Private schools for SEN ?

[Looby4]

We've got an 8 year old daughter with Asperger Syndrome. We've had considerable trouble in getting her school to make provision for her, so we have started on the letter to make the request for a statutory assessment for SEN ourselves at the recommendation of her consultants.

Here's my question - if you are on School Action Plus (on waiting lists for Council's Ed Psych, SLT, and ABA Tutor) at a state school but leave for a private school, are you entitled to the same help and intervention at the private school e.g. would they come in just the same as at a state school, or is it considered that you have opted out of the system?

At the moment we plan to make the Statutory Request, but in the proposed private school I think the provision there will be adequate, so perhaps no need for a statement.

Thanks

You can get a statement of SEN in a private school, but if anything this is even harder to get than in a state school

Alternatively in your statement request, you cna argue that state provision not suitable and fight for a place in a private school. Tough and a lot of work but feasible technically.

It may depend where you are. Certainly in the LEA I had most to do with, children in private schools generally did not get statements or access to advisory teachers / ed psychs. The only occasions where they did was if the child already had a statement in place and local state provision was not suitable. They were then offered places in schools out of county. On occasion, these were private schools.

Incidentally, I'm not convinced that many private schools are that geared up for children with SEN. Of course, some may be, but don't assume that they will be more willing / able / skilled in dealing with children with SEN. This is especially true if they do not have access to LEA training or support teachers. It might be worth while looking around at other state schools to see if there is one in the area which might be more proactive in helping your DD.

More and more specialist SEN schools opening thoguh to deal with state shortfall.

Lobby sorry to hijack but was going to ask a simiular question about independant schools. DS is 9 with AS. He is in mainstream and has a statement. School are NOT coping with him (only there 3 hours aday, lots of exclusions, always out of class). He was ment to be going to a special school for HFA locally in september but this has fallen through. The only other option locally is an EBD (behavioural difficulties school), which is not a suitable placement for DS. I have been doing some research and have found two great looking independant residential schools both within about 30 miles of us - both of which cater specifically for AS. Am I entitled to ask the LEA to send him to one of these, as they are unable to provide him with anything suitable?

Check your LEA policy , ours basically washes its hands of offering any Learning Support if you choose to go private. You could try to prove you have no viable state alternatives and ask for funding but that seems to be pretty rare. Statements in private schools are relatively meaningless, if you look at theri roeprts you'll see a very low figure but there may well actually be more under the Learning Support team than shown, and you may find you have to pay yourself for the one to one and any assessments unless you can go via gp.

I'm having a real dilemmma at the moment as we seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place as far as ds is concerned. getting beyond the basic assessment and intermittent OT on nhs is proving a battle and we are losing so much time in the interim

This is a very brief message but I recently took our LEA to a sendist tribunal about exactly this issue, for my child to receive the same funding in an independent school as he would in the state system, and got the LEa to agree. I will look for my old thread and post more info tommorrow. Apparently a similar case was won in Coventry last year which set a precedent for mine.

Hi Gaia,
I am very interested to hear of your case as that is exactly what we want. My 3year old DS will need extra support as he has CP but we are really struggling to a) find a private school that will take him, and b) get any decent info (from anywhere and I've looked in all the usual places) about getting all the support that he would get in the state system transferred to him in the private system. We had almost given up so I would really appreciate some of your info. How much support does your DC get and in what areas, i.e. does he get LSA, OT, Physio, Psych, equipment, etc. We would need all of these (and probably more) oh yes SALT (ha ha).
He has a current statement that provides all of these things at his Montessori (private) nursery.

Sarah - yes. If he has a statement then you can get part 4 changed - name of school BUT for an independent school it is up to YOU to prove that the state provision is not meeting his needs. You will need time to do this and collect evidence. You will undoubtably have to go to tribunal and be prepared for a long battle. You will also need to commission independent reports from specialists which will cost money.

Remember that most independents are expensive - the Priory ones are around £60,000 a year. Grately and Southlands are over £110,000 a year. For an LEA they would then be spending half a million pounds on one child's education. There are some such as St Dominic's which are much cheaper.

I recommend you phone IPSEA or SOS SEN for advice first. SOS SEN run training courses which are very good.

All the best.

Sorry it's taken so long to get back to this thread.My son attends a private school and the lea have agreed to fund his statement in that school, so eg his statement says 4 hrs one to one per day they will fund that. I took them to tribunal but actually the day before the lea rep had a meeting with me where they agreed to do this. As it turns out there was another similar case last year which the parents won. We did not ask for school fees to be paid, so all they are paying is what they would have to pay in the state sector and it's all carefully worded so there's no chance of them being landed with school fees. Provision such as speech therapy and occupational therapy is exactly the same, as are the ed psych and cdc involvement.But there are some lea services my son isn't automatically entitled to and we need to negotiate getting these. It is entirely possible that the lea will say you've opted out tough luck but they aren't allowed to do that. Looby I would go for the statement because they take a long time to come through and you keep your options open, also any good school will want to see it to know if they can meet your child's needs. Sarah, all nhs provision is the same no matter what school. He has salt, ed psych and will have ot when the waiting list reaches him. He also has an lsa. While waiting for the tribunal we self funded his lsa so there were obviously financial implications there. I did find a site which specifically rated private schools according to their suitability for special needs children, will try to refind it. We got help through ipsea who were brilliant but very hard to get through to and didn't get any private reports. I spent many hours reading previous tribunal decisions, and parental choice for school placement should be respected unless it is too expensive and there is a suitable state alternative. Our school was no more expensive since all we wanted was the same money we would have got in the state sector and there were some specific reasons why the school we picked met his needs best. So I knew we'd win at tribunal but it was still very stressful. Let me know if you need more info.