What if you just don't know.......

[Mrsmoneyworries]

........what school your child should go to.

I'm due to meet with LA, as they'd like my suggestions of schools that DS should go to. His last placement failed so he's been out of school for all year 7.

They're naming a specific school, that's already caused problems for him and we refused his place there.

We genuinely don't know where we want him to go.

He hates (with a passion) standing out, yet is also adamant he won't go to a Special School, which we don't think would suit him anyway. Unless the children were very similar to him.

Help! What do we do?!

I don't know either. I wanted someone to tell me but it was my choice. In the end the LA do seem to make the choices when nothing looks clear. In the end it was their choice. Let's hope it's for the best

Why not take a step backwards:

Work out with your ds the requirements for a school without naming first any school.

For ds1 this was:

Small class sizes
Staff that understood his social communication difficulties and who could adapt
Staff that could recognise his anxiety and had the flexibility to make adaptions to reduce it.
A similar peer group
A full range of academic subjects
Direct teaching of social communication / anger management / anxiety management.
A school that could cope with challenging behaviour and keep him safe.

When we made this list it became clear for us that a school specializing in AS/ASD was the best fit. Not saying it was a perfect fit but the least worse. You may come out with a different option depending on your ds's profile. I think our feeling was that it was easier to add in academic stuff to a special school but much harder to overcome the social problems /anxiety that he found in mainstream. We also visited several special schools to find one that was a good fit for him. A couple were eliminated straight away but we were lucky that there was a choice of 2 or 3 that would have done.

A lot of the refusal to consider a special school may be because it is an unknown quantity so visiting one might reassure him.

I'm in a big LA who are not SEN friendly - but when things break down and you have a reasonable case worker the LA can be helpful.

Have a good look around at state and indi. My friend did this and then the LA did some of the leg work, seeing where would not work. In the end that only left one place that my friend had ruled out. It think it should be a happy ending. Depends on your case officer obviously.

Oh my word.......... I've had a nightmare logging back on (had to change passwords etc)

Anyway, thank you for the great advice. I will take it on board. I've not seen many posts like this, so was worried I was being a bit strange by not knowing.

I will try to see what he would benefit from and take it from there - great suggestion.

Remember when you're considering schools that, no matter what the LA may tell you, you are perfectly entitled to nominate schools in other boroughs and independent schools.

Yes, and they will pay and place at a indi if that's the best fit without much pressure needed by you. Seen it a fair few times here.

I'm in top five worse LAs for SEN appeals, tells you something

I'll take that into consideration too. I'm due to meet with them next week. I'm not planning on doing much talking. I'm planning on just listening and coming away to think about what they propose.