Why would you choose an academy school for a child with SEN ...

[AugustaFinkNottle]

... if they can just decide to bus them out again?

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/29/academy-trust-accused-of-discrimination-over-moving-disabled-pupils-dean-trust

Quote:

"An academy trust has been accused of segregating disabled pupils after announcing that it would bus children with special educational needs and disabilities from a well-performing school to a worse school because of limited resources.

The Dean Trust, which runs schools in Trafford, Cheshire and Liverpool, has informed parents of children with special needs who are due to start at Ashton-on-Mersey school in September that, because of “limited resources”, their children will attend lessons at the undersubscribed Broadoak school in Partington, six miles away.*

The DfE is reported to be "in discussions" with the academy trust. Why can't Nicky Morgan summon the moral courage to say this sort of conduct is totally unacceptable?

If they said 'because of pressure on resources we are going to send all the black children to another school' then who could miss how discriminating this is?

I know some people have had amazing success with academies.

I'm having a massive headache and heartache. They do think they above the law. I'm spending this week acting as LSA to DS for 10 hours approx of Sen provision. He gets 30 minutes 1:1 a week at school.they call it home learning and offer after school tuition.

I believe it all goes against the equalities act but la's do t want to get involved because it's harder for them to fight academies than state schools. They suggest transferring a child to state school as if there's a million spaces just waiting to be filled at schools all within travelling distance.

I agree with zzzzz that moving a child to somewhere they can get better inout isn't totally a bad idea but their attitude to ms v Sen is horrific. Also that they are taking funding that comes with EHCP and then using it to fund transport rather than directly teaching to meet need.

I would hope that this plan actually involves transport to school they are using for a full days education there rather than time spent doing back and forth for various different parts of the day or curriculum iyswim?

The point is, though, that if the resources aren't available in that school they had no business telling the LA that they could meet the child's needs. How do they know that their associated school would be the parents' second choice if they couldn't have a place at Ashton on Mersey? The parents should, at the very least, have been asked.

The school has the right to demand top up from the LA for EHCPs (and even without EHCP if there is SEN that needs extra resources) However, with the delegated funding there has been a big drop in the Pot which these very popular schools receive for children with EHCPs, and if you remember that now the schools are told they have the money already allocated in form of delegated funding, they have to go through all sorts of hoops to GET the top up funding. It can take many months or years for the school to prove it needs extra resources and for the council to actually provide it with the money.

It is now illegal for academies to refuse children with EHCP's if the parents name that school, and there is no obvious reason why it is an unsuitable placement. So obviously the "outstanding" academies will get all the children whose parents would historically have wanted the best for them. If your child has an EHCP and you asked to name a good or an outstanding school, a school which has no particular track record or a school which is known locally for its provision, which would you pick?

In a sense the school becomes a victim of its own success, too many applications, and then they really cannot provide the resources, for the reasons I've outlined above, since 2014 the funding on EHCP is assumed to be delegated, and the bulk doesn't come with the child anymore.

I agree that the answer is for all schools in the area to have a good reputation for SEN but how do you achieve that? Pump extra funds into the schools which receive less applications? Change the law on parents' choice of school? Give pep talks to parents in advance explaining why the obvious choice is not the obvious choice?

I've been through all this; in our case the school didn't want us without extra money, which the LA wouldn't provide. They were completely full and had many children with EHCPs and additional needs (which is why we chose them, that and the Outstanding) It was a game of cat and mouse, playing out the legal implications that the school could not turn us down and had to provide the resources outlined in EHCP, with or without the money. Council was very keen not to have this battle and persuade us to go to another school, but I can see how difficult it is for the school, and by extension for the council, when parents are set on a particular school which is completely oversubscribed with SEN.

The school Dd3 was an academy, in our very last meeting the arrogant HT said "We take children with SEND that no other school will take!" And yet this yr they have said they are at saturation point and have refused a number of children even 2 that I know of with EHPC's!

I think as someone said earlier other HT's have been recommending the school to families when in actual fact they are not able to meet the needs of the children, although they would never admit that in our case.

I feel really sorry for those families who are being told that the school they want can be named on the EHCP but they cant actually go there! Thats just wrong

Okay, so there are two schools A and B, A is oversubscribed and B is undersubscribed. They are jointly managed and between them do have the resources to meet the needs of the children but to do so resources allocated to school B must be transferred to school A. Why does this transfer have to require moving the SEN pupils? A few classes or a year group of pupils could be bussed to school B. That would free up resources at school A so they could then meet their obligations to all their pupils. Or, given they are trying to get round things by saying the SEN pupils are still at school A, couldn't they do something similar with school Bs staff (and save on transport costs)?

It is illegal for the school to say they cannot meet the needs of SEN children, even if it requires considerable extra resources from the LA. The burden of proof is on the school not the parent, although the responsibility rests with the LA. There is a court case on IPSEA to this effect. Even when a child is severely disabled, on P scales for example in secondary, it is still considered the right of the parent to request a place in a mainstream school; if the school has to make accommodations, extra staff, extra equipment, different methods of including them. This is the theory; I'm not saying that in practice this is always the way that a school would present it to a less informed parent, there might be all sorts of ways a different placement would be presented as a better "choice".

But legally the parent has to right to name a maintained [state]mainstream or academy unless it affects the education of the other children (because they haven't put the resources in) and is an unreasonable use of resources, and the LA and school have the burden of proof in this not the parent.

That was in answer to "Ineed".

But knitting no one is stopping them from doing pretty much whatever they want! Thats the bottom line, there is no accountability and the handful of parents who complain and fight the system are not getting their voices heard!

I think the school's response would be that it is up to the LA to provide more resources if it wants to keep those children on site. The responsibility is with the LA to provide the resources if there is a shortfall.

The parents in question would need to find out what resources are missing, ie: what the budget shortfall is that means the school has to bus the children to the undersubscribed school. An individual parent could say, my child's needs are not being met on this EHCP (ie stress of extra transport, wrong environment, less teaching time) and threaten JR on the LA for not giving the school the extra money. But the school would have to say to the LA before this that it needed extra money, for that individual child, if that was the reason for not making the provision on the EHCP.

The school obviously feel they do not have resources. Who is to blame LA or school? I wonder whether school are trying to throw the spotlight back on the LA and get them to come up with more money.

I think it needs a whole group of parents to stand together and make a noise which is what seems to be happening here! I hope they get heard and things get sorted out for their children.

Recent update: Manchester Evening News reports that parents have launched a legal challenge via solicitors, formal pre-action letter to the school threatening JR.

Good for them!

No, it's not illegal for a school to say that it cannot meet a child's needs. It happens quite regularly that mainstream schools tell parents and LAs that that is the case, and generally it leads to the child in question being moved to a specialist unit or special school.

However, it is true to say that it can only refuse to take a child with SEN if it can prove that doing so would prejudice the efficient education of other children and that there are no adjustments it can make to counteract that prejudice. There have been cases (e.g. one involving Harrow a couple of years ago) where schools and LAs have succeeded in that argument.

However, there is no suggestion in this case that the school told the LA that it couldn't take the children in question (and I strongly suspect they'd have said so if that was the case), so the point seems to be academic.

Good news about the JR - Simpson Millar know what they're doing with these issues.

I do think schools will say that they cannot meet the needs though, when in point of law they could make "reasonable" adjustments if the LA just gave them the money. The school however knows that it will be a battle to get the money off the LA, so they will "suggest" to parents that the placement isn't suitable, implying that child will be much happier elsewhere. Why would you force the issue when a school isn't happy for your child to attend - most parents would feel at that point that another placement would be more suitable. I think you have to be pretty determined to want your child to go to a school when you are told their needs aren't going to be met, and various professionals imply that their needs would be met elsewhere.

I think it is only when a specialist school seems completely unsuitable, if the council are recommending that specialist school, that parents start fighting for "reasonable" adjustments in mainstream.

I wish some teachers, or Sencos would come on these threads occasionally and give their point of view!!!

I think you're absolutely right, nettles. However, in this case the school and academy trust aren't saying that the children's needs can't be met in the mainstream, they're saying they can't be met in their shiny popular mainstream school, only in the undersubscribed one with the already fairly poor results.

But they can't validly do that if the resources are in a totally different school, and if, as appears to be the case, they're also putting them into mainstream classes into that school. If the parents wanted their children in that school, no doubt they would have said so. The chances are that if they couldn't have their first choice of school, their second choice would be somewhere completely different.