Since appealing section I and receiving a tribunal date, we have just received an email from our local authority Tribunal Officer, asking what our child's views are on which school she wants to attend and if we wnat to discuss their decision in more detail to get in touch, they want to come to a resolution. Should we engage?

We applied for a specialist school for transition of our daughter to secondary school in September. She has an EHCP with 1:1 in mainstream primary school, but the local secondary school has said they cannot support her needs; we also feel that she would not cope in the large scale setting etc etc. The specialist provision has offered her a place but the local authority has named the mainstream secondary school in the EHCP, hence our appeal. We have requested information, reasons for the decision etc prior to appeal but they would not engage. Now that we are heading towards tribunal they have sent an email asking us for our child's view and if we want to discuss further to come to a resolution. NB. they have only 2 weeks left to submit their evidence pack. This all feels suspicious as we had those discussions in the phase transition meeting with school and the LA, plus all the specialist reports state that our daughter needs to attend a small specialist setting. Not sure to what extent we should reply to this email and engage with the LA now at this stage.