Is there a legal min/max number of SN children allowed in a mainstream primary class?

[DRAGON30]

I hope that someone can help with this, as our village Primary's 'policy' seems to be completely random! Is there a legal min/max number of SN children permitted in a mainstream class ? Is it judged purely on numbers eg: 2 per class, or as a ratio, eg; 2 SN for every 20 non-SN ? Does it depend on the availability of support workers ? Sorry if this seems a bit muddled !

[cazzybabs]

I don't think so - I think it just depends upon how many SEN there are in the year. I am willing to be proved wrong though. Each SEN child should get a certain amount of support depeneding upoin his/her needs and fudning of the LEA.

I don't think school can refuse admssion because it has 2 SEN children already.

[Reallytired]

As I understood it if a parent applies for a place for a child with SEN the school has to take them if it has a place available. Otherwise its discrimatory to apply different admission criteria to a child with SN than one without SN.

With more severe special needs then a child's statement in theory should make sure that there is provision the child needs.

The fun comes if there is a large number of children with mild SEN and the school has provide for them from its budget because they are all on school action.

[Phraedd]

in the class i work in (a state school), we have 27 children, 5 of which have an IEP and 2 of those are statemented and both have an LSA

[RustyBear]

I think your school's policy seems random because there isn't one - if children have SN, the school has to cope, no matter how many there are - it couldn't really be any other way if you think about it - unless you think a school should throw out a child who is discovered to have SN because they are over their quota?

[isgrassgreener]

I believe the school and the LEA have to look at each child on an individual basis, if the school doesn't want to take a statemented child they would have to have a very valid reason.
Each statemented child has a different allocation of hours on their statement so, each child needs a different level of care. You could have two children in a class each with 15 hours and one child in another class with 30 hours.
The primary school that my ds goes to has refused statemented children, on the basis that they have so many already and the % of SEN in the school is higher than other schools in the area.
I also know that the local secondary school refuses some of its statemented applications each year, because they have so many applications, again it is not based on a fixed number of children (ie 2 in each class) but the overall number of hours provision that is needed in that year.
So I think it is never as simple as 2 per class.
Hope that makes some sense.