To say my DS cant keep missing school because the school “cant cope”??

His brother is at the same school and they are very close, and DS2 already feels different enough without being taken away and told he needs a special school.

How are they at the same school is one is 12 and the other is 9?

You say you want them to remain at the same school but surely they’re not going to be at the same school forever?

I am siding with your DH.

Your DS is struggling - he cannot cope, just as much as the school can’t cope.

His long term options are change to a different mainstream school or go to specialist provision.

He is ‘different’ and being around mainstream kids and being sent home because he can’t cope, is only reinforcing the idea that he is different and probably making him feel like shit.

You say this has only been happening since he returned though - so last year, was he ok?
Or has he always had this behaviour but it’s just increasingly got worse?
Has anything changed to trigger it?

I have no idea of the laws around SEN provision, but if excluding a child who is endangering other children and disrupting their education is illegal the law should be changed.

I know this is difficult for you but the school has a responsibility for all their pupils and your son's behaviour means that far more pupils are not getting the education they deserve. You need to listen to your husband and accept the specialist provision.

It sounds like you need to urgently review the ehcp. He needs actual 1 to 1 support in place with a specific aim of co-regulation. It also sounds like he could do with some proper salt and ot to help with that too. Just a bit of shared 1 to 1 without decent training to do the role isnt going to spot the signs early enough, they will be too busy.

He may be more suited to specialist but people cant really know that until he has a proper ehcp being implemented mainstream..

If its in his best interest to come home, agree but ask for the proper paperwork as evidence for the ehcp review. He wont want to hurt someone either..

OP does he not have ear defenders? A safe space to go to play to calm down? A card to hold up if he is starting to feel funny? All the usual stuff - are they doing it or not doing it? It isn’t really clear how much they are trying or not trying.

I agree with others and were it my son I would be wanting him out of the setting for his own good. If he’s regularly dysregulated, he’s not getting the care he needs and/or the environment is overwhelming for him. He will also be picking up on other kids being scared / annoyed / resentful of the situation he’s causing every day, which will do him no good in terms of self-confidence and peer relationship building. While the legal requirement for mitigations from the school is there, in my view the effort you’d spend fighting that battle should be focused on how to get his needs met quickly and in the most effective way. And it seems clear the school he’s in is a bad fit if he’s regularly this overwhelmed.

I have huge sympathy for your situation - and am a SEN parent myself - but given your husband’s view I do wonder if you’re seeing clearly what’s best for your son or if you are finding it challenging to accept that mainstream is not it. My son’s special needs became apparent as he got older and I recognise the difficulty in accepting your kid may be on a different kind of path that you had expected.

You said your older child was also at this school with support needs. Do you have complaints about how they’ve managed with him, or just DS2?

The line is potential risk to others and violence. The school has to safeguard everyone including their own staff.
And parents in a school local to me keep calling the police now, SEND or no SEND.

This.

Teachers know very well they’ll have all sorts of children in their class including pupils with SN.

And that’s because the various governments have pushed fur those children to stay in mainstream school. Whixh was hailed as an amazing step forward at the time because it meant being more inclusive. This was seen as great both for the SN pupils and for the others - learning to live alongside each other, better understanding etc….

Its a bit rich to now grumble that those same chikdren are disruptive etc… and that ‘teachers haven’t got into teaching to deal with those children’

Mainstream schools aren't suitable for some choidren and unfortunately for you OP it sounds like your DS falls into this category. It is not a case that the school cant be bothered but have to consider the needs and safety of other pupils not just your son. They are obviously struggling with him.

The school aren't blameless as they are acting unlawfully. OP's priority is naturally going to be her own child.

Keep in mind that this is just the beginning with the proposed SEND reforms. More and more children who can't cope in mainstream will be expected to be in mainstream education.

He really doesn’t.

The worst thing a parent can do in this situation is agree to home school. This removes any responsibility the LA have for meeting the child’s legal entitlement to a full time education. ( they will be able to wash their hands of him and hand over responsibility for his education to the parent, save for one or two visits).

I say that as an ex primary headteacher and senior advisory staff.

This. It's not palatable but the parent keeping the child home is the cheapest solution, not necessarily the only solution.

I don't think it's helpful to couch it that they can't be bothered to look after him. They are probably trying very hard. But if you push back you might give them the firepower they need to go to the LA and get additional funding while he is still with them. Illegal, informal exclusion against the parent's wishes can delay securing the right provision.

You need to be honest with yourself about whether it's in his interests to be there, but he is entitled to a full time education. If he needs to be taught out of the classroom for everyone else's safety while he's there, so be it.

I’ve worked with disabled children and adults for 11 years. This is not working for him, move him to a specialist school.

I'd definitely be asking for an EHCP review if I was OP and like I said in my first post earlier, making sure that they know I'm aware they are acting unlawfully.

OP does need to work with the school but that might not always mean doing exactly what they say. They need to also work with OP too, it has to go both ways and acting unlawfully isn't going to help a relationship between parent and school either.

A specialist placement is likely to happen quicker if the school followed the correct process rather than trying to quietly informally exclude.

I fully understand that getting the correct provision is difficult, however that shouldn't mean that the OP shouldn't be looking into it if the school are unable to meet with the child's needs.

Repeated suspensions can also make it very difficult to secure one of the very few specialist places available in some geographical areas. It is always better to work with the school if you can. If the EHCP needs to be rewritten for specialist provision and a place found, this will take some time. I would suggest working with the school on a short term plan which might be a limited school day, a medium term plan which might cover reintegration with enhanced support and a long term plan. When consultations are sent to special schools, they have to consider their existing cohort. A long list of suspensions may well be evidence that mainstream isn’t working but in my experience it can also be used by specialist provisions to say that they can’t meet needs.

OP doesn’t need to know “the ins and outs of other needs in the class, nor the level of complaints etc by the other parents.” That isn’t relevant to making lawful or unlawful decisions.

A school that is unlawfully, informally excluding has not followed due process. They aren’t trying their best either.

Exactly. A boy in DD's class is throwing chairs this term, at least twice a day. DD doesn't feel like he is throwing them at anyone and that he isnt a mean child, just that he is getting very annoyed at noise in the classroom (keeps shouting 'shut up, shut up' and picks up the nearest heavy thing and throws it. But 2 children got hurt yesterday - cuts and bruises. As a governor I know he hasn't got an EHCP (they name the class the incidents happened in, not the child) so can't access the resource base within the school. It's hard for the other children, they are quickly learning they can't talk as this triggers him, and they are all asking to not sit near him in case they are the next victim of the flying chairs.

The class TA spends most of her time either trying to calm him down, or going after him when he runs out the classroom. He clearly isn't happy or regulated there, and it's tough fir the rest of the class. Inclusion at any cost, both to the child and their peers. But this is cheaper than specialist provision, which is often a last resort rather than a proactive plan.

Because LA's insist that children who need specialist schools go to mainstream and then usually have parents go all the way to appeal. It can take years for a child who needs specialist school to actually get a place in a specialist school.