Post 16 Education for highly anxious child

[MoonUnit27]

My DS missed school from Dec 24 (neurological condition now diagnosed - no treatment available, needs to learn to lve with it) and sat just 4 GCSE papers - with special considerations he now has 4 GCSE grades - not including english and maths.
His school had said he could resit the year, but he is highly anxious and says he cannot attend in person at the moment, so now they have said that he cannot be put back on roll. He was offered an interview for a level 2 course at college, but he can't get in the car due to anxiety and therefore cannot attend the interview (he also doesn't meet the entry requirements).
We have applied for an EHCP, but school say it will take at least 18 months even if our application is successful which they are not sure it will be as we don't have and ed psych of clin psych assessments.

He is capable and could sit exams if he didn't have to go to test centre and they weren't one after another. The cumulative stress of one exam after another causes a flare-up in his neurological condition.
LA have said they don't know what else he could do. He wants to continue to learn and he wants to be somewhere he can socialise with people (but at the moment he is a ball of anxiety and can't get anywhere).

Open to any views / thoughts / ideas that anyone may have.

Online school - Inter High or similar? Not sure how he can socialise if he can’t leave the house though. Might have to know that on the head for now and work on his anxiety with a view to starting college next year.

Where are you in the EHCP process? Is the LA sticking to the timescales?

Unless you have to appeal, and I appreciate you may, potentially more than once, it won’t take 18 months for an EHCP. There are statutory timescales. LAs like to think they don’t have to adhere to these, but they aren’t optional and parents can take enforcement action.

If the LA refuse to assess or refuse to issue, you should appeal. You can get an EHCP for the needs you describe. You don’t need EP and CP reports beforehand. They can be part of the EHCNA.

With an EHCP, there is EOTAS - Education Otherwise Than At School. You will also see this called EOTIS, with the I standing for In. And you will sometimes see it with a C on the end for College. This is a bespoke package of education. Education in the broad sense including things like mentoring and therapeutic input. Not just academics.

There are options for the academic side of things. As well as online schooling, other options include online tuition (individual or small group), pre-recorded lessons or F2F tuition at home. Then, once DS’s anxiety improves, there are tuition centres and alternative provisions that might work for him, or there may be a special sit placement suitable within travelling distance once DS’s MH improves.

Exams can be sat at home if necessary too. Or certain exams can be remotely invigilated.

Without an EHCP, whilst the LA has the power to arrange alternative provision for post 16 students unable to attend college etc., they don’t have a duty to like they do for compulsory school age pupils. So, whilst you should ask the LA to arrange provision, most of the time LAs don’t/won’t.

We applied for EHCP about 4 weeks ago, so a couple of weeks to go before we should hear whether they will do assessment - so after term starts. Thanks for the info re EOTAS / EOTIS, I hadn't heard of this. Can I ask whether you know how to go about being able to sit exams at home - we asked school about this at the time of GCSEs but they said it was too late to organise - do you know whether this is only available through school / LA? We are pretty annoyed because school didn't follow policy and report to LA when he had 15 days off due to medical needs (Dec / Jan) as LA should have been informed and should have taken over responsibilty for his education at this stage. And like you say - now the LA don't have a duty to provide anything.

I have 2 DSs who sit exams at home. Their exams are arranged via their EOTAS/EOTIS packages.

In theory, it is possible for home educated DC to have home invigilation as a private candidate. However, it is very difficult to find an exam centre able and willing to do this. Where they can, they are usually booked very far in advance because they have very limited capacity for such arrangements.

How late in the day did you raise home invigilation with the school? The centre has to submit an alternative site form at least 6 weeks before the start of the series. Although in exceptional circumstances, it can be after this. And they would need the staff which can be difficult to arrange for some schools.

Just so you are aware, there are some exceptions to the timescale for responding to the EHCNA where it is impractical for the LA to adhere to the timescales. One of the exceptions is where the LA requests advice from the headteacher or principal of a school during the period beginning one week before a school closes for a period of 4+ weeks and ending one week before the school re-opens from a closure of 4+ weeks. This can affect requests made during the summer holidays. Although it isn’t the go ahead for the LA to do as they wish. It is only if it is impractical to comply, and they must still comply as soon as possible. If you want to read more, it is in Regulation 5(4) of The Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014.

Look up your local/ national exam centres ours offers exams at home which are online and you will have to pay for private invigilation but they are very expensive , on top of the exam fee say £200 you also have to pay for the invigilator at £300 , this will cover all papers in that exam, but if you are sitting more than 1 subject you will have to pay this fee per subject

Have you requested medical needs support from the LA? Have your ds been signed off medically?

Thank you I will look into this. I am not sure we are able to bear these costs, but it is worth considering.

Thank you. The school should have made the LA aware after 15 days of absence (to be fair to them we didn't have a diagnosis so weren't sure whether he would be able to return or not, but I wasn't aware of the policy at the time). The LA are now under no obligation to provide support as he is no longer of compulsory school age.

I would formally complain to the school. Even if DS didn’t have a diagnosis, they should have made a sickness return.

My last post was about home invigilation. Remote invigilation is different. For those exams where remote invigilation is possible, that is easier to arrange as an external private candidate, but still costly. Although depending on the other exam access arrangements required, remote invigilation isn’t always possible even if the exam can normally be invigilated that way.

That sounds really tough for both you and your DS — you’ve clearly been working so hard to support him. A couple of families I know in similar situations have found online learning providers a bit of a lifeline, as it takes the pressure off travel and anxiety while still keeping the learning momentum going. Some of these even count as structured education if you need to show the LA that he’s still learning. While waiting on the EHCP process (which I know can feel like forever), would he feel up to dipping into something flexible and at-home, even if just short modules at first? It might also give him more confidence for when in-person exams or socialising become possible again.