Asd and secondary school or specialist school?

[Chocolate4me]

Hi, my son has just been diagnosed with Asd in Year 4. The school say they need to apply for more funding for extra support and also to support DS longterm re. HECP.
He struggles with getting anxious and needs support to do half his work. I am thinking forward to secondary school and I can't see him coping unless he suddenly matures.. Even with a support staff. Or he will end up walking out of class and will get a reputation or bullied. But I'm not sure if a specialist school will be for him either and there isn't much in between either apart from home educating.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? You wouldn't really know he had Asd outside of the school environment... He is sensitive and dislikes school work... But can also be very headstrong! Would I be able to use a personal budget from the Ehcp for home educating resources and exams? Thank you

You could only get resources for home schooling if you were able to show home ed was a necessary rather than a choice. That means having EOTAS (education other than at school) in section I (placement ). Of tou Google EOTAS you should be able to find more info. For that you need evidence from reports to show this is needed. The LA generally speaking do not have to provide educational support if you elect to home ed because there is arguably an alternative available in a school.

I'd start looking round at all the possible schools now as it will give you a feel of the places and you will know straight away whether they would be right for your son. Mainstream schools vary a lot.Start with the ones in your own county then extend to neighbouring counties.

Our son wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes at the school up the road, where his brothers and all his classmates from primary school went and where the SENCO showed complete ignorance of autism and didn't give a toss.That would have been totally the wrong place for him.

Instead, we chose to transport him to the (mainstream) school 6 miles away in the next county, where the SENCO was knowledgeable and compassionate, and staff had huge experience of ASD, where there were links with a special school for children with autism, and where there were facilities for learning in smaller groups and 1:1 in a quiet and calm environment. Because it was the right school, our son settled very quickly and was very happy there.

If you can't find a suitable mainstream school, then look at autism specific special schools, rather than generic special schools.

Thanks for the replies, we did move him to the school that kept being recommended but we didn't have a diagnosis at the time and now I feel like we missed out on trying another school that has an Asd unit within in, but I believe you would have needed an Ehcp for there anyway I guess.
The school are understanding but my son will do things like the other day he went to school really grumpy and miserable and just led down in the classroom for 45 minutes and wouldn't talk etc. Or he can easily go into crying excessively and disrupting others so it's the behaviours like that (happened 3 times in the last 2 weeks) that are challenging in mainstream and I get called in to try to get him out of it. And he is missing out of alot of work because they can't get him to do it as easily as I can at home, but doing at home just isn't ideal either for so many reasons.
I think we will have to give it a year of persevering and then look at private specialist schools maybe