which of 5 school options? or move/ homeschool?

[letsgooutstiiiiiiide]

Schools are very oversubscribed where we live, so have to get DS (2.8) onto waiting lists for all the options - we are only in zone for one school, which looks like the worst option.

DS is on the path to an ASD diagnosis, or at least "autistic traits with specific sensory issues". He is very, very stressed by lots of noise and chaos, and won't voluntarily join anything with other children. 1:1 in a very familiar environment he is fine, though we notice that he isn't good at social imagination (as opposed to more general imaginative play, which is fine).

Options 1&2 are private with waiting lists. 3-5 are public.

1: Co-ed prep, tiny year groups (15). Academic, quiet, consistent. Expectations of good behaviour, sitting at desks, working as directed alone or in groups. Ties and blazers and shoelaces and PE uniforms (Ds may cope poorly with that kind of thing).

2: Steiner school, at the fundamentalist end of the spectrum. So no pressure, lovely place, nice curriculum, gentle and nurturing... but also batshit crazy anthroposophy, which may affect DS if he won't conform.

3: Big university-linked state primary, very good SEN provision, kind and experienced teachers, lots of good extracurricular things on offer, generally an outstanding school. But incredibly noisy (kids and highway traffic) and visually busy. I felt stressed just touring the place.

4: Tiny local school for which we are zoned. Offers play-based education to age 8-9, very collaborative, no desks, very social. Also very very loud and chaotic, in the early years, though very accepting of difference. Not outstanding but not bad.

5: Small, quiet state school that is very nurturing but utterly academically dire, and with a lot of children with chaotic or didficult home lives. Kind and gentle but overstretched and academically laissez-faire.

Ps these are schools within reasonable travel distance. Other potential state primaries are variations on options 3-5, mostly less extreme than 3, 4, or 5 but also more of a pain to get to. No other private options other than academically poor and behaviourally questionable Catholic schools (rules, expectations and some teachers still in place from the 80s when brutal corporal punishment was the way to do everything).

I should also say - we know lots of people at the local and the university ones, but can't really get disinterested opinions about the prep or the Steiner.

obvs we can put him on waiting lists everywhere, but if moving or homeschooling are required, that takes rather more planning. Given that no option looks right, I worry that we should look at moving (if DH could get a job, which he may not be able to - niche career).

He's 2 years and 8 months? How is he coping at pre-school? How is he when you leave him/pick him up - what do the staff say?

If he is being diagnosed at this young age, with the difficulties you describe, then if it was me, I'd also be looking at special schools or at least a mainstream school with a special needs unit. I'd also be considering applying for an EHC Plan - consider talking your specific situation over with IPSEA/SOSSEN - your son could still come out with GCSE's; there are more academic special schools - at this stage though, it would be hard to determine your son's full academic potential, as his special needs will be a barrier to a full assessment e.g. inability to take instructions/concentrate etc.
A school named in an EHC Plan must take the pupil and the school would have to be considerably over-subscribed to say they could not take him, as it would affect the education of the other pupils.

Diagnosis this early is because I knew what i was looking at, coming from a family full of undiagnosed ASD, my own adult diagnosis, having worked in a context full of adults with very mild ASD and their children often with less mild ASD. So I pushed for a referral as soon as I had any suspicions.

He's doing OK at preschool - not really interacting with the other kids, but concentrating and following instructions fine, coping fine with structure, happy to sit at a table opposite another child and build stuff in parallel. He is taking in a lot of what's going on, in the little video clips they send home I can see he's watching every bit of what the other child is doing, even though it looks more like solitary play than parallel play. When I say "won't join other children voluntarily" I should have said "won't join groups of other children particularly if they're being noisy".

Staff say he is doing extremely well, but I don't have a good grasp of whether that is "extremely well for a child being monitored for signs of ASD", "extremely well for a 2.5-2.8 year old just starting nursery in a room full of 3-6 year olds who all started in the baby room at 18 months", or just "extremely well".

Unfortunately we're overseas so EHCPs etc don't exist. Also unfortunately, we only have one special needs school where we live, and it (and 1:1 funding for help in mainstream schools) is intended for children who are unlikely to achieve (the local equivalent of) KS1 by age 18. He is able to recognize a lot of words (as in, writing out words like "Gruffalo" "cake" etc) and numbers, and used to be able to count, so I think he's likely to get beyond KS1 relatively quickly.

I think if he can cope with the sit-down-and-be-good ethos and the uniform at the private prep it's probably the best option, but I do worry that he won't cope. A discussion this morning, since I posted the OP, also says the SEN provision at the big state school is in fact not that good any more, and that they are very bad with bullying (as are other state schools - it's very laissez-faire on bullying here, seen as the kids' problem to sort out and if the kids can't sort it out they're probably snowflakes).

Argh. Homeschooling isn't really something i want to do...