School Admissions - What constitutes a special medical reason??

[drosophila]

DS has a host of medical issues which I feel justify a place in our local school. It is a very popular school though and part of me worries that if I identify his medical issues they might find a reason not to admit him. I am thinking about this as several friends have been very very disappointed this year.

is it worth speaking to your current SENCO at ds'primary school?

I will do that and the head too I think. I am pretty sure they would support it too as they are fully aware of his medical history.

Generally speaking, it would be any condition which necessitates him attending his local school. For example, if he had brittle asthma, and needed to be close to home so that you could attend quickly in an emergency.

One child I know of got in on the basis that she needed to be near to her local GP surgery.

You could go to your local LEA website and read their admissions criteria. You would need backing from your GP/Consultant, and usually need to demonstrate that your child needs to attend this particular school over any other, and how not doing so would impact on your child's health.

So, for example, if you had two schools within similar distance of you, and one was ofsted outstanding, and the other graded "satisfactory", you would be unlikely to be successful in claiming that he had to attend the outstanding school to stay close to home.

Why would your local school help your son's medical conditions?

Well asthma is one of his problems along with life threatening food allergies so close to home is exactly the issue there. Also closest to hosp. He also has issues around eating generally and his consultant indicates a calm environment is important for him as he has attention issues too. They were happy to write a letter to support s move to a different primary school which I didn't do as didnt want to move him at that time. Local school is a calmer environment as I have visited a couple. Some of my friends are being offered schools 6 miles away which terrifies me. On the plus side he is very academic so I would hope that would help.

I worry that if I bring it up they might think he is more trouble than he is worth but if I don't he might go to a school miles away.

Being academic will not help one jot... You need to demonstrate (and a GP letter isn't enough - it'll need to come from your consultant) why this, and only this, school will meet his medical needs.

Bear in mind that in the eyes of the LEA all schools are equal - fairly obvious really - they can't exactly admit that one of their schools doesn't provide a satisfactory education. Be prepared to them to say that other schools have children with serious food allergy and therefore he/they will cope. Be prepared for them to state that all their schools aim to provide a calm atmosphere, not just the one you're after.

If you could for example prove that this school is the only one that has someone who has received medical training particular to your son, that could work.

The school won't be involved with your application - it's the LEA. Unless it's private or church controlled in which case go to the head and beg/grovel/offer large quantities of cash/your body

not sure if we used that box correctly but on DD2's application we stated that one of our reason for choosing this school was it's close proximity to the hospital as dd2 sees 3 different consultants every 3 monthly and the close proximity would mean less hours lost from her education.

Thanks guys. It helps to think about the possible come backs.

Remember that for every medical need you will need to provide evidence from a professional that he needs exactly what this school, and only this school, can offer.

We got dd into secondary on two counts:

a) she needed wheelchair access (letter from GP and paedatrician in support)

this, we knew, would narrow choice down to one local school (the one we wanted) and a couple of schools much further away

so we provided further medical letters to explain that dd could not cope with long bus journeys (because of joint trouble) and that she needed to be close to GP surgery;
also (letter from hospital counsellor) that she was emotionally fragile and had suffered emotionally from misdiagnosis needed to go to a school with at least one friend who would be able to support her and help her negotiate new friendships

You need absolute medical evidence that this is the only sensible school for your child. The letters must say "in my opinion" signed by the doctor / consultant to have any weight. If they say "Mrs X tells me that" then they will receive little weight from the LA or in any appeal and are unlikely to be enough to get a place under medical condition.

It is the admission authority that makes such decisions within the normal admission framework, so for a community school this is the LA. If you are looking at a sept 2011 admission to secondary school I would start talking to them now, as to the evidence they will want to see and start lining it up. You in fact only have a number of months, as the admission form will need to be submitted sometime in October / November. The school will not be involved at all until a decision is made on the medical evidence.

Thanks. Proxmity is the main thing the school we want offers i.e. proxmity to hosp, GP and home in case of emergency. We have apt in a couple of weeks so perhaps we should bring it up then?

The other thing is that DS has attention deficit problems which means he is not trustworthy walking down the road on his own even now at age 10. We live 5 mins from school and I could not let him go on his own so a bus journey half way accross town would be very difficult as I would have to travel with him and I have back problems making travel difficult for me. God sounds like a right old sob story.

DO any of you think it might be held against him. By that I mean do you think a school might argue that they couldn't meet his needs. For example there would need to be a reasonable level of supervision at meal times. DP is worried that we might actually make matters worse if we raise it as an issue.

Another thing to remember is that if you get a place due to special medical reasons you go to the top of the list, in front of siblings for example, so the reason needs to fully demonstrate why your son should get priority and possibly deny a place to a sibling.

It is also worth remembering that any application should have all of the information that you wish the LA to consider. Think of it as conducting your appeal from the outset if that helps.

Where it places you varies among LEAs, so you need to check the policy carefully. Some LEAs place siblings ahead of medical.

All schools are expected to make reasonable adjustments to allow pupils such as your son to access schools. There is no way that any school should be arguing that they cannot meet your son's needs.

There is nothing that you have said in your posts that would suggest that a "normal" school could not cope with them providing that your son has some help.

The issue over attention deficiency is important to get over as well to the admission authority (LA) as this is good reason for your son going to the nearest school, apart from the distance arguement.

The medical criteria usually will also apply to you as well, so providing that you can show good medical evidence there is no reason not to include your back problem as well.

Thanks guys lots of good advice.

Would your local school be the right school for DS if it wasn,t so popular? that's what you have to demonstrate

There is a medical need with which a school might not meet a child's needs. If a child had social anxiety and the school placement offered was a large school as opposed to a preferred smaller one. Again you would still need a consultants opinion and an opinion from an EP maybe useful as well.

As admissions says, the thing to hang onto in the case of SN/medical needs is Reasonable Adjustment. You cannot ask a large school to turn itself into a small school, or a Victorian 4 storey building to become wheelchair adapted by September.

But a school would have a job claiming that providing 1:1 lunchtime supervision does not constitute reasonable adjustment- you're hardly asking them to raze the school to the ground and rebuild it by Monday. And this is something, by the sounds of it, that any school that took on your ds would have to do- so not a get-out clause for any one particular school; the LEA wouldn't see why this is different for school X to school Y.

sorry for jumping into this thread - as i am in the similar predicament. i need to prove to LEA that the nearest sec scholl is unsuitable to the one i prefer which is further down.

our preference sch is specialist in maths and computing - which are the subjects my Ds excels and this has been reported by the psych, class tutors and in the statement we have that as well. however the other - closest school is specialist in arts and my Ds has fine motor skills - so will be unhappy if more focus is on arts. i wonder if this might help count in our favor.

english, it helps if you look at it from the panel's pov. Potentially there are hundreds of parents whose dcs also will not to get the specialism that they would prefer and who will be unhappy about it. You need to show them why your ds's condition puts him in a special category, where not getting to do what he is good at will be more damaging than for another child.

(Also, remember that specialist subjects even in a specialist school count for a very small part of the curriculum. Dd's school is a business and technology college: all it means in practical terms is that they have to do one GCSE in a tech subject: dd (who has joint trouble) has been promised that her tech subject can be cookery. But the bulk of the teaching is in more traditional subjects).

sorry i lost this thread, ok, makes sense. Another reason we were considering was that the school we prefer had a asd unit although my DS is not diagnosed with that but the social, communication etc will be best addressed in this school which already has a dedicated unit on these issues. - my Ds is working on at the moment.

Resurrecting this thread as I need some advice around this issue....

My problem is that it is more a case of feeling that a particular school won't be suitable, rather than being able to prove that a certain school is the only one that will be - anyone had experience of that?

As background, ds (may) have a medical condition which precludes him playing contact sports (being tested soon). I am concerned that an all-boys school will have more emphasis on team contact sports and he will feel excluded or even be picked on if he can't take part or they may not have adequate facilities for alternative sports.

Also, the sports fields are a considerable distance from the school & the pupils walk there unaccompanied, giving me two concerns - that pupils are often seen having scuffles as they go along a busy road and that if there was a medical emergency there would not be enough staff on hand as it is so far from the school (would there be more than one staff member with a class?)

I know I am probably over-thinking things and have no idea how I could demonstrate that a particular mixed school with the sports facilities adjacent to the main school would be better....

Unfortunately the system doesn't really work like that. Saying that there are medical reasons why your DS can't go to a particular school still leaves a lot of other schools he could go to, so it doesn't provide a strong reason for admission to a particular school. Admissions are looked at for each school individually, so the fact that your DS can't go to school X doesn't give him priority for schools Y and Z.

Mixed secondary schools separate boys and girls for sporting activities, so I may be wrong but I doubt that a mixed school will be much different in terms of contact sports for boys. I'm a dad who went to a mixed school and sport for us included a lot of football, rugby and other contact sports.

Of course, if there is a school in the area which makes particular provision for children who can't participate in contact sports or which doesn't do contact sports at all, your DS's condition (if confirmed) would provide a case for admission to that school.

I know what you are saying, just wondered if anyone had been in a similar boat. In fact I would be happy for ds to go to either of the two mixed schools closest to us so not wanting a particular school per se. Just feel that if he has this condition he would be safer at a mixed school with less rough & tumble, better discipline, etc.

The mixed schools have swimming pools - swimming is his "thing" so would be good if he could continue with that if he can't do contact sports but afaik the all-boys school doesn't.

Ok, so there's your argument! Your DS can't take part in contact sports but can swim, so it would be to his advantage to be at a school with a swimming pool. I'm not saying it is a particularly strong argument but it is worth a try. It may just be enough to give him priority for these schools. Even if it doesn't work in the initial allocations, it may convince an appeal panel.

What you need is good medical evidence. As Admission said earlier on this thread, you need a letter (or letters) saying "in my opinion" and signed by the doctor or consultant. A letter saying "Mrs Decorhate tells me" or something like that is useless. It needs to be clear that it is the opinion of the medical expert, not your view.

Thanks. If he has this condition it's extra important he keeps fit so might explore that angle...