No place at the 2 local special schools

[nappyaddict]

Is it right that you cannot put your child's name down for a special school place without a statement? This is what we were told and his proposed statement came through today. Have rung up both local special schools and they are already full for September. Do they have admissions deadlines like mainstream schools and if so were we told false information about waiting for the statement to come through before trying to get DS a place?

nope, ds1 looking at sprsely-spaced AS specific provision in a MS comp.

Friends son would get 1-1 yes, either in private or MS

Do you know how many hours he is going to get? How old is he?

NA he's ds3's age, so year 2.

Theya re trying to get 10 year old ds1 an upgrade to 15 hours on his statement atm (it's 10 atm)

The other childs family has been told to get the head to 'contact them to say how many hours they need'; they read that as you can have what you want, I am, erm, suspicious they are optimistic (Head is reputedly on planet vallium and does as told in that school- not ours )

Sancti have they given you a new date yet for meetings?

They held it without LEA roundthe, so request is now at panel stage. We also ahd SSD meeting today, we've finally got a SW for the boys, promises of summer help and plans for a core assessment. Looks like things are moving (only taken 5 years!)

See I'd have thought if they are funding a private place then they will probably give him less 1:1 support cos of the money than he would get in mainstream.

Depends on teh private; although cost is clear;y an over rider to anything, they have anum,ber of objectives to fulfil- finding him a suitable school place is not neessarily the same as providing the support to utilise it: they ahve a stat duty to do both. Although they minimise cost, they still have to assign teh childs needs to a scale that identifies those alongside the school place: SNU's are different in that support is built in but a private could still ahve classes of 30; the local private has bigger classes than the local Juniors (ds2's class is 21).

Cost is more of a 'once we've fulfilled stat duties what's the cherapest we can get' balance- the over riding factor for ds3's placement was the savings made on attending the unit comapred to erecting a fence around a playground in a site of special scientific interest and where all surrounding land is owned by Cadw (Welsh National Heritage people- school yard is sandwiched between Roman barracks and Roman Amphitheratre- is somewhat unique LOL); the fence had to be crafted from willow.

Attending private as a child with SN isn't the norm but certainly isn't unusual, it's often far cheaper for children whose placements are in excess to supply or whose needs are soemwhat unique to access an existing privately (or charitably) funded school. Same thing happens after school age if care is needed; we'd probably have moved from this house (rented or we'd be here for life) but if not the nearest appropriate ASD provision is 13 yards from our front door and would be their assignation of choice, and is run by the NAS. And this sort of thing is a key emphasis under the enw Government (doubly so with the coalition, big focus of both Conservative and Lib Dem polciies) as it's the merging of state and private. So it will grow. From what I have seen when working in the sector, student nurse in state, then HCA in state followed by charitable management it does bring much higher quality of care usually (staff and management standards being IME of bigger import).