Having a bit of a battle of wills with the man from the LEA!
J is 10 and has AS. He should be in year 6. He left his previous MS primary in May last year, and has been receiving home tution (5 hours a week) since.
He left his previous school as his AS related problems had become so bad that they could no longer manage him. He has big problems with new places, people (new and old!), noise, obsessions, need for routine etc etc ect! His is also very anxious and has big problems with violence and aggression. My opinion is that he can only be managed in a MS enviroment with full time 1:1 support, with a further person available for 1:2 when problems arise. Anything less would be a H&S risk for him and others.
Bearing in mind he is in year 6, so only has 6 months left at primary, it is my view that he should continue with his home tution until the summer, ie the rest of this school year when it will be time to go to secondary. We have a great chap from CAMHS working with him who agrees with me, and wants to work with J and his new secondary between now and Sept to help with the transition. J is going to find the transition extemely difficult, and it is going to take months of careful integration, probably most of year 7 before he begins to feel comfortable with a new school, and achieves anything useful accademically (he's very bright).
Unfortunately the funding for J's home tuition has just reached the 6 months point which means it changes hands from one department of the LEA to another. The LEA are now stating that J needs to return to school this year, as it is not in his interest to stay on home tution for an extended period (nothing to do with the money apparently!).
My agrgument is that it would be seriously unfair to put him through such a major transition for such a short amount of time, and that it would take him months and months to settle into school (he would seriously need to start for an hour a day and work up from there) and to acheive anything useful academically from this. Also if the transition was not sucessful it would jeapordise any chance of getting him to secondary in september.
The LEA say that he needs the socialisation from school, and that secondary need to see what challenges he presents with at primary to effectively integrate him to secondary (the fact they already have 6 years of records of his challening behaviour at primary seems to count for nothing!!) - and it has nothing to do with the money!!!!
Anyway the LEA are now asking me to 'name' a new primary school of J's statement, which I have refused to do, this appears to have thrown a bit of a spanner in the works!! I can see where the LEA are coming from and if J wasn't in year 6 I would agree, but there's absolutely no way I am putting him though so much distress, for something from which I can see no gain.