College provision

[Huda2012]

Hi there
I wanted some advice my son who will be starting college in September 2025. I have visited the SEN provision of some colleges and noticed they only either do 3days a week or 4days a week. Is there any help with getting extra funding for the days the child does not attend school. Do I need to state this in my son's EHCP does he does not do well at home and needs to be in college for longer than 3days. Would love to some advice.

LAs often try to limit post 16 provision to 3-4 days, but the LA must provide the provision required, so if 5 day provision is required it should be covered in the EHCP and therefore provided. You may have to appeal to get the EHCP right, though. It isn’t lawful for LAs to have a blanket policy limiting the number of hours of provision despite what some LAs try to have.

If there is maths/English it is probably more likely to be 4 days. The idea is you can use a free day for work / work experience though for my DD she just needed to recover.

(Can't answer your actual question)

What normally happens for DC without EHCPs isn’t relevant to DC with EHCPs who need. Their provision should be based on what they require rather than what typically happens. If some time is used for work experience, it should still be in the EHCP.

Not disputing that @BrumToTheRescue just making sure the OP understands the 'norm' of vocational college as a jumping off point for deviating from.

OP doesn’t need to worry about the norm. It isn’t relevant. What is reasonably required is what is relevant.

The SEND Code of Practice says that councils should consider the need to provide a 5 day per week package for over 16s, although it may not be all education - it can include, for instance, work experience, therapies, local activities, health provision, social services provision etc. It's not the strongest duty, but certainly if they don't the Tribunal would expect them to be able to produce a pretty good reason.

You should try to get it into the EHCP. Would the school back you up?