Help wording amended statement "access to LSA for 20 hours per week"

[daisysue2]

My daughters statement says that she should have access to Learning Support Assistant time fora total of 28 hours per week for individual, paired and small group intervention.

At the moment this is fine and works well as she is in a mixed ability class but I am worried this will not always be the case. When she moves to seniors soon the classes become streamed and she will be with other children who have needs so the learning assistant will be needed by 30 children.

Any ideas of how it should be worded without the new school then saying we can't provide that level of support so she will have to go elsewhere.

This is from the original statement and a few years ago and I am asking for it to be amended with a few other points regarding specific provisions rather than generalizations.

Yes it's her transitional review so it is open.

I am happy with the number of hours that she receives in the current school, I'm just worried that it may be diluted by other children in the next school as she will be in the bottom group where the children have greater needs and there will only be one LA for all of the children, or so I have been told. I was going to ask for her it be dedicated one to one and the SENCO at present school said that they may refuse to take her as they don't have the budget for dedicated one to one - now I'm writing it down it doesn't sound legal. I've been too worried about getting down specific number of hours for SaLT and OT. So I don't want new school to say no but I do want my daughter to get what she needs to see her through the first year at the school. And she will need dedicated one to one initially for most of the subjects to keep her sensory overload in check. So any advice or experience on various ways LA hours have been worded would be really useful.

My understanding is that it is very difficult to get a 1:1 in secondary school, because the schools don't like it. One school I visited had subject-specific LSAs, so each change of subject meant a new member of staff! And it was supposed to be a particularly good mainstream school for ASD.

I wonder if the timing means that the new school would actually see the amended statement before offering your DD a place? Is she in Yr 5 now and you will be changing to senior school in Yr 7?

If the statement gets amended now, just as a result of AR, then the new school would see the amended statement. But as Starlight says, it's quite hard to get the statement amended until it's necessary, to name a placement at transition (in Feb of Yr 6). In our LA, the secondary schools are sent the old statements when being consulted for secondary placements. This happens in the autumn term of Yr 6 and the statement is amended to name the school in the February. Often LAs change nothing else on the statement except the name of the placement - my friend's statement looks exactly the same as when her DS was 5. It's only the amendment which triggers your right to request changes (and appeal if necessary).

In the secondary school my daughter is going to in September the TA's/Learning support stay in the same topic/subject area. The children with SEN are supported by them in small groups rather than 1-1. Its a mainstream but has a learning support room for any 1-1 support that may be needed as well for anymore significant difficulties. It is possibly worth seeing the school you want your daughter to go to first and looking at how they support their SEN children before deciding on amendments?