What are the stages of appeal against an SEN school placement named in a final statement

[lisaross]

Does anyone know what the stages are for appeal against a special educational needs secondary school placement. We have a school named in part 4 of the final statement that we are refusing to let our son attend as what we saw there on our visit could only be described as disgusting. We will be putting in appeal papers against this decision but the education authority will not tell me what is the next step if we loose the appeal tribunal. Can we appeal for a second time. Does it go higher to a legal court/ european court of human rights eventually etc. Any advise would be good.

If you lost the Tribunal appeal you could theoretically (and assuming you had the ability to pay the substantial legal fees) take it to a higher court.

What you have to prove at Tribunal is that the special school the LA is proposing cannot meet your son's needs. It's as simple as that. It's not sufficient to say it's disgusting or that another school would be better for him. As long as the school propsed by the LA can meet his needs then he'll be expected to go there.

So what you need to do is to ensure that Part 2 of the Statement lists all his difficulties and Part 3 descrobes adequate support to assist all the difficulties stated in Part 2.

Yoy may want to obtain private reports. These will almost certainly state that he needs a greater level of support than the reports that were done by the LA, school and LA's own Ed Pysch. Once you have these private reports that detail higher level of support you have a greater chance of prooving that the proposed school cannot meet these needs - something which you'll argue at Tribunal.

Best wishes

If you lose your Tribunal, you can appeal to the Upper Tribunal, but only on a point of law, e.g. if you felt the panel had misinterpreted a legal point or if an anomaly occurred, such as one of your witnesses being unable to make the hearing.

It wouldn't be a re-hearing of the whole case, and it's relatively rare for cases to go to the Upper Tribunal. So it's in your best interests to put together a strong case for the first SEND Tribunal.

Is the school named in Part 4 a mainstream or special school? What kind of school did you name as your preference and what reasons did the LA give for turning that down?

I agree with getting private reports done.
Our LEA wanted us to look at 3 other independent special schools instead of our preferred choice.
We wanted to like them as they were day(ours is boarding) and to 19yrs BUT the peer groups were not right and the specialism(?) of the schools were not right.All the reports identified this and the LEA agreed in the end.
It was tough but we got the right provision.
SEND WEBSITE will tell you what can happen if you don`t agree with decision
Good luck