Anybody Had Problems Finding a Suitable School After HE?

[loveandlight]

I'm having terrible problems finding a suitable secondary school for my DC after being HE for a few years now.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any good stories to tell as my experiences so far with the schools and the LEA's have been disheartening and I would like to hear of some good news stories to give me the inspiration to keep going.

My DC wants to go back to school and I am supporting him in that respect.

With all the fuss that is made about us HE you would think we would be welcomed with opened arms. Not so.

I phoned yet another school today just to see if they had any places available and I
was interrogated over the phone and then told words to the effect that they have had HE children before and they were a burden to them as they were socially withdrawn and needed more time spending on them and they still wouldn't tell me if they had any places. This was a foundation school. They are phoning me back tomorrow. I wonder if this is a warning sign that the school wouldn't be good for my DC to go to if they are that prejudiced towards HE students or maybe I'm being over sensitive because all my experiences so far have been very depressing.

That sounds very depressing - I don't think that state schools would be allowed to refuse you a place if they have them available, whatever their personal views about HE, so you maybe just need to be persistent. In secondary school your DC will have many teachers, so it's not as if he will have one teacher whose opinion is going to be very important - there's every chance that his subject teachers won't even know about the HE unless he mentions it specifically.

We had no problem at all in getting DS a place in our preferred school when he wanted to go back, but he was going in at S5 (Maybe Year 12? After the first set of qualifications anyway) as the school had plenty of spaces at that stage.

Update

Well three days later the school contacted me and said my DC should go to our local school near where we live even though it's not suitable for my DC and that was the end of the matter as far as they were concerned. They would not even tell me if they had any places available.

Well it doesn't matter any more now as we have decided to emigrate in 2010 so I shall start contacting the schools abroad after Christmas. Enough is enough and at least my DC has a new life to look forward to now.

That's really awful - AFAIK they have no right to do it, but you probably wouldn't want to fight for the right to send them somewhere they'd be unwelcome anyway. Glad to hear you are able to just get on and not in a position where you had to get them in somewhere.