Unauthorised school absence due to missing taxi

[ILikeToastt]

My DS attends a SEN school 40 minutes away from us. He was placed there by the LA (i didnt get much of a say where he went) so we rely on school transport to get him there and back as wouldnt be possible otherwise.
DS has a dental appointment tomorrow morning over 1 hour in the oposite direction from the school which I have managed to get a lift to but I cant get a lift to drop him back at his school over an hour away from the dentist and then 40 minutes back to my home.

I informed the school of this and they said the morning session will be authorised for his appointment but not the afternoon. That will be marked as unauthorised.

It seems unfair as I can't help not being able to get him to school so far away when I didn't even select that school for him to attend.

DS will have a lot of appointments coming up so I'm concerned that he's going to end up with a lot of unauthorised absences due to this and that the LA will end up issuing a fine!

Does anyone else have any experience of this?

Some appointments are difficult to rearrange and should be authorised. The school are authorising the appointment, it seems, but not the rest of the day.

Would it be possible to plan dentist appointments for holiday time?

I think the appointments themselves will be authorised, but they will expect that he’s back in school afterwards, depending on the time, of course.

From now on I'll try to get as many appointments out of term time but its not always that straight forward especially when the appointments are already far away from where we live then we have to travel twice as far in the oposite direction to get back to school.

It might not be possible depending on your finances, but would paying for a taxi be possible?

No not at all affordable for me, just for him to attend an extra 2 hours in the afternoon. It's crazy in my opinion. It's not like live in the same town as the school and could get him there fairly easily. It's not even possible to get him there from where I live via public transport. I feel they should just authorise the whole day off as its not like I can get him there but am choosing not to.