Daughter being excluded from prom

And maybe the school already has?

Maybe you give the benefit of any doubt that some may have.

I think what some people are forgetting on this thread is the requirement is for reasonable adjustments.

Reasonable.

You do not know from what the OP has said that these have not been applied. It doesn't mean that her DD can behave badly and not have any consequences for that but they reasonably adjust any consequences to account for her disability.

Which if they hadn't by this point, why the hell has the OP taken till now to act?

Dear god. You need help. And I'm speaking as an autistic person myself.

Let me know when this is planned for, I'll get the popcorn. It would be more ridiculous than Eastenders.

Personal;y I think prom should be open to all children and not based on points/attendance etc. There are other ways of promoting those. Nobody can know what’s going on for a child at home, or why their attendance is poor. Preventing them from going to prom only serves to reinforce the message that they are a loser, that any effort they’ve ever made was pointless, so what’s the point of even trying. It’s cruel. However, I’d hate for a kid to ruin it for another because of bullying. In those cases I guess a ban is right.

Are you a bit naive?
It sounds like DD's behaviour has been quite bad.

I'm autistic.

One of my personality traits is rule following.

I never, not once, got in trouble at school. No detentions, negative points, missed playtimes etc from age 4 to 18.

Lots of autistic children are the same.

What's cruel about it? This won't be out of the blue. It will have been threatened and incentivised repeatedly. She will have been given way more chances than anyone else. Why should she still get to go?

Loads of prom venues also don’t allow schools to hire their place out without having firm conversations with schools about the expectation that students with known behaviour issues will be barred from attending. Venues around us won’t let local schools host there unless the school makes assurances that students with a history of behaviour problems will not be in attendance.

The school also needs to take into account the feelings of the staff and the wider school. If students and staff can breathe a sigh of relief that a certain student will be barred, attendance will be higher and people will have a happier night. Less people on edge. School staff and students are forced by law to be around students that cause so much distress and unhappiness to everyone for five years. They have this discretion for one night to get rid of the troublemakers so everyone can at least have one night of peace.

Excluding a student from the prom is not taken lightly and the student would have to show significant behavioural issues and there would be agreement that almost everyone would have a more pleasant night without them there Almost ending up in a PRU means the behaviour problems will be significant. No school bans a, shy meek anxious autistic student who staff and students like to be around/don’t mind being around who’s only wrongdoings are not wearing uniform properly or going to the toilet too much. That’s not a reason people get banned from prom at all.

She has autism and anxiety - it is discriminatory. A mental health professional is required for the dx. Schools should be inclusive - how would you feel if they said a child in a wheelchair couldn’t attend because the venue didn’t have a lift? Every child DOES have the right to participate in school life.

@user1471497170
OP your post really upsets me, greatly so.
I cannot believe we are still living in a day and age, with all we now know and understand about neurodivergence, where children are being excluded from an end of secondary school celebration. This compounds the isolation and exclusion and 'othering' that ND children already go through their school lives feeling anyway.
How the professionals at your school have reached the decision to exclude your DD from the prom after all her struggles through the past 5 years of being there - yet she's still there, still turning up, still putting the work in, and is impressively set to pass her GCSEs despite all her challenges - is shocking beyond belief. What a terrible, negative and upsetting message to give her upon leaving school.
And yet, even as I write that it's shocking beyond belief, at the same time I'm sadly not surprised, because I've come to loathe and despise some (not all, but a great many) secondary school teachers since my two ND children started secondary. And I loathe them with a rage that I've never experienced before towards any other person, ever.
I feel really upset for your DD, and for you, and I don't even know either of you.
You must fight this. Tooth and nail. Head teacher. Governors. Research about her rights not to be excluded because of her ND difficulties. Do everything in your power to fight for her and her self-worth. Don't stop until someone listens to you. Your DD has a right to be there. Don't let these teachers damage her self-worth.
Hopefully other posters will add better ideas on how to fight this.

Almost 20 percent of children are claimed to have a mental health issue, learning difficulties, behavioural issues etc. A school can not operate policies which only apply to 80% of students.

Op has done this and not getting anywhere so she goes to governors now.

Eh?

Well realistically they'll tell her she can't come in, won't they 😳

Autistic secondary teacher here.

If behaviour is due to disability, then it's not possible for a student to suddenly choose to improve so they can go to prom. Sorry, but that isn't how autism works - see above, autistic myself with a Y11 autistic granddaughter (who is going to prom because she always knew that she was responsible and accountable for her own behaviour).

Further, if the OP's daughter has only chosen to improve in Y11, and was previously considered for a PRU, this means she's caused significant disruption for the previous 4 years. Prom is a privilege not a right. I haven't read anything suggesting that this privilege should be afforded due to a few months of improvement and the behaviour of the previous 4 years should attract no consequences whatsoever.

Is it discrimination? No. It would be discrimination only if the child absolutely couldn't regulate their behaviour. Unfortunately, she's shown she's perfectly able to make the right choices when she wants to avoid a particular consequence.

Finally, the going to the toilet thing. She hasn't been sanctioned for going to the toilet, she's been sanctioned for unauthorised absence from the classroom. Why? Because it's a safeguarding concern. You don't just let a kid destined for PRU with significant MH issues hang out in the toilet. Major risk to themselves and others. It often takes the intervention of 2-3 members of staff to resolve each instance (one to on-call the absence, one to find the child, one to staff the detention). In other words, every time that child takes themselves off to the toilet without permission, it costs the taxpayer £20. If they do it only once a day, that's £3,800 a year. Of course this has consequences.

Chair of governors here: any complaint must go through the school's complaints procedure.

Having autism is not an excuse to bend the rules and be a dick

Does she have an EHCP?

I agree.

Maybe she will learn from this experience. She may well be ND, but where do you draw the line? Should ND people avoid prosecution if they break the law?

It's a harsh lesson, no doubt, but ND or not, she is part of a wider community and compliance within reason, is important to society. Imagine if everyone who was ND just went around doing whatever they wanted.

They will refuse entry and if mum becomes aggressive then police will be called.
Fucking great idea.

I’d just turn up with her. What are they going to do realistically?

id also go to the local paper about it

It's difficult without knowing anything from the school's perspective but it's entirely possible that the school have applied reasonable adjustments every time they've given her a behavioural reprimand, i.e. they've given her more leeway but she's still pushed boundaries beyond what is reasonable.

If that is the case, the school approach is perfectly fine. And if the school haven't been applying reasonable adjustments then why wait till now?

This is all making me think of a story when I first worked in operations in a factory.

Not in my team but there was a guy who, I kid you not, had ridiculously high absence. Typically you got above 3% and the informal attendance management started. Anyway, the shift manager on that shift started off the process. He halved his absence. Great, improvement. But still way above 3%. So he moved onto the formal process.

Improvement from a very bad performance to just bad isn't enough in some cases. Neurodiversity may mean she's entitled to reasonable adjustments but that's what you do when her school work is suffering not about prom.