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

This.

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.

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?

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.

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..

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.

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.

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?

The school is very likely acting unlawfully in two distinct areas: illegal exclusions and a failure to deliver statutory SEN provision.

It is completely understandable that you do not want to see the school as "evil" and that you care about the safety of other children. However, schools are bound by strict legal frameworks. Wanting to protect everyone does not give a school permission to bypass the law.

"we can't safely accommodate him today" or "it's best he comes home to calm down" are classic examples of informal and unlawful exclusion.

Every time they send him home informally:- It does not show up on official statutory attendance records, hiding the true extent of his breakdown at school.
It denies you your legal right to appeal or submit written representations to the Governing Body. It deprives your son of his legal right to education.

Throwing a chair or pushing a table when completely overwhelmed is a manifestation of his distress/disability, not calculated malice. Expecting a 9-year-old in a state of sensory overload to "learn he can't behave like this" via strict reprimands rather than providing sensory breaks and de-escalation fails to make reasonable adjustments.

There is a vast difference between placing a child in a mainstream classroom and actually including them. What your son is currently experiencing is integration, not inclusion.

Integration (What is happening now): Placing a child with additional needs into a standard mainstream environment and expecting them to adapt, conform, and cope with the exact same demands as neurotypical peers with the threat of strict discipline or being sent home if they cannot.

True Inclusion (What the law requires): Adapting the environment, teaching methods, and sensory conditions so that the child can access education safely and effectively.

Telling a 9-year-old in sensory overload that he "needs to learn he can't behave like this" misplaces the responsibility. Under the Equality Act 2010 and the SEND Code of Practice, inclusion requires the school to adapt to the child’s disability, not demand that the child mask or suppress their disability until they explode. True inclusion would mean:

Recognising his distress signals before a meltdown occurs.

Allowing him to leave a noisy classroom to go to a designated quiet area without it being treated as a disciplinary failure.

Training new staff on his specific profile rather than applying a blanket "strict" behavioral approach.

Year 5 is historically the point where mainstream primary schools drastically escalate academic pressure, pace, and formal classroom management in preparation for Year 6 Key Stage 2 SATs.

Environmental Shift: Year 5 classrooms often become much more rigid, noisy, and focused on formal table-work, past papers, and silent working time. Teachers feel immense pressure from school management to hit specific attainment targets.

Reduced Tolerance for Disruption: Because of the impending pressure of Year 6 SATs, tolerance for anything that interrupts the structured flow of the lesson drops significantly. This explains why his new teacher may be taking a strict "zero tolerance" stance.

Off-Rolling / Exclusion Push: It is a well-recognised pattern in the state education system that SEN pupils facing high levels of anxiety or dysregulation often see an increase in suspensions or informal "off-rolling" during Year 5. Schools often push for a move to a special school before Year 6 so the pupil's scores do not impact their published SATs performance data, or simply because they feel they lack the resources to support them through the SATs preparation period.

The school are pulling a fast one on you and your son. There's a word for them but I'd have to see you next tuesday to tell you it.

You seem to be looking at this in a totally binary way.

If this school isn’t right for DS, why are you assuming a Special School is the only option?

Another mainstream school might be a better match for him, or some form of home schooling perhaps?

Do you know what specialist provision there is in a reasonable distance from your home?

Its just your husband might be right that pursuing specialist is the way forward, but he might also not be aware of the actual options that exist or the maasive hurdles to get there and you son still needs help in the interim.

My son did very well in special school. It was much better set up for him but the path to it was not easy.

@Jacobator you have had a lot of replies from people who don't know very much about how the SEN system works, but also a lot who clearly know their stuff.

You said "The school have definitely used words like “not in a position to safely accommodate him” rather than exclusion. I have all the emails so i can check exactly what they have said." This is what I would expect an illegal exclusion to look like - a de facto exclusion without using the word - so don't get hung up on the language they used.

Call an AR immediately and take it from there. There's scope for him to get extra support and sometimes these crises are a route to better provision, whether that is a different school or not. It can be difficult to maintain the relationship with the school if they see you as being difficult so instead of saying they can't be bothered, say you are following all the steps you've researched to secure the funding and provision he needs.

Have you thought about a SEN school if a regular school isn't working?

Sadly a chair thrown and table flipped is scary/noisy and leaves you on eggshells.
I suspect you’re more accustomed to your son’s outbursts and are somewhat desensitized as to how upsetting this can be to others.
He is only 9, still young in many ways. IF noise and class size are both big triggers and you’re spending 2K a month on therapies, would the 2K be better spent on private ed?

i don’t think she is assuming that.

But so many posters have told her her ds doesn’t belong to mainstream so she is answering that.

But why hasn't he got an EHCP? Has school applied? Do the parents know they can apply themselves/appeal a refuse to assess?

You need to call an emergency review of the EHCP. This is exactly what happened with my daughter in primary school and we made it very clear that we wanted it recorded as an exclusion (because it is) and that we would then be talking to our local authority about her access to education. The school have clearly said they can meet need as it is the setting named in his EHCP, but this is very obviously not the reality.
Please don't leave him there, he isn't wanted and it will be affecting him in so many ways.

For what it's worth, my daughter struggled like this all through primary school. However we decided to give mainstream secondary a try, and she has blown everyone away with the change in her. She's not had a single issue in two years.

Primary schools often don't have the expertise needed for children like ours. My daughter was closely traumatised by primary school, but now loves school.

Based on my experience, they will eventually permanently exclude him and he will be left with no school or alternative provision for many months or years until a place at a special school can be found. Start the process of finding one now because you won't get one without a fight.

No of course not. No body wants to see any children hurt.

The OP asked for advice from the perspective of her child. That is what I gave (as did the other poster who pointed out with evidence that what the school is doing is illegal).

To jump to conclusions about wanting to see children hurt is an absolute nonsense.

OP, it's definitely necessary to call an emergency annual review, not just to deal with the current situation but because of the imminence of secondary school. It may seem a way off but I started thinking about it for my daughter around that age and it wasn't a minute too soon.

Is DH contributing to the heavy paperwork and research burden? Has he made a long list of suitable alternatives and looked into practicalities such as travel, qualifications offered etc? I find a lot of dads in these situations are keen to throw out suggestions while actually having little idea of the immense amount of work any change requires.

Does DS have any insight into what's changed?

It can't be a coincidence that this has started since he got a new teacher. It isn't necessarily the new teachers fault, but their style of teaching, combined with a change, is likely to be the problem. Can he move to another class with a more empathetic teacher?

Sounds like the new teacher needs some specific training from the SENCo about the fact that Autistic children are not “just naughty” and being strict and telling them to “just behave” is not a suitable, or indeed legal, strategy.