[senco-forum] PRUs and new regs

Not to mention unofficial exclusions. I know of one school

Brian -- your response, in this case, to Chris was trivial and unjustified to say the least. She was commenting extremely helpfully and pertinently on a school that was unlawfuly excluding a pupil -- which is such a serious matter  -- that even the usually slow acting DfES is quick to clamp down on such highly unjustified and unlawful practice. We are talking about children being denied the right to schooling by the whim of Headteachers who break the rules regularly to make their jobs easier in not having to provide positive and effective management and educational provision to special needs and so called 'hard to teach' children -- an important responsibilty of all Heads in all mantained schools. There was no comment here about LA failures (although I have commented upon these recently in another thread). We should all applaud those parents who act promptly and effectively to ensure that schools face up to their responsibilities to educate all pupils on their roll in a fair and non-discriminatory manner. I think thee ist oversensitive and doth protesteth to much. Brendan King 

-----Original Message-----
From: chris.gravell at green43.myzen.co.uk
To: webmaster at aylesburyvale-sec.bucks.sch.uk; senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
Sent: Fri, 2 Feb 2007 1.59PM
Subject: Re: [senco-forum] PRUs and new regs

At 13:28 02/02/2007 +0000, webmaster at aylesburyvale-sec.bucks.sch.uk wrote: 
>Not to mention unofficial exclusions. I know of one school 
>which forced a child to stay at home for a year while it 
>sought a statement. The school were hoping for special 
>school but the statemnent came back as mainstream with 
>support! 

At least unofficial exclusions are easily tackled as they are unlawful -- the DfES takes a very dim view, so that a quick complaint by parents to the Secretary of State may make the school clean up its act. 

Parents I supported recently won a disability discrimination claim against a school indulging in unlawful lunchtime exclusions (child is now statemented -- school had not referred him for assessment before deciding it could not cope -- and is happily at a more positive mainstream school). The discriminatory school has been ordered to give all staff and governors training in: 

· Disability Discrimination in an educational setting, 
· Children with special educational needs, 
· The law and practice on exclusion, 
· Specific and distinct disability awareness training. 

I hope the training takes. 

Chris 