Change from mainstream primary school to autistic secondary school

Hello @MelanieB and welcome to the community.

Your son will find it strange to begin with. Classes will be a lot smaller to what he is used to. The atmosphere tend to be a lot calmer. Alongside the academic learning they also work on independence and day to day issues.

Special schools are usually better resourced which means your son is likely to get opportunities to do things that he would not get within mainstream school.

Bullying, as @DannyMoore says is rare but not unheard off. However because of the higher adult/child ratio this is usually quickly spotted and dealt with.

As I said your son will find it strange and to begin with may find it difficult to settle in. But may find it better when he does.

I won't lie to you, even with a small group when one has a meltdown it does have an impact on others, but staff are trained to deal with these and things usually calm down quickly. They also have ways of encouraging the children to be honest with how they are and can usually pick up on individuals who might have a bad day and deal with it and monitor the situation.

Places in such schools are in short supply and the fact he got into one suggests long term he will benefit greatly from it. My daughter was in mainstream right through her schooling, she never made any friends and was often bullied. Academically she was very bright and was ambitious to go to university so we stuck with it.