There is such a thing as "flexi-schooling" which is a mix of school and home education. If you posted your question in the home-ed section of this board, you might get some answers. As far as I know, flexischooling has to be done in agreement with the school - you can't simply decide to send him in on alternate days. That would be recorded as unorthorised absence and would have the EWO (education welfare officer) on your case pretty quickly I think.

Hi,
I'm new to mumsnet so bear with me. I'm in the middle of trying to get my statemented 13 yr old moved from mainstream to a special needs school.
We know we've got a long fight ahead but in the meantime our son is having a really hard time dealing with all the overload of info he needs to take in of a school day.
Friends suggested having him go to school on alternate days. We have tried it a couple of times and he really feels rested and ready to take on a full school day when he returns.
My question is are we allowed to do that and would it jepordise our chances moving him?
Thanks in advance

Hi I have done this. Ring the LEA for the school you want to you to and ask for the special needs team. You should be able to identify the person who is responsible for your target school. Explain you have a child with a statement which you want to transfer and they should contact the outgoing LEA and pick up the statement. They will want to do one of their own but in the meantime should treat your child as a statemented child.

I have heard some LEAs are poor at this but the LEAs of which I had experience (Islington and Essex) dealt with this really well.

I'm about to try and move my ASDson from his school, which is a special unit attached to mainstream. I too had worries from the beginning and this year was and still is a nightmare for us both. It is completely wrong - how they deal with him and myself and they don't give me any info, including no IEP... they say there's no problems, then he's causing no end of probs, etc. I worried all summer, spoke to the LEA, ~PWP and still no-one can help, they say speak to the #Head. This week the staff were in hoots of laughter at me when I went to pick up my son and they were gesturing to the SENCO to look at my sunhat. #I feel so humiliated. It's totally wrong - -

Sorry can't help - can only empathise with you!!

I am on the verge of having a nervous breakdown over this so any help would be greatly appreciated.

My ds has just started school with a full statement. He has ASD. Almost as soon as the statement was finalised, we felt we had made a mistake with the school. We decided that we would let him start and hope things got better. Whilst he has only done two days, there have already been two incidents which have not inspired my confidence in the teaching or the staff.

My gut feeling is that we should have asked for a place at our catchment school where we already have one child. We were originally put off this school as it is quite large. However ds has grown massively in confidence, his speech and communication has improved and we now feel he would cope fine.

So my questions are:
How easy is it to change the name of a school on a statement?
Do schools have any provision to take a child with a statement even if they are in theory full?
Is it best to do this now or wait?

Please give me your wisdom !