Navigating the Challenges of Securing Support for Autistic children in high school

It has been a really long time since I have had a chance to write a blog post. As a single parent of 2 who works and studies, I am always pretty busy but since the start of 2024 I have been embroiled in a battle that is very familiar to parents of children with ASN…the battle to get your child the right support in school. It has been like having another full-time job on top of everything else and it has been exhausting!
My eldest daughter turned 12 in March and is preparing to transition to High School after summer. She was diagnosed with ASD and hyperacusis when she was 3-years-old. Primary school has been a mainly positive experience for her (apart for school closures during lockdown). Of course, she has encountered challenges but she loves school and feels comfortable among her peers and teachers. However, high school is a different kettle of fish, as someone who has taught in mainstream high schools for over a decade and still regularly visits across the central belt, I am acutely aware of the barriers that face neurodivergent pupils as they navigate corridors, canteens and libraries. My biggest concern is her safety, not only is my daughter vulnerable, she does not behave like her peers and attracts a lot of attention; she is also unable to communicate if she if an incident does occur. She needs significant support to move around safely before we even consider the support she needs for learning. With this in mind, we visited our mainstream catchment school and a specialist provision within another mainstream school.
When we visited the specialist provision, we went in armed with questions but left without having to even ask them as the lead teacher told us everything we needed to know without being prompted. We left feeling reassured and confident that they could meet my daughter’s needs. In contrast, at our catchment school, while the teacher was friendly and helpful, she was unable to give as any reassurance about the support my daughter would receive. Not only that but some of her suggestions (such as letting her go out of school for lunch) left me worried for her safety. Therefore, we applied for a place at the specialist provision with strong supporting evidence from my daughter’s Primary School and a raft of supporting professionals. Everyone was in agreement that she would thrive in the specialist provision.
You can imagine our anguish then when our request for the specialist provision was rejected. Three reasons were provided:

1. Giving her the place would contravene the ‘presumption to mainstream’ education.
2. Placing her with the specialist provision would make it necessary to employ an additional teacher.
3. The specialist provision does not suit her ‘aptitude or ability’

She was therefore allocated a mainstream place at our local catchment school. It felt like a punch to the gut. It didn’t make sense. The provision I had applied for was in a mainstream school so how would it breach the expectation to provide mainstream education? That is the whole purpose of the provision to provide supports to allow pupils to attend mainstream classes. I drafted a comprehensive response expressing my concerns about her safety. I also asked for a specific list of criteria for the specialist provision as there were no specifics provided around how her ‘aptitude and abilities’ were mismatched. I contacted a lawyer to start the ball rolling for a tier 1 tribunal.
I was even more surprised when I discovered that no children in our whole council had been successful in securing a specialist place. Having reached out to the local elected members, I was put in touch with a large group of other parents in the same situation. It seemed that the council had decided that all pupils should be attending their local catchment school whatever their needs. Therefore, parents had effectively wasted their time conducting school visits to decide which schools would best meet their children’s need and then spending 100s of hours writing applications and gathering evidence to support their request, they were never going to be approved. The lack of transparency in the process and poor communication with parents and schools has been appalling and has caused immeasurable distress to families and children.
Since the decision I have been in constant contact with Edinburgh council to try to get more clarity about the process and their decision. They have now been more open about their ambition to have ‘Enhanced support provision’ within every high school in the council. This means that any pupil could attend their local catchment school and have their needs fully met. There would be no need to go through a stressful application process for parents, which also saves hundred of hours of professionals and council workers time and no need to provide transport to pupils to get to a school that can meet their needs (which is a huge cost for councils). While this sound great and a vision that I could really get behind and endorse- it is being implemented too swiftly to be effective and with very little consultation from parents and schools. This is not a small tweak to the existing educational landscape in the council, it requires a huge systematic and cultural shift and crucially, large investment!
While I am awaiting the tribunal, we are working with the local catchment school she has been allocated. We have been reassured that some of the supports she would receive in the specialist provision would be in place, but not all. The big question that no one at the council seems to be able to answer is what does enhanced support provision look like? What should we be expecting mainstream schools to have in place to meet our children’s needs? I have been repeatedly told that the mainstream school are confident that they can meet her needs, yet when I discuss her needs with them, I constantly get the feeling that they do not fully understand what her needs are. As a teacher myself, I fully empathise with the schools and the position they have been put in. The specialist provisions have years of experience in understanding and meeting the needs of the pupils they serve. While the ‘presumption to mainstream’ has been around for two decades now, mainstream schools are challenged with ever increasing diversity and reduce budgets and resources.
So, I continue to fight for a specialist provision, gathering more evidence, fielding more phone calls and emails. The hardest part is being unable to plan. The logistic of getting both kids to school and myself to work is hard enough while they are both at the same school but is about to become even more complicated! Obviously, my eldest daughter cannot travel independently and so I am still fighting for school transport as well. I am not sure if I will be able to get to work myself next term so I am trying to work out a contingency plan with my employers. The uncertainty is stressful for the whole family and I worry so much about for my daughter will get on at high school.