University exam access arrangements not followed for an autistic student with significant exam anxiety. It is reasonable for the university to only offer the remedy of resitting exams?

The university say they have discharged their responsibility to remedy the error by offering student the opportunity to resit exams "as if for the first time" ie without penalty. Student has severe anxiety around exams and has had no reassurance that errors will not recur. Year was passed but results lower than expected and results will affect final degree classification.

University admissions disability discrimination appeal for 17 year old F/T college student - is Legal Aid available?

My daughter has recently been rejected from a performing arts university after she applied to a degree course. She has diagnoses of Autism and Dyspraxia and an EHCP which I made the University aware of in various emails about her application over the last 12 months. Her disabilities are also recorded on her UCAS form.

The final stage of the admissions process was an in-person audition and interview which was a disaster as her anxiety levels were off the scale, she made mistakes (despite being a superb musician and singer), the questions asked were not Autism and Dyspraxia friendly (they asked abstract, open questions and she felt that they were trying to catch her out) and she left after having a meltdown. It’s a heart-breaking situation for her.

I believe that the University have broken the Equality Act (2010) by failing in their anticipatory duty to offer reasonable adjustments in the audition, as best practice for interviewing Autistic/Dyspraxic candidates has not been applied in any form to the audition.

I have years of experience fighting battles for diagnoses, EHCP, transport and many other barriers as you might imagine a SEND parent has. I am currently looking at appealing against the University decision and it occurred to me that there might be specialist solicitors out there that could help me.

Before I start this battle on my own, can anyone advise if this is the sort of situation that a specialist solicitor would take on and if so, is it possible to get legal aid, and if so would that be for help with dealing with the university appeals process or only if we were to proceed to County Court?

Thanks!

Taking children out of school during term time

I will be taking my children out of school next month for our family holiday. 2 of my children have additional needs, one is diagnosed combined adhd and one awaiting assessment for adhd/asd. Neither of them cope well in overcrowded situations with one having social anxiety and the other being liable to wonder off etc. this is the main reason for going out of term time so it will not be as busy. Is there anything I can do in order to not receive an fine from my local authorities for doing this.

Suspensions

Son is 6 years old - suspected ADHA,PDA and Trauma related anxiety (owing to my incurable cancer diagnosis). He is in year 1 of a primary school who were very slow to acknowledge his SEN needs, despite paperwork backing this from age 3. He has a sen support plan in place, along with a positive behaviour plan - both heavily written by me as the SENCO is very inexperienced. He now has 1:1 at all times he is in school - with a note in the sen plans that he should be with a trusted adult at all times, because of a flight risk and risk to others. This year he has been suspended 3 times already with the last suspension being 2.5 days for spitting. The situation occurred because his trusted adult was not with him, no adult was. My question is - can the school really suspend him, when they are failing to stick to what's been agreed and counter to the plan, fail to identify new triggers and learn from experience. Many thanks legal brains for giving your time.

My child is being turned down by all the independent schools we are applying to based on his recently diagnosed dyslexia - does this contravene the disability act?

My child recently had neurodiversity screeners by a charity. They provide reports but not diagnosis and suggested his had strong signs of dyslexia and possibly ADHD. He is year 6 and due to go to year 7 in a few months time. We have applied to 3 non academically selective independent schools and they have all turned our application down. The first which is supposed to have good provision for dyslexia, turned him down on the basis of the report saying they couldn't support his type of adhd. They hadn't even met him, he doesn't have a diagnosis for ADHD and certainly there was no mention of a type. We are wondering now whether he actually has adhd or whether we were just going through a tricky developmental stage at the point of the screener. I've tried to get an ADHD private diagnosis since to rule it in or out but no providers have come back to me. I'm not happy for him to be turned down over something that is not diagnosed. We have managed to get a private dylexia diagnosis since. It confirmed his dyslexia. He scored significantly low for literacy but average in other areas and particularly high in others (98th percentile in one particular test). The conclusion was he can still be successful academically (particularly in STEM) provided his dyslexia is supported. Since then our last 2 independent school options have said they cannot support his dysexia requirements. I am told he does not qualify for an EHCP and as far as i can see the dyslexia recommendations are standard. 25% more time, pre-teaching, some small group dyslexia support and speech to text tech. All of which is supposed to be available at the last school in particular that has a specialist learning facility. Are they discriminating or can they just get away with saying they can't support him and he won't be able to keep up with his cohort?

Can I contribute my EHCP to this site? If yes, how do I do it?

Can I claim transport costs arisen while appealing changes to transport provided (appeal was successful)?

- Transport changed from solo taxi to shared taxi without new risk assessment being conducted
- initial appeal (end of august, just before school returned) submitted parent statement
- initial appeal failed, warned one attempt left. Gathered evidence from multiple professionals for stage two appeal and triggered pre-action protocol letter
- while appealing - self funded transport with the same company the LA had been using previously, receipts provided
- outcome - won appeal and LA concluded solo transport was required, however refusal to reimburse any costs as it was parental choice to send our son to school and we hadn't provided all the evidence (which we didn't have) at stage one

Context - our son is a school refuser (gaps in attendance can lead to increase in distress behaviours going in / increased refusal), his school is out of county and we were unable to drive him ourselves, all our leave was allocated to school holidays, our son has a congenital brain injury and cannot be left at home without supervision, our son has previously looked after child status (adopted) and significant trauma, the loss of regular driver triggers rejection and toxic shame responses (including self injurious behaviour).

Additional - initial appeal August 2024, pre action protocol issued October 2024 (and not accepted as stage two complaint hadn't gone through - we thought both ran together, additional costs associated with this), complaints re costs incurred outcome August 2025. (Process initially delayed by gathering evidence, and then by stress incurred / health issues)

Costs incurred - around £5,000, now in debt as a result as had been told if we won the appeal we would claim costs back (but county staff member - recording of this phone call is unavailable we have been told, as not all calls are recorded)

How do I get an EHCP without a diagnosis and how do I access an alternate provision if we don't get an EHCP?

I have a 13 yr old son who has been home educated since Sep 25. We were failed by our primary school when they kept referring him for ASD and ADHD and telling us that he was "managing with scaffolding" when he was clearly struggling and failed all his SATs. He went to a private school for 1 year and they deferred him back a year because of his delayed learning, they did a Sandwell assessment that showed he was working at 7-8years old in every area, but then the school closed down so we chose to home educate (there was huge anxiety around school and learning and it had started manifesting as self harm also).

Since doing so we have realised just how far behind he is. The only official diagnosis we have is a visual processing disorder and after 3 ASD and ADHD referrals they all came back as inconclusive. We have an anxiety related Tourettes diagnosis and the consultant there wrote that he has an obvious learning disorder but then discharged us so we have no follow up for that. Our GP has just told us to get in touch with the LA to get an EHCP but I dont think that will do much good when hes home ed so we have no capacity for an ed-psych or similar. We are struggling with traditional home-ed as there is severe anxiety around learning in the traditional sense so I would like to let him access an alternative provision for 1 or 2 days a week but I cant even find anything that we can fund privately.

So I suppose my question is in 3 parts -
1. do I need to get a diagnosis or where do I get any support for a "learning disorder" and how do we find out the full extent of it? (hes had testing for global delay that was negative)
2. I know I need to start the process for an EHCP but Im at a loss how I do this as a home educator and without a diagnosis and no professional/medical support?
3. Is an EHCP the only way to access an alternative provision?

Does anybody have a template letter for taking there Autistic child out of school in term time please

Im absolutely rubbish at wording things in the right way.
Thanks

Can Section F identify a school and its provision

In Section F of EHCP it is stated that 'Whilst at (named school)' the pupil will have X provision. The EHCP is written like this for most of Section F. Is this correct?