My son has been sent to the headteachers office 3 times this week

[Ultracleo]

He is now in year 2 and this has been an issue on and off since he started. I wanted to talk to the teachers in March, but lockdown happened just before parents day.

He was fine during lockdown, enjoyed learning with me and hanging out with the neighbours kids in small numbers, but as soon as he was back in full classes it has become a problem again.

I wrote to the school and they responded immediately with a referral to the paediatricians for ?autism spectrum.

But that referral was turned down by the local community paediatric team, suggesting his symptoms aren't bad enough, yet he seems to be getting worse at school so he's hardly been in any of his lessons this week, he keeps getting sent out for being disruptive. He can't tell us why he does it.

I wonder if we need a private assessment to try to make a diagnosis, but I don't know who would be the right person to make that assessment. Any advice would be really appreciated

I think if the NHS locally have turned him down as there not being enough evidence to even start the assessment procedure, then any private diagnosis would be taken with something of a pinch of salt by people, so it might not really help your ds.
Even if they had decided to start an assessment, it still doesn't have any impact on the fact he is missing all his lessons and getting in to the habit of not being in class.

What you need to do is ask for a meeting with the class teacher and B.Co (Behaviour co-ordinator) - who might, or might not be the same person as the SENDco (Special Educational NEeds and Disability Co-ordinator) and say you would like to understand what it is he is doing, what the triggers are, and what the school is putting in place to support him and to meet his needs. (Obviously in these times, this is likely to be on Zoom or Microsoft Teams or whatever platform the school are using)

Whether or not he has a diagnosis of anything, the school should still be making a plan as to how they can help him, if he has got to the point where "he has hardly been in any of his lessons this week".

They should have been making a record of what was happening before whatever the incident is (that he gets sent out for), what the incident is, and what the consequence is for the action. They are usually called 'ABC's. Sometimes what is being given as a "punishment" might actually be what the child is seeking..... so, he doesn't like the busy, noisy classroom and has learnt that if he pushes or hits another child then he gets to sit in a quiet corridor for 20mins with no-one pressuring him to do anything {just as an example}.

The school is obliged to make reasonable adjustments and work to help him stop whatever challenging behaviour it is, whether or not he has an official diagnosis of anything.

My daughter was seen privately and it worked out really well for us. I felt there was an issue but I got the feeling school thought it was my parenting skills (maybe I over thought this). In Y2 I decided to take things further, we were lucky to have Bupa through DH work but basically we booked an appt with a Consultant Pardiatrician - I was able to speak to the secretary first to see which areas they specialised in. School were contacted directly and asked to complete some forms. We also did the same.

My daughter was diagnosed with ADHD - it was the best thing I did for her as the reasonable adjustments made by school have turned things around. She is now in year 5 and happy at school.

Most consultants working privately will also be NHS too.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

Is he disruptive in all classes? Is he disruptive because of social issues or is it perhaps a distraction because of the work. (so perjhaps a dylsexia issue.) Is it with all teachers. How is he in breaktimes?

If you feel that there's something wrong, but the school's referral has been refused for not meeting threshold, you need to pursue a referral yourself via your GP.

You also need a meeting with the teacher to establish what he is doing, whether there are any obvious triggers and how best to respond to unwanted behaviour in future since being sent to the Head clearly isn't working.

I'd approach it from a place of concern - how you can support him at home, how you can support the schools behaviour policy so that he knows that the entire team around him are on the same page regarding unacceptable behaviour.