Posts Tagged ‘specialist schools’

Treatment of Autistic Children Says a Lot About Our Failing System

June 21, 2012

If I had to assess the effectiveness of our education system in one sweeping statement, it would be that our system is concerned with process over people.

What we must remember is, we are not only teaching human beings, we are teaching the next generation of citizens. The method in which we teach them and the way we treat them will have a dramatic impact on their view of the world. If we treat them with respect and empathy, they are more likely to grow up to be decent and generous people. If we treat them as guinea pigs the outcomes will not be as positive.

That’s why our system has to change. Programs and policies which are designed to avoid lawsuits rather than achieve outcomes have to go. As does the notion that children with disabilities can be put anywhere the budget bottom line dictates:

Autistic students are being told they can no longer attend specialist schools because their language skills are assessed to be too high in controversial year 6 tests.

Parents say their children, many of whom have attended autism schools all their lives, will be unable to cope and vulnerable to bullying if forced to go to a mainstream school.

Some have resorted to desperate tactics such as threatening to go to the media or applying to have their children reclassified as having a Severe Behaviour Disorder rather than autism so they can remain at autism schools.

Janeane Baker, whose 11-year-old son William has been at Northern School for Autism since prep, was horrified to learn her son no longer qualified for funding to remain at the school because he had passed a language test. ”It doesn’t matter that his mother has worked in the mainstream education system and knows that he would never survive there,” Ms Baker said. ”It doesn’t matter that his highly qualified teachers have never thought he would be able to be integrated. He can speak; therefore the government obviously thinks he is cured. They are very wrong – autism is for life.”Ms Baker had tried to integrate William with mainstream peers at junior cricket and Scouts but he got bullied because he was ”just that little bit too left of centre”.

Instead of treating this issue as a process dependant on academic evaluations, we must see this as a human issue. If children with disabilities are more likely to thrive in specialists schools we must do whatever we can to make sure that option is available to them.

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Posted in Children with Disabilities | 2 Comments »