Decision Report 201507691

Summary

Ms C raised a complaint about the educational support offered to her son while he was absent from school and when he returned to school on a phased basis. Ms C was also unhappy with the handling of her complaint.

We noted that the council had apologised for the delay in Ms C's son's return to school, for the failure to send work home while he was absent from school, and for the delay in securing a technical teacher to assist her son. However, we were concerned that we were provided with no evidence of any structured approach to Ms C's son's return to school, any mechanism for monitoring the work he had missed, or a plan in place to ensure he could catch up with the work missed.

We were also concerned that when Ms C's son returned to school, while there was a willingness to offer support, there appeared to be no structured plan in place to monitor how well he was catching up and whether any changes had to be made to the support being offered to him. We were also concerned that, while meetings to discuss Ms C's son continued during his senior phase of education, Ms C remained unclear about the support being proposed for her son. We upheld this part of Ms C's complaint.

We were satisfied that the council had reasonably considered and responded to Ms C's complaint, and we did not uphold this part of her complaint.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• reflect on this case with a view to introducing a structured approach to ensuring pupils' education is maintained where pupils are unable to attend school and that this is properly recorded; and
• if they have not already done so, implement a learning plan for Ms C's son as a matter of urgency, and confirm in writing to Ms C what support is being offered to her son for his senior phase of education.