Right where to start.......... We stated DS had AS on the SCAF and the school sent supporting letters for 3 of the 4 schools all written by the SENCO and each letter geared to each school. My DS then failed the VR and passed the other 2 papers with marks in high 120's. The school appealed for us but crucially didn't mention his AS at all. The appeal was turned down because of his creative writing. Writing has always been my DS problem especially creatively/imaginatively and most definitely part of his AS. At this point the HT disappeared in mysterious circumstances and never returned
We then appealed to 2 GS and won both appeals. However only one of them was our real choice and realistically, regardless of the fact it was a grammar, was the only school suitable for our DS and had been our choice since visiting at the beginning of year 5. Tbh there were so many things that were right about it that we didn't have to go searching for a match with our DS they just fell at our feet (something we said in our appeal).
Examples are
*specialisms in maths and ICT (and languages which we also admitted may be a problem for our DS)
* at a support group the school was highly reccommended by the head of the local secondary autism unit
* the SENCO and head of KS3 admitted that they had plenty of boys with AS and didn't find it a problem
* the SENCO i later found out has a special interest in AS hence his confidence and experience
* the fact the boys could go to their form rooms for lunch and didn't have to go the the canteen, playground
etc, so a quiet calm area where he quite often sits alone
*there was a lunchtime social club which he had been used to in primary
* 2 particular clubs (Yu Gi Oh and Warhammer) were run by the SENCO
*the school was up and running with a food tech suite - my son is interested in cooking and it is an important life skill. Life skills being a very important thing for AS children to learn
* my DS loves his Scouts (luckily the beaver leader has an AS son so hes been v well supported there) the school do D of E which again will help his social and life skills
*they have a sixth form so he won't have to change schools later on
I know there were other things but i can't remember them all
We did pay for "help" for our appeal and our help told us the reason the HT appeal failed was (creative writing) was weak and could be fully expalined by the AS, school, SENCO including proof with my DS work. His Y6 teacher explained he wrote factually and reflectively not imaginatively. I also pointed out at school, which i hadn't before, that lots of his "creativity" was actually copied from books he'd read
As the HT had gone the current acting head was quite prepared to come to the appeal and say something went wrong but nobody knew what. This new acting head had also taught my DS Maths from year 1 in the top set which again tied up with the specialism and she did stress her personal experience of his high maths ability
Also we had an EP report done. We were totally honest with the EP about why we were doing the assessment and he was v straight with us..... if he felt our DS wasn't grammar material he was going to say so. Luckily he came down firmly on our side all things pointed to high academic ability. Several other things came out of the report like for example our DS was a slow starter when tasks changed and so guess which paper came first in the 11+ - the one he failed VR
CATs done in Nov of y6 and predicted SATs all showed high academic ability.
I hope this helps, its very muddled but what i'm trying to express is that everything tied up and some stuff backed up other stuff in a convuluted way. Also as i said in my earlier post i'm can't say we won on social/medical grounds but as others say you have to prove academic ability above all else and you have pointed out yourself the need to match your child to the school.
Excuse the spelling and punctuation - i wasn't a grammar pupil