Is this an illegal/informal exclusion?

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My son is in reception and has been put on a reduced timetable (9-12) since the second half of the spring term, following an exclusion of 4 days. The head basically said to me that unless he went on a reduced timetable the risk of him being permanently excluded is higher.

My son has a learning delay and they said developmentally he's around 2 in some areas, they also say he probably has ADHD and PDA is something that has been mentioned recently.

Ehcp has just been sent off for and appointment at the doctor's is booked so we can go down the right to choose pathway.

I assumed the reduced timetable would be temporary but the school have not contacted me to increase his hours and the last couple of weeks I've been trying to get a meeting sorted they keep coming up with excuses and saying they'll get back to me.

Im aware my son is a handful but he is entitled to a full time education. Has anyone else been through this and what happened?

Tell me please, would you work full time as a 121 for this child for £6000 a year?

He needs 121, for the safety not only of himself but also for everybody else in that building. Even with that £6000 funding it doesn’t come close to the cost of a full time member of staff allocated purely to this one child. Even if you said they just pay minimum wage that would be essentially 23k would be for someone to do the job just for this one pupil, the funding doesn’t cover that.

Where do you get that myth about Reception from.

No, OP's child didn't "rip down a trophy cabinet." He got into it. He pulled down a wall unit, you have no means of knowing how big that was - it's reasonable to assume that no responsible school would have a unit that was capable of being pulled down by a 5 year old that would actually cause serious injury.

If the school was solely motivated by safety, they wouldn't have the child in part time. They clearly don't actually believe he is necessarily that dangerous.

Yes I do actually she's really lovely and she's been a ta for all my kids over the years and she said she had a soft spot for my son, unfortunately she had to move to a different class as they say she's a trigger for him as she was effectively his one on one, and the more comfortable he is around someone the more likely he is to attack when dysregulated.

I do, you can search my name on here I mention it a lot, I haven't changed it for this thread.

But that is not what the law says. Nor is there any indication that this is the only way to keep other children safe.

Even if the school was right to persist with the part time timetable, it should be making other arrangements together with the LA for OP's son to receive education in the afternoons. Again, there seems to be simply no attempt even to do that. There's no safety justification for that failure.

So the OP should accept her child isn’t going to access any type of education because TAs aren’t paid enough?

I wouldn’t accept that for my child and I’d be horrified if any parent would.

Could you just answer the question then- would you work full time for £6000?

A permanent exclusion isn't inevitable unless you are assuming that the school will ignore its duties to seek other support for SEN and disabilities so as to keep that as an absolute last resort. Why, for instance, should the school not at least consider extending the child's time by, say, 30 minutes a day and so on until he is back full time? Why shouldn't it apply for funding for extra support to be in place now?

My advice is: evidence everything. Keep every email or letter. Follow up conversations with an email to confirm what was said. Get something in writing about what is happening now and the schools plan for his education - they should create a SEN plan even before the ECHP. They need to show what they are spending on his needs.
if possible get documents from his nursery’s (if you don’t already). Documenting why he was excluded and why on a reduced timetable.
Do see your GP - you want to be referred to a paediatrician.
Find out the local best support group for children with special needs - the National Autistic Society helpline might be able to help - you don’t need a diagnosis before reaching out to such organisations.
Do not let the school frighten you with tales of how bad the alternatives are - your son’s behaviour is him communicating. He has rights and the school is failing him.

I really feel for everyone in this situation. Your son, as he’s not in the correct childcare setting for his needs, you and your little ones, the classmates and the teaching staff. It’s impossibly difficult for you all.
I know your original question was whether the reduced timetable is legal or not but I’d be more concerned about what is the best way to move forward now.
I would 100% keep pressing the school for a meeting because it’s awful that they’re ignoring you.
Ideally, your son should be in a school suitable for his needs but other than that, a 1-1 at the very least but sadly he doesn’t go to Hogwarts and they can’t simply wave a magic wand to conjure up extra staff/resources/school spaces!
I would try to see the EHCP and the reduced timetable as a positive for the long run because it’s essential evidence for the school to prove his additional needs.
I worked with a child in reception who was similar to your son and trust me, we tried and tried to involve various agencies to show that he needed a ‘specialist’ school. One person came and observed him for a morning and whilst we were delighted he ‘frustratingly’ had a good morning for a change, the report said that he was more than able to manage in the class full time. He absolutely wasn’t 🙄
He moved to yr1 and then needed THREE support staff to ‘manage’ his behaviour and only at the end of yr1, was he given a place at a specialist school.
My point is, I don’t imagine the school are just twiddling their fingers and reducing his time table on a whim but these things can take months and months and months.
I would say a reduced timetable is better for him than another exclusion - maybe a permanent one - but on the other hand, if he’s permanently excluded then that would go in his favour too. It’s just not fair on him or the children or teaching staff to put him and others through that.
It’s an extremely difficult situation to manage and I’m sorry you’re in the thick of it

Then they should have applied for extra support long ago. Going for excluding a child from full time education in preference to providing support is clearly disablist.

A school which has cabinets on the wall that can be pulled down by 5 year olds and that are capable of hospitalising and killing pupils is a severely negligent school. You seem to be determined to catastrophise and paint this in the worst light without considering basic realities. As for the picture of hundreds of people being at risk from one 5 year old, that is simply absurd.

If OP's child was the unexploded bomb you depict, how do you account for the fact that the school allows him onto the premises at all? Why do you ignore the fact that the school doesn't need a diagnosis or an EHCP to apply for extra funding?

I’m not on trial at the stand. You seem to think me saying ‘no, I wouldn’t’ is a ‘gotcha’ but

1. i wouldn’t work full time 😂
2. without wishing to sound rude, my qualifications are such that I don’t need to consider it

Low paid work is an issue. I’m not sure where you’re getting £6000 from, though.

The notion that allowing adjustments for clearly disabled pupils leads to having to make adjustments for every pupils is clearly unfounded. The system clearly provides for support for schools to offer help for children who need it, but the school needs to do its part including applying for that support.

At any rate, the bad attempts to turn this into an ITV courtroom drama deflect from the point, which is that some posters here think this is a badly behaved child who as punishment for his poor behaviour needs to be kept away from the nice children and the poor teacher. Thankfully, the law does not agree.

Where on earth do you get the idea that TAs are paid £6K a year? That is why I said the school should be applying for extra interim funding, and should have applied for an EHC NA long ago. Who knows, if they had done so OP's child might have been in a specialist school by now in a small class with a good staff:pupil ratio and adequate therapeutic support.

I'm not exaggerating or demonising anybody - they're the OP's own words about what she has to do when her DS is at home.

That’s a no then- thanks. So you’d expect someone else to do it to support your child, but you wouldn’t do it yourself.

£6000 is the notional amount the school could be receiving per SEN child, once an EHCP is in place they could apply to the LA for top up funding which could then pay for a full time 121 if that is what is stated as being needed.

What's the relevance? No-one has suggested a TA should work full time for that wage.

Hold on, ‘fine being there all day’ does not equate to being too hyper, needing one to one support and getting destructive if he doesn’t get that level of attention!
That means he is absolutely NOT fine being there all day.
You are being totally unreasonable in your expectations of a mainstream school, and suggest they’re doing it ‘for their benefit and not his’ is offensive and totally misguided.
At the moment, for whatever reason, your very young child cannot cope with school.
Focus on his needs and you’ll see they don’t correlate with being in a class of children at school. That’s why he’s still part time.

So where’s the money tree that you expect to pay for this child’s 121 support?

They could notionally receive the £6000 for SEN, that won’t cover it. There is no EHCP in place, once there is they could absolutely apply for LA top up funding which then could cover it if it is stated as needed in the EHCP.

But the issue is not the cabinet, its the child ripping it off the wall. There is loads of potentially dangerous stuff in school buildings. People could be pushed down stairs, windows smashed, jabbed with pens/pencils, hit with heavy stuff, the list is endless. If kids won't behave within a reasonable range of expectations, then it's not the schools fault.

Once an EHCP is in place the LA has an absolute duty to secure all the support set out in the EHCP within five weeks of the EHCP being finalised. LAs that require schools to go through a process of applying for the required funds are breaking the law, but happily most don't.

OP, be careful with SENDIASS. Some are good, but too many repeat the LA’s unlawful policies and processes. IPSEA and SOSSEN are better sources of reliable information.

Funding doesn’t excuse schools acting unlawfully. As @Nominative explained, the school could request high needs top up funding now rather than waiting for an EHCP. The school could also have requested an EHCNA well before now.