Harry is only five but his school was right to expel him

‘ Teachers aren’t meant to take over parenting’

SPECIAL NEEDS: Debbie Reid thinks Harry’s primary school has let him down there was nothing it could do. And it hasn’t, although his mum is acting as though it has.

Harry’s local authority is trying to get him into a school that can cater for his needs, which means a mainstream class of another 30 children for Harry to disrupt and a teacher for him to chuck chairs at.

The education specialists are trying, as they should, to keep him in a class, keep him in the system and give him a chance.

But that’s not good enough for Debbie who insists the school doesn’t want to deal with Harry’s autism as it would affect its OFSTED rating.

And she’s also demanding that Harry goes back to his original school and none other, that the children and staff who couldn’t deal with him before continue to not deal with him in the future.

What parent, when faced with something that has not been able to help their child, demands that child continues to remain in its care? If it’s the school’s fault Harry is acting up, as Debbie claims, she should be jumping at the chance to send him elsewhere.

As far as Debbie’s concerned it seems as though Harry is the school’s problem. Staff are not teaching him properly, they don’t know how to deal with him and it was “only” a chair.

But it is her problem. Harry is her son and it’s her responsibility to care for and teach him for the rest of their lives together.

Teachers are there to help not take over the parenting. They have enough to do without adopting every little tearaway that comes through the doors.

Every parent sends their child off to school having drilled into them reasonable standards of behaviour so they can be taught.

Harry’s autism, if it is at the root of his behaviour, is something Debbie has to help him deal with in order that he can be accepted into a mainstream school. She’s his mum, that’s her job. It’s just the same for a parent of a child who has a physical disability or a fear of school or bullying problems or any other issue to contend with.

It’s the adult’s job to get them to school in a fit state, not just drop them at the gate and leave the teachers to sort out whatever mess they might be in.

THERE is a tendency with autism to say, “Oh well they can’t help it”. Yet there are 61,570 children in the state sector with this condition and while many might be more seriously affected than Harry they don’t all get expelled and they don’t all terrify their teachers.

This country has come on in leaps and bounds in its treatment of children with problems which a few years ago would have seen them on the scrap heap. The number diagnosed with some form of autism has gone up 56 per cent in the past five years and schools generally do a fantastic job of catering for those with special needs.

Debbie should be glad that the education system still wants her son and is optimistic that it can teach him despite the challenges presented by his condition and the parenting he has received.

But if he grows up to be a badly behaved teenager or an obnoxious adult it won’t be the schools’ fault for not trying.

It will be his mum’s for abdicating responsibility for a difficult child to someone else.