They can't be managed in the mainstream in many cases, . One of my children has hyperacusis and the other Auditory Processing Disorder. Both have sensory processing issues at a level that would make it a separate diagnosis, were that one in this country. How on earth could they attend a school with more than a thousand kids? My daughter couldn't cope even in primary with classes of 30, and my son should never have been in classes of more than 6. He now has a formal diagnosis of PTSD due to school attendance - in primary! That's not even unusual amongst autistic kids. When we were last at CAMHS a new clinician saw the PTSD dx and immediately said "from school?" and when we said, "yeah" just nodded and carried on. That's the go-to assumption with an autistic child. Not an accident, or witnessing or being victim of a crime. Not abuse of some sort. School. And you say we should send them in, and the schools will magically "step up"? How? Shrink?
The LA voluntarily removed my second child from state mainstream and put her into a private school, and they do that reasonably often across the board for SEN, because a state SEN specialist school costs them around £26,000 at primary, and an independent is likely to cost less. In point of fact, providing for my younger child even in state primary would also have cost the state more - much more. They drew up a provision map showing this. She needed movement breaks every hour for a start, so would have had to have a 1:1 TA in state. In private, they move classroom every hour. Job done.
And there are no specialist schools in our local area for bright autistic kids who can't cope with mainstream. None. The commissioning brief for the schools is 5th to 50th centile ability for the school designed for the most able cohort - and plenty of autistic kids are fairly bright. Do they need schools for this cohort? Well, duh. Are they building any? No. No, they are not.
My son has been out of school and on an EOTAS package for 6 years now, and there are hundreds in our county alone. Many others are home educated. All the special schools are full, and most over capacity - talk to parents whose kids are meant to be in classes of 8 who are instead in classes of 12, and not coping, but who have kids added all the time as those parents win Tribunals. The system was where the NHS is now, when the Tories got into power. To say it's past breakdown is to understate. Every single LA is tens of millions overspent on SEN - to the point they are all having that money kept off the books by government agreement, because if the SEN overspend were factored in every single LA would be insolvent - and yet the deficit, year on year, keeps mounting. LAs don't abuse families - which they are all doing! - for a laugh. They do it because they are so badly overspent they have to. So to get what your child needs you either appeal, or pay, or get exceptionally lucky.
So, so many disabled kids are out of school altogether and have nowhere, many for years on end. SEN Reform has a huge Facebook group, and threads on there by parents comparing notes on how many years their child's been without anything at all are hair-raising.
Is the private sector the right answer? Absolutely not. Is it the only answer, for all too many kids right now? Yes.
And again: this policy doesn't affect me in the least, because one of mine is at home on EOTAS, and the other has school fees paid by the EHCP. I just happen to know, and care about, a lot of desperate parents with SEN kids, who aren't making normal levels of sacrifice at all (think: remortgaging, huge credit card debt, trying to find a way to earn more through hook or by crook) because their autistic kids were suicidal in state primary, and now aren't. And not because private schools are magic, either. Because they are smaller-scale!
What we really need are state "mainstream plus" schools for autistic kids. Same curriculum, but much small classes, in a quiet site. Training by OT and SLT so provision is threaded through with that understanding. Autism is a different way of seeing the world so teachers who adopt a neurodiversity-affirming approach, and recognise heightened anxiety, are needed. Plain walls, and in fact a sensory audit to ensure a peaceful, accessible environment. And it should be possible to place kids there early, before the damage is done. So many kids need it, and it would cost less than either specialist or private. Everyone in the sector knows this is what is needed, too, but nothing is done because the wider public do not give a shit about disabled kids other than feeling sentimental on Children in Need night.
Right now, we have so many kids destroyed by the state system who end up in private specialist schools run by chains (Cambian, Aspris, Aurora, Spaghetti Bridge, Options Autism, I could go on), offering frankly quite weak education for kids who by then are often very challenging due to earlier unmet need and catastrophic mental health damage. And to suggest that those kids shouldn't be placed in small private schools before that stage is reached is insane, even just in terms of cost to the state. We badly need an alternative pathway for autistic kids for whom state mainstream will always, always be destructive - there are a large number of them! Schools designed to challenge and stimulate the most robustly neurotypical will only ever harm many neurodivergents. Pretending that isn't the case is actively colluding in that harm. We need different and we need better, and until we have it, small private schools (which don't, as a rule, offer more understanding of autism, so aren't "better" but are smaller) are plugging a desperate gap.