Can we take our current TA to new school with DD? Any experience?

[Grey24]

Grateful for advice or experience of about moving schools and taking your current TA with you - is it possible? Where would I start?

My DD is at pre-school and has a great one-to-one TA who she trusts - and whose contract finishes in July. My DD starts reception in Sept probably at different school and will need this support. If we have to start new school with an unknown TA I am worried that the transition will not work. DD has ASD and would find everything changing and no trusted/known person to be too overwhelming. I think she'd refuse to go.

We are waiting for Statement at moment and are told it's likely they will fund one-to-one. In the meantime - given that term finishes in a few weeks - how would I go about arranging for the new school to employ our current TA? Or at least attempting this?
Does the LA officially employ the TA, or the school?
Can't find anyone at LA or new school who knows how to attempt this.

Grateful for any help or info - I hope you can understand what I'm asking, as not sure how to phrase it.

Hi both DD's took their TA's with them from primary to secondary. It was the LEA's suggestion with DD1 and we took it as read when DD2 moved. It was a village primary school and not the feeder school to the secondary.
So it can be done but we may have been very lucky.

From what I gather the statemented child gets a pot of money and the school uses it to comply with the statement.
Btw I may be very out of date with this.

Good luck

I think it's unlikely that the school would start the recruitment process until the statement is finalised and they know how many hours and the nature of the support needed. That may work in your favour in the sense that they will have a very limited amount of time to find someone given where we are in the academic year. You could present them with a ready-made solution .

On the other hand, because of changes in SEN funding, schools are having to fund the first £6000 worth of support and whilst officially schools are supposed to be getting more money in their budgets to cover it, the reality in my area (rural, fairly affluent) is that their budgets are being cut and many schools are reallocating TAs already on staff away from general classroom support to 1:1.

I think I'd try and talk to the school about this again and get a sense of whether they'd be looking to recruit externally or fill the position internally. If the former, a simple interview of your preferred person would tell them whether they could employ her or not. I don't think it's any more complicated than that for them.

Good luck!

Thank you both - that's all really helpful information.
No-one at the school, nor the people I spoke to at the LA seemed to know how to get things started - maybe because as you say, normally the specifics of the statement come first. Now I can approach the school again better informed.

Many thanks for your help!

Sorry, forgot to say - I am hugely relieved to hear that it might be possible to take TA with us - that could be crucial to keeping us all sane.

DD starts primary school in September her full time 1to1 statement was finalised in Feb. when the school heard the statement was likely to be issued they advertised for someone to support a y6 child till July and then DD from Sept. She didn't get 1to1 at playgroup till Feb. we were gutted as the playgroup ta is lovely but, in hindsight, we are now happy with the change and DD likes the new TA too. She doesnt have asd though, just a physical disability.

when we talked to school about it they would have considered takung on her present ta and putting the other ta onto general classroom duties, but we actually said no in the end.