Home schooling child with EHCP

[Dinnie]

My DD is in year 5. She has special education needs and currently has an ECHP that covers 25 hours.
She attends mainstream school but is currently being taught full time in their 'hub' which is for six children. She can not cope in a normal class with an LSA by her side.

I plan to homeschool her once she finishes primary school but don't really know how this works with an EHCP.

Anybody know anything about this?

I only know the basics, as I have not yet bothered to get an EHCP for my SEN child - she has always been home educated and there is usually no benefit to having one for a chi9ld not at school.

In England you can remove your child from school at any time on demand by sending the school a letter of deregistration. The exception is children attending special school, for whom consent must first be obtained from the LA (but should be straightforward and cannot be unreasonably withheld). A unit in mainstream school still counts as mainstream, so you don't have any hoops to jump through.

If you want to start home educating at a transition point as you plan to do, then no dereg letter is required - simply don't register her at a secondary.

At some point the LA will need to review the EHCP and change the setting to home education. They may do this as an emergency review. Thereafter they should maintain the EHCP and review it annually, which is a theoretical exercise because it just documents what provision she would receive IF she were at school. It just keeps ticking over in case she ever returns to school.

In a few rare cases parents succeed in extracting some support from the LA for home education, but I understand this is like getting blood from a stone. They are only obliged to help if they admit that there is no school which can meet the child's needs, and they don't normally admit that even if it is true!

Come on over to the Home Ed board where I am sure you'll find some others with experience who can give you all the details.

Before you decide on homeschooling, it might be worth requesting a change of placement to Education other than at school (EOTAS)
That way the local authority would still have a duty to provide an education (at home if needed), and you'd be able to have help funding it.

Full disclosure, I have no idea how easy/hard is is for a successful request- I'm currently in the process of a change of provision (to EOTAS) request for DS.

If you were planning on HS anyway though, there's nothing to lose.

If you EHE the LA are likely to say you are making suitable arrangements and therefore they are relieved of their duties.

I second pursing EOTAS. DS1 has an extensive EOTAS package with tuition and therapies/other provision. There's a few other posters with home tutoring via EOTAS in their DC's EHCP on the SN boards.

Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you, thank you for all your replies.

Local authorities are getting better, DD has an EHCP for education in a non standard setting due to her condition

6 years ago we had to force the issue by placing her in an online school ourselves, the L A realised it was the best option and agreed to fund her place even before she had an EHCP in place

At her last review for year 12 the panel actually stated that it was the only way to provide her education adequately