hi
just been trawling through all the high schools in the area for our daughter in year 5 (seen 6 schools). You need to understand every school delivers special needs in different ways. Some would provide 1 to 1 for the hours allocated in your sons case 10 hours. So they would have to decide which lessons he will be okay on his own in i.e drama, art, sports and use the time for english maths etc. It may be your son is a whizz at maths and would need it somewhere else. When they mean 1 to 1 by an Learning support assistant they mean being with him in lessons to keep on task help him work etc. Some children when they get to high school resent the presence of the support especially if they sit right next to him, it has to be done in a sensitive manner so whilst parents want one to one you have to encourage independence, and the support assistants usually judge the situation and may sit back in some lessons and not in others.
You may find if your son is 2 to 1 support he would get more support in more lessons so I would not be adverse to sharing hours, as long as sharing means more than 10 hours for your son. Its really hard to let go of the primary school mentality its very different in high school but should be they are growing up.
We have chosen a school that does department based support as our daughter would hate to have 1 to 1 that is recognisable !! she has 25 hrs. When you meet the senco you need to clarify how the support is delivered i.e same person or different support assistants, if you share the time will your son get more than 10 hours, will he be taken out of lessons for extra support with a specialist teacher in problem areas, will he have to do a foreign language ( some parents choose to opt out and spend more time on literacy). I think the best schools are those who are flexible and are prepared to deliver the funded support in a way that meets the childs needs. Some schools will use laptops to help children who have problems with speed of writing things down etc,
hope this helps, we have spent so much time and energy in sussing the whole thing out I just wanted to share our findings with you.
