. Smaller intervention groups for phonics etc for those struggling. We “race” through the curriculum because of this at our children’s private school and then have loads of time for sports, drama, dance etc etc .

problem in state school is classes are bigger and the demographic is much wider so a teacher can be trying to teach someone who is very bright and someone who can barely read or write. So they have to kind of pitch somewhere in the middle. At private school kids tend to have successful and you assume brighter parents who do homework with kids so the basics are all covered.