School excluding DD due to MH. Is this allowed?

[ComplexNeeds]

My DD is at an independent school. She’s self harming and struggling. Not with camhs so seeing private psych. DD thought school should know in order to understand why underperforming etc. Now they’ve said she can’t attend until they get the say so from her psychiatrist. Is this normal? The psych is going to charge us £225 for the letter. I’m very reluctant to pay for this when I don’t think it’s necessary. Is this a legal requirement or even a normal request? Can school refuse her.
Just to add she’s no harm to anyone else. Hasn’t self harmed at school. If I’d not told them they would never have known other than her grades are plummeting.

Heath and safety issue, I would assume

My DC was not allowed in school with crutches until the GP had written a letter.

HI OP do you have another thread on the same subject? I posted there that I had similar and I'm afraid they can ask as they are a private school. Cost me £600 and she had 3 weeks at home whilst the report was prepared - nothing quite screwed her over as much as the isolation of being kept out of school.

Yes londonmummy I posted in ‘child mental health’ but wondered if I’d get a school/teacher/education perspective here. Interesting rainbow and I’m assuming he wasn’t allowed into school until that had been received? I’m really surprised.

Gosh, I’m really surprised. Never heard of this in a state school.

I'm a safeguarding officer in a college, and we might ask for a letter or a risk assessment/safety plan etc from CAMHS if we had serious concerns about our ability to keep a young person safe or whether they were well enough for education at the moment, for example. But this is not something we often do and certainly not our usual response to a student disclosing self harm.

We would also have a college safety plan agreed between us and the parent and the child, so we all know what the plan is in response to certain scenarios and what our individual responsibilities would be. For example, we might ask our students to come to Student Services if they felt very low or likely to self harm at college, and we might ask the parent to give us a number we can call if we need them to be collected because they are very distressed. If we could not get agreement on a safety plan, we may have to say we cannot have that learner on site until it's resolved as we cannot keep them safe.

I think this is a grey area. They should have an exclusion policy but I doubt mental health is on it. So on what basis are they excluding her? Unfortunately private schools do write their own rules but do have a complaints policy for unfair application of their rules. It might be the rules are obscure and made up as they go along. I would challenge the rationale but I’m not entirely surprised because they are not held to the same legal standards as state schools with regard to exclusion.

I replied on your thread on the Education board, just in case you missed it as i replied a day after you posted

Thank you alpine

I think you have to go on the assumption that an independent school can exclude/refuse to allow a pupil to attend for any reason. Do you feel that they have concern for her wellbeing or rather just concerned by the plummeting grades?

I’ve no idea. It’s not about her wellbeing that’s for sure. We weren’t going to tell them as I know a few kids there who have issues and they’ve been absolutely unbelievably shocking with. So I think it’s dreadful pastoral care all round. Covering their backs maybe? Worried about being sued? I’ll get what they need to get her back into school as this is having a massive detrimental effect on her. It certainly won’t help her grades if that’s what they’re worried about. Tbf some of the teachers are fabulous. It’s the SLT who are dire!!