Appeal content or wait for AR?

[Idratherbebaking]

My dh and I have been to visit a secondary school, with a view to naming them on our ds's statement for his transition next year. From what we saw and discussed, it's perfect for ds and coincidentally, is the school he desperately wants to go to. They have a really good LS department and lots of support available, plus the whole ethos of the school seems to fit with ds very well.

We have recently obtained a statement for him, but were intending to appeal the content of parts 2 and 3. The statement as it stands is pretty fuzzy. It has all the needs and provision there, but is not tight at all, in that it's not quantified and is very wordy and non specific in quite a few areas.

We were just about to send our appeal documents in, but are now questioning ourselves, as the school said they have other children with similar SENs, who have done very well at the school, but have never had a child with ds's needs with a statement before. The others have all been supported at SA+. They do have several statemented children in each year, but for different SENs.

The reason we are questioning going to appeal is because they couldn't say whether or not they would be able to accept him until we have named them and they have been sent a copy of his statement by the LEA. We have been told that the way we want the statement quantified makes ds very unattractive admissions-wise, as it is very specific and tight, leaving schools little room for manoeuvre. It's not a high needs statement. Ds doesn't need a lot of academic support, but will need a good amount of pastoral and organisational support, which the school is set up to provide easily, without a statement. I now think, having visited the school and met key SEN staff, that they are experienced and resourced well enough for them to be able to sensibly support him without needing a very tight statement to channel precisely how the support is put in place.

I am concerned that if we press ahead with quantifying the statement, they won't give him a place, as it would mean they would have to do things differently for ds than they do for all the other children with similar SENs, in terms of support that they are already set-up for, experienced in carrying out and have used successfully with other similar children. I do think that they way they work would suit ds, as long as they were very careful about how he is transitioned and from what they told me their transition process is very well organised, led by the individual pupil's needs and sounds like it would probably work for ds.

If they turn him down on the basis of the tightness of the statement, effectively we will have done ds a disservice, because without a statement, he would automatically get a place in the school by virtue of our address and the feeder school he currently attends.

If we leave the statement as is, with all the support he needs in there, but a lot of flexibility on how the school deploys that support, can we tighten up the wording at his transition year annual review? The secondary said they always attend transitional ARs to make sure they can get things set up properly for each statemented pupil, so we are now thinking that as long as we can all work together at AR, hopefully we can come up with a tighter statement at that point, working with what this school can offer to suit ds, based on their experience and facilities and the knowledge of his needs that will come from his current primary and ourselves.

Would we be crazy to not appeal at this point? It's a bit confusing really. Things are so different at secondary to primary and we hadn't expected them to be so well set up to support ds, which is why we wanted the statement tightened up in the first place, to make sure he was well supported wherever he ended up. He doesn't really need it tightened up for primary, they manage him quite well, he is used to the school and systems and they were going to be working with the statement in it's current form for the first half of his final year anyway while we wait for our appeal date, so didn't intend to change how they support ds unless we won at appeal and the statement changed.

Ooh, that's a tricky one. I would usually recommend that you make the statement as tight as possible to be sure that the school won't drop support once they feel your DS is 'managing.' I think they are being a bit 'clever' telling you that a tighter statement would make your DS 'unattractive' to them. They would generally have to have a pretty good reason not to take him, especially if it is his local, catchment school anyway. Sounds like an empty threat, to me. I assume you aren't wanting the statement to only fit a SS, so some MS school will have to take him, and the LA would usually want that to be one with the least transport costs.

Can your rewrite of the statement incorporate some of the support that the potential school would provide anyway? If you are happy with and trust this school to support your DS suitably can you compromise with your changes to reflect this? Still get it quantified and specified but flexible enough to ensure your DS gets good support within the school's current systems without that being whittled away in the future.

If the Statement is woolly and vaugue it's not worth the paper it's written on as it leave so many loopholes for school to exploit.

Only support that is written in the Statement must be delivered - without explicit support stated school can do what it wants.

Your fears about the school refusing to admit him are almost certainly unfounded. Schools cannot discrimminate on the grounds of SENs or because a child has a Statement - they can only refuse to admit him if they cannot meet his needs - and this would be exceptionally rare as mainstream school is the default setting for any child with a Statement. Also, you will have the LA on your side as they will be very keen to see him in an ordinary mainstream setting that you agree with.

I would certainly get the Statement quantified etc. Schools promise much but don't always deliver. The reason they are trying to sway you against going for a tighter Statement is that it will cost them some money to provide the support that a tighter Statement will have to be delivered - by law. Much easier for school to say - Don't worry, trust us. You then have to hope school will actually deliver. A change of Head or a reduction in school budgets and help can suddenly disappear - which it couldn't if it's firmly written into a Statement.

What Wet said in its entireity.

Itsd a big leap from primary to secondary. A statement also provides your son with a degree of legal protection with regards to his education, he would not get that if a statement was not in place.

Would appeal any statement document that has woolly worded provision; a poorly worded statement is not worth the paper it is written on. Parts 2 and 3 are the most important bits of the whole thing; it needs to be right and right before he starts Year 7.

Support in a statement should be both specified and quantified. If it is not it should be appealed against.

LEAs know the law most certainly so they have no excuse. Some LEAs do try and dodge their statutory responsibilities.

It wasn't the secondary that said the statement would make him unattractive in terms of admissions. We have been told that by a couple of people, but not the school.

What the secondary said was that they only take 3-4 children with statements per intake and it would depend on whether or not they felt they could meet the statemented provision as to whether they would take him. I took that to mean they would find a way to turn down some if 'too many' statemented children applied in one year. He did mention that they have one year with 9 statemented children in though, so thinking about it the 3-4 a year could be because there aren't that many children with statements in the first place, as our LEA isn't keen to issue them so only those who's parents are willing to fight will have one. He did say that they have quite a few children with similar SENs to ds on SA+.

Thank you for your responses, what you are saying makes a lot of sense. I like EllenJane's idea of bearing in mind what provision is available at that secondary when rewriting for the appeal.

Can anyone tell me what levels of statemented children would be expected in a 8 form secondary school (1200 pupils)?

So that just shows that having a tight Statement would not be a problem for the school.

The people telling you not to seek a tighter Statement would (let me guess) be connected with the LA? Hmm.

You should not base your appeal on what's available at the school you wish him to attend. You should base it on the level of support he actually needs.

Look at Part 2 of the proposed Statement - does it adequately describe his difficulties - if not get Part 2 amended.

Then look at Part 3. For every diffiiculty stated in Part 2 is there quantified specific support to address the difficulty. If not then try to think what he may need - you know your son better than anyone else.

Unless he has severe SNs (which it appears he does not have) he will be educated in mainstream and any school you choose will be able to meet his needs and will not refuse to admit him. It's that clear cut.

Don't let this imaginary fear of him being refused a place at this school stop you from ensuring he has adequte support specified in the Statement that must be delivered by law.

The support he needs wouldn't be changed by me considering what the school has to offer. There's no way we would compromise on getting the level of support that he needs, obviously that's the point of the statement. What I mean is that before starting to visit secondaries we didn't have a clear idea of what's out there or could be done to support ds, so we wanted to be very specific about how things should be put in place to support him, with no wiggle room for the provider/school.

I think the end result of the amount of and type of support he would get would be the same as we'd hoped for, but resources would be used in a slightly different way, which we had not considered prior to visiting secondaries and seeing how they work. If we went ahead and specifed as tightly as we had been intending (based on not knowing where he was going and what was on offer) we would actually be limiting what they could do to support him in some ways, as it would be insisting things be done 'our way', whereas having visited a couple of schools, we can now see that things would/could work just as well for ds if done by their tried and tested route.

I think we will go ahead with our appeal, still try and get the statement specified and quantified, but look at it with fresh eyes, based on what we have seen actually working for other similar children in secondaries, rather than assuming that things could only work 'our way'. Hopefully we will then come out of it with the best of both worlds, ie, a tight statement that is suitably specified and quantified, but would/could work properly meet ds's needs within the type of secondary set-up that we are now clear we would like him to attend, eg the school we want to name.

It is reassuring to know that they would find it hard to turn ds down anyway, as there is no doubt that he needs to be in mainstream education, the school we want happens to be our local catchment school and he doesn't have a high level of need.