Surrey mum: "The last thing you want to see is your child in that much distress."
Over the past year, around 71,500 children were withdrawn from mainstream schools, with some opting for online alternatives.
With over 70,000 students being withdrawn from mainstream schools over the past year, a Surrey mum told us why she had to withdraw her son.
Jacqueline's son was recently diagnosed with autism and was withdrawn after only half a term at school last year.
Her son has now started at an online school, where she told us that the environment is helping him to find himself and be more confident.
She told us that the mainstream school system led to regular panic attacks for her son.
"he started at mainstream in September 2024 and he was really distressed from the very beginning. And I think for him the real issues that he had were around the the amount of movement they have to do in school.
The lack of consistency in terms of the teachers, you have a different teachers for each lesson. If, for example, you have a supply teacher, you don't know how they're going to react to different things. You don't know if they're going to tell people off, and he does have a real fear of being told off.
I think for my son that put him in such a heightened state of anxiety. He was constantly in fight or flight mode and he wasn't able to concentrate"
Jacqueline says that although the school tried their best to accommodate his needs, they were simply unable to.
"Whilst my school was incredibly supportive and they put my son on a reduced timetable and they helped us to find therapy, it didn't change the fact that school was school and for him.
The school were really supportive, but they also had their attendance targets to meet the reason that we deregistered him was because school had told us that he would have to be full time by the time he started Year 8 and we just took a really long hard look at where he was and where we as a family were and just knew that that was never going to work for us."
She emphasised the need for a space for her son to cope when he felt overwhelmed
"His school had a room, just one place where students could go when they were feeling dysregulated, that had a teacher in it all the time. But that room wasn't just for people like my son. It was for people who maybe were very angry or were kind of shouting.
Even in that space that was supposed to be a place of safety and calmness for my son, it wasn't"
Jacqueline said the time at the school when he wasn't coping had an effect on her entire family
"When he was struggling at school, it was just awful for us as parents because, you know, that's the last thing you want to see is your child in that much distress. And also because you're forcing him into that situation, you know you're doing what you're supposed to do.
I had to be signed off work for two weeks with stress because it really got to me.
The weekends were terrible because, you know, he would start panicking about school from Saturday afternoon onwards.
Jacqueline finished by talking about how much her son's life has improved with the switch
"If he struggles to understand something in a lesson, no one is going to tell him off. They will just try and find out what the issues are and how to solve them.
It's that kind of attitude that I think is really helping him to find himself and and be more confident right now it's just, it's amazing. It's a life changer."