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

Well the law says LAs must ensure the provision is in place, so if your school can't afford it why aren't they making the LA cough up or telling parents they can't provide it so parents can take action? Sounds like, you just work in a shit school.

I’ve seen EHCPs with no funding and EHCPs with a minuscule amount

How will you feel? Knowing that the school haven't done enough to prevent this happening? That the school haven't tried hard enough with the LA to get appropriate provision in place? You will likely be angered by those questions and say you've done everything you can. Well it's the same for most of us parents. Why do you think send parents have any more control over their child's situation than the school do? Why is it anymore a parent's fault than the school's, when the school aren't following the proper process of calling an early review and are unlawfully excluding so there's no paper trail for the OP to approach the LA with and say my child needs more support ? Why it's it OPs (or any parents) fault that your 1:1 TA isn't appropriately funded?

LA's love this you know. They play schools and parents off against each other on a daily basis whilst they sit around avoiding accountability. If you have issues with a child and their send funding in your school I suggest you take it up with your LA. Will you? Doubt it.

I understand how you feel but when furniture is being thrown, other children aren’t thinking that your son isn’t doing it to be horrible. A chair hitting them will hurt as much regardless

OP look you can’t treat everyone the same. It’s unfair. Your DS may get overwhelmed by the noise for example of 30 Kids in a class, specialist or private provision in a quiet setting might be what he needs!

There are lots of reasons.

For example, one problem is they often aren’t properly resourced. Most do not have ‘specialists on hand’. The SEND reforms plans won’t be properly resourced either. You can see that from the white paper despite the ‘Experts at Hand’ tagline.

For some children, being in a unit/provision/hub doesn’t change anything because most units/hubs/provisions are still part of the overwhelming mainstream school.

For those units where part of the time is spent in the mainstream classroom, there is often a lack of flexibility. For example, in some units the pupils spend time in the unit in the morning and join mainstream in the afternoon, but for some they need it the other way round but lots of such units don’t offer that flexibility (unless formally written in the EHCP and then sometimes incompatibility can be proven).

In some units, a mainstream curriculum isn’t provided.

In many units, there is less direct teacher input than those in mainstream classes (or SS for that matter) get.

In lots of units, there isn’t enough space to properly deliver provision. For example, some only have one room or 2.

Some units/hubs/provisions are just generic units rather than specific to a type of SEN which doesn’t work for many.

I was coming back to suggest the e-mail back after phone calls as well - to eveyone vaugely applicable.

I do get why you feel need to pick him up when they call - I really do but you do need paper trail to show they are not coping with his needs.

Different issue with DS in secondary but they wanted to phone so there was no record so e-mailing back with time of phone call and summary of coversation we could then point to was useful to us.

My DC have got through school system mostly now but they had bad years with classes and teachers which made that look unlikely we luckily didn't get to stage where they were sent home - but with family member who has it has appeared with time to move from last resort to first reponse.

If something repeatedly shows you that you can't trust them, why would you then trust them?

If these SEN hubs do get properly funded and don't shove children in them who clearly don't belong there then I will happily hold my hands up and admit I was wrong but I highly doubt that somehow.

It's also very easy to say when it isn't your child and you don't have to fight for every little crumb available to help them.

But the lack of trust and antagonism is not going to work at all!
The whole point is nobody on their own is responsible for these children. It has to be a joint effort between parents, school, LA and politicians. It cannot be unlawful this that and the other and there is no 1 thing like a recipe that will necessarily work long term. The whole things needs cooperation and flexibility built into it.

I don't trust that they would be properly resourced and I don't trust that children who actually need greater specialist provision elsewhere wouldn't be just shoved there because it would be the cheaper option.

I'd also be concerned that children like my son who can manage well in mainstream would also end up shoved in there when it wouldn't be appropriate for him with less effort to make mainstream alone work with a good EHCP, again to try and save money.

Why are some of you so opposed to the idea of properly resourced SEND hubs in mainstream? Surely that is exactly the kind of thing OPs child needs. Specialists on hand to tailor his education so he can access as much of mainstream as possible (which may change from time to time). He is accessing the main stream curriculum, it is just the behaviour and emotional needs/noise that appear to be the issue (asking for help, asking for help on time, managing his own sensory needs). With the right help surely he may well learn all of that in time.

I know the numbers have risen enormously too

Looking at percentages rather than raw numbers, while the percentage with EHCPs has increased, there hasn’t been such a big increase in the percentage of DC with SEN as some like to suggest. The most recent statistics released this year show 20.8% of pupils have SEN. In 2010, it was 20.9% or 21.1% (depending on which statistics you look at - I think it is a rounding issue adding up SA, SA+ and SSEN). In 2005, it was 18%. Going back several decades to the Warnock report in 1978, “some 20% appeared to need some form of special educational help. This may even be an underestimate…”

To be more accurate, local authorities acted on the legislative framework
brought in by the Conservative government. LA’s cannot choose to ignore central decision making.
The Conservative government created the legislative framework that made closure inevitable through key legislative changes.

The 1978 Warnock Report, Central Government passed the Education Act 1981. This established a national policy of "inclusion," legally mandating that children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) should be educated in mainstream ordinary schools wherever possible.
The Education Reform Act 1988 introduced the National Curriculum and local management of schools (LMS), which tied school budgets directly to pupil numbers. This business model, applied to the system, changed how education was funded, making standalone specialist provisions financially precarious.

Since, the Conservative government’s academy programme has meant LA’s cannot open any new schools and require academy trusts to do this. (Explained earlier in the thread). Labour are going to have to either continue systems in place or make bigger system and strategic change, all taking time. So yes, write to your MP to try and influence change.

Yep.

My son has 2:1 TA support in mainstream. He does take up more time than a typical child would and that is always, always going to be the case because well, he is disabled and that is what disabilities do.

Parenting well doesn't make a child any less disabled or of needing extra support.

Yes, I am 53 and my friend's dad taught in a large boarding school for children with disabilities. Some attended my Guide troop (forward thinking for the 80s). Certainly some of them could have attended a mainstream school.

The school still exists but has 100 places for the whole of Kent and some children come from hundreds of miles away. They could fill each place 20 times over.

Local authorities closed the specialist provision about 40 years ago - when I was at school in the 60s and 70s I didn't know anyone with any kind of disability or additional needs because they simply weren't in mainstream. I know the numbers have risen enormously too but fact is you didn't have children with significant needs in mainstream school.

So this is partly a political issue. Like someone else said, write to your MPs.

The result is that LAs insist on trying mainstream until it becomes clear that it's non workable, by which time everyone is pretty traumatised, or parents force the LA's hand, often with costly professional advice and support. Then it often leads to a child being transported by taxi up to an hour away, in a different LA, because there is no suitable local provision.

I have known several young people who couldn't cope at mainstream who are now productive adults. The idea that a child who can't cope with the sensory demands of a mainstream classroom should simply be ejected from society - parents give up work, go on benefits to personally educate their child - is appalling, and atm it is not legal.

Every child is entitled to a full time education - that's the law.

We need to support parents like the OP, not demonise her. We all need to put pressure on schools, LAs to properly cater for children who aren't coping.

I have a child in my class who struggles to regulate himself. The rest of the class regularly get evacuated, can't have scissors and lose learning time in every single lesson.
School budgets are shot to pieces. This child has a 1:1 TA (which has helped a little) but a huge chunk of her wages come from the school budget. Which means fewer resources for the rest. The impact this 1 child has on the others is unbelievable. I would not want my child in that class. It is not about us not being bothered to help him, we are simply not able to give him what he needs and keep everyone else self.
OP, how will you feel if your child injures another child?

It's the acceptable face of discrimination. Imagine if I said I'm sending peanut butter in my sandwiches to school because the kids with peanut "allergies" just haven't been well enough parented.

No. It is the LA who is ultimately responsible for ensuring the provision detailed, specified and quantified in EHCPs is provided. That duty is absolute and non-delegable. It can be enforced, including via JR if necessary. As LAs have been shown repeatedly in the courts, lack of funding, resources and/or staffing are not lawful excuses for breach of their duty.

I missed the comment but I can imagine how it went and I'm not at all surprised.

The situation is so tough.

Teachers want to teach everyone. We don’t just want to teach neurotypical children but the requirements of assessment and learning are so high, the curriculum so packed, and resourcing so low, that it’s difficult to fit everything in with a low needs class. Add in additional needs, which are increasing for sure, and we simply can’t do it all. Of course we want to but it’s impossible.

we need extra people to help with EHCP requirements with very limited and decreasing (in real terms) funding. We need more time to be able to give children like the OPs child real thought and consideration (I agree with pp that I would have asked parents to come in and get our heads together - I don’t like the idea that her child has plummeted in a new class, it could be developmental stage of course but I for one would be naval gazing on this one). We need the curriculum to be less ridiculously packed - literally I move my class from subject to topic to work like a military exercise because that’s the only way to fit it all in.

honestly, I wish all parents could come in and see a classroom at work. As a pp said, imagine dealing with your child (any child, not the op) having a tantrum or a meltdown or being upset or just having a bad day, like children do, and then imagine 29 others, all having their own needs. It’s a bloody brilliant rewarding wonderful job but my god it is like juggling fire for most of the time. It’s no wonder that sometimes, someone gets burned.

we need more money and more help to provide quality first teaching to all children. We cannot do it on the current basis with children who sit at the extremes of need. And it devastates me professionally to admit that.

I once had a child whose EHCP had more support and interventions listed than hours the school was open for. Their social and emotional interventions alone left only 2 hours a week for academic lessons and that was in a mainstream school. Funding wasn’t enough for a full time 1:1

If school has no resources, EHCP is a work of fiction. Regardless of what people would want to believe.

They have to deliver the EHCP. It is a legal direction from the LA telling them what they have to do, it isn't a suggestion as to what to do. A school not following the EHCP is acting illegally. Pat of the problem is there seems to be no consequences for Heads that break the law.