Autistic pupil left with no school place for 12 months - Tutor Hunt Blog

Autistic pupil left with no school place for 12 months Autistic pupil left with no school place for 12 months Autistic pupil left with no school place for 12 monthsSchoolsMy cousin is autistic, and from what I have heard attends an excellent state school, which provides a lot of understanding and support. The SEN and ASN (Special educational needs and additional special educational needs) facilities in her school are very good. I`ve heard she receives a lot of assistance from a teacher who understand her needs during lessons, and her parents are brought into the school every week to be appraised as to her progress. There are a number of specialist schools that cater to the needs of autistic pupils, having a staff of teachers who are trained to provide the right support. Despite these being available around 71% of children with autism actually attend mainstream schools. While my cousin attends a school that is able to offer a good level of support, unfortunately not all autistic children are so lucky. A recent case was brought to my attention regarding an autistic boy who was left without a place at school for a whole year, all because of a breakdown in communication with the local council. He was initially excluded from his school because of behavioural problems, and ended up being denied a place at any school, because the council departments were not communicating efficiently with one another. This is a dire case of a young boy being failed by the education system. Thanks to a Kafkaesque bureaucratic foul up this pupil has missed out on three whole terms of his education. The situation was reported to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGO), who published a damming report that concluded that Cornwall Council had `delivered a fragmented service to the detriment of [the boy`s] needs`. The council has apologised to the family of the boy, agreed to remunerate them to the amount of 2,500 in respect of the damage to the boy`s education, while also providing an additional 1,000 to `fund additional activities` for the boy`s needs. This situation very likely resulted in a parent of the boy being obliged to take a year off from working, in order to care for him. The remuneration offered may go some way to addressing the situation, but without proper funding from the council, the amount awarded certainly wouldn`t cover a full year`s worth of home schooled private tuition. Hopefully a situation like this will not be repeated. Michael King, chair of the LGO, has stated how this sad case must be learnt from, and that it highlights the necessity of different council departments being in good contact with one another, to ensure they are `working together, communicating properly and sharing information to provide support quickly.` He went on to say that: `The council also applied too high a threshold for deciding whether or not to assess the boy for an EHC Plan. The threshold for deciding an assessment is low a council only needs to be satisfied a child may have special educational needs and may require provision.` `In this case there was ample evidence the boy met this. These recommendations aim to stop other children having to wait so long to receive the support they need.` This story comes nearly a year after the National Education Union (NEU) disclosed that thousands of schoolchildren with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) were left without a school place. Tim Nicholls, the head of policy at the National Autistic Society, has admitted there are some really distressing stories of autistic children who are left for many months, sometimes even many years, without a place at any school. `We hear awful stories of children on the autism spectrum who spend months, even years, out of education because of this,` `Local councils need to make sure they understand the needs of the children in their area and have the right range of school places locally to meet them. No autistic child should be left without a suitable school option due to a lack of availability. Too many local councils don`t do this well enough.` In situations like this, where the local councils fail to provide a school place for a child, it invariably falls upon the parents to rectify the matter, either by homeschooling them, or fighting what I can only imagine is a bureaucratic nightmare with different municipal departments, in an effort to secure school for their child. This will of course only put undue strain on working families. 11 months ago0Add a Comment