Our chosen schools have refused to take DS - what now?

[QuestionsaboutDS]

DS (10) has HFA, and a full 20 hour statement, with a brilliant TA, who has transformed his school experience. He's expected to get all 5s and 6s in his SATs this summer.

Many thanks to the Special Needs Board posters who helped us get the statement - I honestly believe he wouldn't be able to write a word if it wasn't for his TA funded by that statement.

We looked at loads of schools and found one which we thought was just right - very caring SENCO department, medium sized, calm atmosphere, nice simple layout, and located somewhere where DH and I could drop DS off and pick him up for as long as was necessary. We visited and talked to SEN team at length.

We also put our local school as a back-up choice - but reluctantly because although it's a good school it's big and noisy.

I thought this was a simple case of crossing our fingers and hoping for the preferred option.

Local authority have just rung me to say that both schools have looked at his statement and said they won't take him because they can't keep him safe - I think they mean from fights/bullying. Local Authority SEN team are going to go back to our first choice with an offer of increased support to try and get them to change their minds, but asked if we had any other suggestions. Off the top of my head I couldn't think of anything, but I need to make a list of options and get back to them.

I can only think of:

The brand new academy at the other end of the borough - untested and a nightmare commute but aims to have an ASD capability. I guess we need to go and talk to them - stupid of us not to do it earlier. We might get transport help, and the advantage of it being new is that it will be smaller.

Private? but behaviour would still be a problem - more so in fact. WE might be able to come to an arrangement with the local authority whereby we pay the fees and they pay for a TA, or something similar. One option would be to do a 10+ application to an academically strong school to retake year 6 - he's a summer baby and emotionally/behaviourally immature, so this might give him more of a chance to fit in. But we're really late for this.

Special school. I honestly don't think this is an option in our local special schools - he's way ahead of the rest of the class academically in his mainstream primary.

Home ed. I don't think I'm capable of this - I struggle enough with homework supervision, and I really don't want to quit my job.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance, but actually just typing it out has helped me think a lot. We're in South London but anywhere central would be an option.

However in DS's case both schools have specifically said they're too big to be suitable for him.

Well that is excellent if you have that in writing, and a good basis for the argument.

in my experience, small classes don't come into it at all at Tribunal - or even when the experts start to weigh up what a child needs. It's not about inverted snobbery but more about what else a DC needs by way of quantified and specified provision.

My DS was originally in a MS setting of just 15 pupils and couldn't cope (his school said in writing that this was too big for him). The LA tried to put him into MS setting placement with 30 children. The Tribunal didn't even comment on this. Instead, my DS's new placement was based on what the LA could (or couldn't) provide by way of q&s help, therapy, specialist teaching. The fact that my tribunal "win" resulted with him being now in a tiny tiny class was irrelevant to the tribunal.

Haven't seen their written response to the LA yet - this is just based on what LA rep told me on the phone.

I've talked to two plausible looking private SEN schools today, and left a message for School 1's SENCO, but he hasn't replied. I'll ring the new academy tomorrow and send copies of DS's statement to the private schools to get the process underway.

Interesting seeing the experiences on small class size etc.

star it would be a fair point EXCEPT if the evidence is clear that it is a small number of students in the classroom that is required. I would still suggest plenty of parental references to the state schools that they went to and the state schools that their other kids attend or attended.

Good luck with the search question