No school place for September

[Violet22]

So my son, year 7, has been at a special school this year after mainstream primary. It hasn't worked. Was not our first choice, was what we were left with this time last year.

It's gone from bad to worse. The school have told us to look for something else as it's not working. He wants to be in mainstream, the school don't let him walk down the corridor alone, when at home he walks to the shop alone. He feels it is too babyish. He is the most capable there, but he is low academically for mainstream.

After a lot of to and fro-ing and the LA not being able to find paperwork that the school swore they sent we got some consultations done, and the 15 day deadline for schools to respond was last Friday. We have had two responses both negative.

His current school are quite set on him finishing next week. The head has told him he won't be there next year. They are independent and not on the section 41 list so I think they are under no obligation to keep him am I right? I don't want him to go back there so I am hoping the LA can't send him back.

When I finally managed to contact LEA, after a couple of days of trying they said they will chase the other schools on Monday. If they say no what are my options? They are mainstream schools. Will I have to send him back in September?

As an independent school, they can serve notice.

Unless the independent mainstreams are wholly independent, the LA doesn’t need them to agree to being named. They can be named even if they object,

When was your review? Is the LA sticking to the timescales?

Have you emailed the LA asking how they intend to provide a full-time education and anything detailed, specified and quantified in F come September?

The annual review was in end of April. The school then took a while to send paperwork, and then the LA said they didn't receive it despite school saying they had sent it. Probably ,LA have kept to their time scale from when they say they have received paperwork but was a bit of a while to get paperwork and I 'm not sure whether school's fault or LA.

This week LA have been pretty unresponsive in emails and calls, but I will speak to them on Monday I hope. I really don't want to send him back to the school in September. We are waiting on two more schools to respond.

If the AR was the end of April, it has already been the 12 weeks or will be in the next couple of days. If the 12 weeks have already passed, you should send the Director of Children’s Services the relevant model letter from IPSEA’s website. The paperwork delay is irrelevant to the timescales.

Ok I will look at that. Thanks. Not sure of the 12 week timescale, I thought 4 weeks from annual review to deciding whether to update EHCP.

The LA must inform you if they are going to amend or not within 4 weeks of the AR. If they are going to amend, they must send you the amendment notice at the same time. They must then finalise within a further 8 weeks. Taking you to a maximum of 12 weeks (but quicker if the LA informed you they were going to amend before 4 weeks).

If the LA has consulted schools, they have presumably already informed you they are going to amend, sent the amendment notice and given you the opportunity to make representations and state your preferred placement. So the 4 week timescale is no longer relevant.

They consulted before amending, they did ask me first but we needed to get consultation done as we were getting close to end of term.

In that case you need to chase the LA about that.

You wouldn’t have been close to the end of term if the LA had followed the timescales. There would still have been time to consult if the had informed you within 4 weeks of the AR, given you 15 days to make representations then consulted.