Is it possible to contact head teacher during half term?

[elliejjtiny]

The local authority have refused to assess DS5 for an ehcp. Head teacher is not impressed and agreed to come to mediation meeting despite it being half term which we are very grateful for. I let the lady from global mediation know that he was coming 2 weeks ago and gave the school office email address as there wasn't one on the website for the head teacher. I explained that the only email address I had was the school office one but they can pass on stuff to the head teacher. Last week she asked for the head teacher's email again. I explained I only had the office one again. Now today she has said that she has emailed the head teacher via the school office but nobody is responding (understandably) because it's half term.

Meeting is on Thursday this week. I haven't got any ideas of how to contact the head teacher without resorting to things like contacting him via facebook which I am reluctant to do as it feels like crossing the line and something that would be too intrusive of me. I'm really nervous about this meeting going wrong though and don't want to jeapodise it because I was too polite. I've seen children be unsupported during secondary school. One attempted suicide, One caused a power cut at school and several others became school refusers. I don't want this to happen to DS5. He is really struggling and so is his teacher who is trying really hard and has the patience of a saint.

Any ideas on how to contact the head teacher? He already has the link for the meeting (it's virtual) so I'm wondering if what the lady from mediation wants to talk to him about and if she doesn't, will it really matter?

I would ask other parents if they know heads email address - someone is likely to

Phone the school and leave a message. Email the school email and mark it URGENT FAO HEADTEACHER
My headteacher usually goes into school over the holiday and even if not checks her emails regularly. In my school sone office staff are at work over half term so someone may pick up the call message. If not, phone the LA /organiser of the meeting. Say if the headteacher has not confirmed then the meeting needs to be rearranged. Good luck.

Thank you everyone. I sent the link for the meeting plus the date and time to the head teacher 2 weeks ago via the school office. I've trawled through the safeguarding policy which names him as the safe guarding lead but doesn't give an email address. The ehcp paperwork has the sencos details, but nothing for the head teacher. This is official mediation, yes. I'm going to contact the lady from mediation and tell her he has the link and that I don't have an email address for him.

Forgot to add, no, we are not in Surrey, sorry to hear parents in Surrey are struggling to get ehcp's too.

Two weeks ago they asked you for Head's email. And you just shrugged your shoulders, said there was an office one and left it at that.
You must have spoke to your head and they agreed to log on - selflessly giving up their time in their holiday.
But sending 1 email the office to explain and ask for a direct contact (or for it to be sent to x email address) was beyond you.
And now your laziness has come back on you you expect the school caretaker, the office staff, pretty much anyone connected to school to step up, in their holiday and help you out.
When it was too much for you to send 1 email earlier.
Rearrange the meeting and for goodness sake don't contact anyone on fb. And do show massive appreciation when the meeting actually happens. And apologise to the administrator who you just said no to when they asked for the info in plenty of time.

I'd go ahead with the meeting. As PP said, they are generally just a LA stalling tactic anyway, why would you stall it further. They are not going to concede at this meeting regardless of who attends. Just get it done with or without the Head and move on with your appeal.

If you have the sendco's email, the heads email probably follows the same pattern eg I inital.surname@ or head@

It is worth a look. Most heads will check their emails during half term. But there may not be anyone checking the office email.

Half term, its unlikely anyone will be in at all - at our school (big secondary) yesterday only the caretaker and a few contractors were in when I dropped by, phones all switched to night service for the week and emails to out of office.

You may be lucky, but the head may actually be away on holiday.

I am beyond grateful that the head has agreed to attend the meeting and I have told him this. I sent him the link via the school office 2 weeks ago which is how I have always contacted him. I'm assuming this is so the office can filter out any emails they can deal with themselves. I sent the school office email to the global mediation people 2 weeks ago and last week, explaining that this was how to contact the head teacher. I'm not expecting the caretaker or anyone else to help out. I was just posting on here to try and find out if there was another way to get hold of his email address that I had missed. People suggested it might be on the safeguarding policy which was a good idea but unfortunately it wasn't.

I am going to contact mediation and ask why they need to contact the head. If it is just to send him the link I can tell them I did that already. If they want a long conversation with him about DS5 then they will have to reschedule the meeting. I am reluctant to do this because he is in year 5 and we are on a time limit as he needs this ehcp before secondary school to be safe.

Currently he has a staff member holding his hand and taking him when they go to the dining room, the assembly hall or when they come in from the playground to keep him safe which I'm assuming won't be able to happen in secondary unless he has an ehcp. He needs to be in special needs school really but because he is working at greater depth when they give him a 1-1 then the autism specialist has told me that he has no chance of getting a place. They have started doing sats practice papers at school but he has scored zero in each one because he won't write anything himself and won't tell the scribe what to write either.

OP, have you contacted the LA yet? They will have the head’s email address.

The ehcp paperwork has the sencos details, but nothing for the head teacher.

Whatever format the SENCo’s name is in, the head’s email will be exactly the same.

That isn’t necessarily true. I’m senco and am jones.ruth@ but the head teacher’s email isn’t the same, and it’s not head@ either. There’s quite a variety judging by the group emails I’m cc-ed into.

Worth a shot, do you have contacts of the PCA chair or team, most likely they will have direct access to the head. I have our head teachers mobile number.
Plus you should be able to find out email addresses via the council.

Good luck

@Shinyandnew1 I’m not sure why you seem to be targeting my posts but 🤷🏽 The overwhelming likelihood is that the head’s email will be the same format as the senco’s. Either way, the address could have been found by now. Best of luck OP!

I just think it’s unhelpful to the OP to state something ‘will’ be the case, as fact, when it isn’t! It might be, it might not.

Good luck, OP-I hope it gets sorted.

Absolutely do not contact your Head on Facebook.

I would be very surprised if the Head isn’t checking emails regularly through the break.

Please do not contact the HT on facebook that is a massive overstep of boundaries! All you can do is leave a message on the school answering machine and use the email you have (cc in the Local Auth) and hope for the best.

The HT may have a family issue going on or be ill or anything or they didn’t get the message- so you may have to prepare yourself that they cannot be there.

I'm so sorry this is happening, it definitely isn't good enough!!!
They are placing too much responsibility on you and it's unfair of them to ask you to find an email address that you're not sure about.

Please also have a look at special school provision my friend was told exactly the same as you by her childs specialist- and her DC is now very happy in year 7 in a specialist school. Its quite far from home but DC enjoys the ride in on the school mini bus. The specialist maybe right - but sometimes its still worth going down that route. I hope the meeting goes well xx

Hi OP. Hopefully the head will attend but in the meantime, some tips. You probably already know all this but just in case, it's good to have all this in front of you during the meeting.

The legal criteria set out in Section 36(8) of the Children and Families Act 2014 states that the LA should conduct an assessment if it is determined that:

• the child or young person has or may have special educational needs; and
• it may be necessary for special educational provision to be made for the CYP in accordance with an EHC Plan.

The LA will probably try to get out of that by all sorts of means. For example, they may say your child has not had 3 cycles of access-plan-do-review, or has not been seen by an Educational Psychologist, or that the school can't prove that they've spent more than the notional £6k extra, and therefore they can't have an assessment. These excuses are unlawful and do not comply with the Act.

Do you have any professional reports as yet eg from an occupational therapist or other specialist. If so, send them to Global Mediation asap and highlight to them the relevant sections that you want the LA representative to read before the meeting.

If they are still saying no, make it clear that you will be taking them to tribunal.

Have you seen the ipsea website? It says this on the website:

"The LA/ICB representative who attends must hold decision-making authority, and be able to make decisions for the LA/ICB in the meeting. They can't say they have to get someone else’s approval."

So - If they try to stall and say it needs to go to panel again in a few weeks make sure you express your disapproval and say as per the IPSEA website they should have sent a decision maker to the meeting. At this point I would hope the Global Mediation representative confirms this!

Good luck and hope you get the decision you need.

Thank you so much for all the advice. I have emailed mediation and the LA, just waiting to hear back. Ds5 has never seen an ed psych or an OT. He has a family intervention service person, the children's autism outreach team and and someone from the access to inclusion team. I have reports from the family intervention service and the access to inclusion team which were included in the ehcp application. We see the children's autism outreach team for meet ups and things but there isn't a report because it took so long to get the referral that we were already doing the things that they were offering support with like visual timetables etc.

That's good to know there is still hope for him to get a place at special needs school. We did have a look at one and it was amazing but after we were told there was no chance of him getting a place at any special school we stopped looking as it was too depressing looking at amazing schools that he has no hope of getting into.

The lady from mediation got back to me and said she wanted to chat with him and send him the link to the meeting. She thanked me for already sending him the link 2 weeks ago and said that the meeting would go ahead without her talking to him beforehand. I've done my bit and just hope it's good enough. The lady from mediation talked us through the possible outcomes on the phone last week and one of them was they might go back to panel for a decision. I didn't realise that wasn't legal and they have to send someone who can make decisions to mediation. I'm worried now they are going to break another law that I didn't know existed.

No, you can't do that. Rearrange for after half term. It's unreasonable to expect him to interrupt his break for unarranged meeting! Would you expect a surgeon to fly back from holiday to attend a meeting, would you do it yourself. Different if date was given pre holiday. This is probably intentional on behalf of local authority so I'd demand reschedule with Teams opt in for head T.

I wish you all the best. Having the HT in your corner is worth so much whether he goes to this particular meeting or not.

The first time I heard of DS's unit it was in the context of "but there are like 200 applicants per place, you don't have a hope." Getting desperate enough to suspend that thought and try for it anyway is a kind of blessing. Turns out DS is one of their more high needs students. I was terrified they'd decide he didn't deserve the place and pack him back off to mainstream!

Our school office is closed this week, though I think the email is monitored a small amount during the week. There would be no one answering the phone.

Our headteacher is away in holiday, as is most of the SLT infact, so not necessarily the case.

Op - you could try sending the email to the headteacher direct by amending the email address slightly. Many schools use a similar format - the bit after the @ stays the same. But change the start - maybe trying headteacher@ or the head's name. It could be first intitial, surname or surname first initial for example.

He already knows the time and date as I told him in person 2 weeks ago and then emailed him via the school office to confirm. I wasn't even going to ask for him to be there as it was half term but he asked how we were getting on with the appeal and offered to attend mediation. We were really pleased and grateful. It was the school who applied for the ehcp in the first place and I get the impression that schools only apply when they are desperate and they think they have a good chance of getting one. Getting turned down without even getting an assessment was a shock to us and the school. My older son has moderate learning disabilities and the school applied for an ehcp for him when he was in year 3 and that for through no problem.