EHCP and ABA advice

[amunt]

I’m just filling in the EHCP request form and I know inclusion of ABA funding is nigh on impossible in Herts. I probably wouldn’t pursue it were it not for fact that it seems difficult to argue against it in Ds’ case. He started reception this year and makes zero, absolutely zero academic progress. That’s not their fault, but they can’t get a handle on his behaviour and they won’t be able to in the near/mid future. But with his ABA he learns very fast academically. If he were tested on what had been taught at school in a given week, it would be nothing and if he were tested on what he had been taught via his ABA in the same week he could demonstrate significant new skills and knowledge. I know they could dismiss this, but I’m not sure how.
Any advice on whether go into the progress made by ABA straight away in the application request or whether hold back a bit until the draft plan? I’m pretty sure we won’t get any ABA funding, but I think they should account for themselves when there doesn’t seem to be a viable alternative.

Thanks

I wouldn't go into detail as there is a chance the school will pretend they have been working on same things. LAs will always use the 'how do you know its the aba and not what school is doing / natural dev' argument. What we did is agree very specific iep targets for nursery and deliberately did not work on those targets in aba - and was able to show no progress. we then worked on diff targets in aba and showed progress in those. More than that we were able to show he didn't learn anything incidentally - the only skills he gained were the ones we targeted in aba, he hadn't shown any ability in these skills until we started targeting them - so we were able to show very clear correlation between starting working on a skill and that skill emerging.

I would stick to a general statement about not making appropriate progress in school but making good progress in aba, but keep the detail to yourself until much nearer the tribunal date and once you have done FOI of school / outreach etc file to show what (if anything) they worked on.

usually schools don't provide any detail of progress - just levels - and they often exaggerate levels to claim progress even where there hasn't been any

Brilliant, thanks AgnesDiPesto. That's exactly what I was thinking. He doesn't learn anything incidentally either, so if we don't work on the school targets he won't show any improvement in those areas.