Hypocrite Kelly and a Snub to My Daughter; LETTERS SPECIAL

MY DAUGHTER was born with cerebral palsy and has severe epilepsy. She attends a mainstream school and has a statement for special needs.

Two years ago, a new special educational needs co- ordinator (SENCO) arrived at my daughter’s school and promptly took away her one-to-one support. Since then, my daughter’s education has deteriorated badly.

Last year, when Ruth Kelly was Education Secretary, she visited my daughter’s school with Bill Rammell MP, and I wrote to both of them, hoping they could help my daughter. But Ruth Kelly didn’t even have the courtesy to reply, let alone look into my daughter’s case.

It’s hard to fight the education system. I’ve been trying for two years to get back the support my daughter had in her first year at her school. I have now had to put it into the hands of solicitors.

Unfortunately, I do not have the money to send my daughter to a private school, so when she leaves school in 20 months’ time with no qualifications, who will provide for her then?

Will she have to rely on state benefits and will everybody be happy with that? Or will my daughter have another stigma attached to her for becoming a benefits sponger through no fault of her own but being born with cerebral palsy?

In my opinion, Ruth Kelly is a hypocrite, and she uses and abuses her position to suit her own needs and not that of her constituents.

DEBBIE NOGRE, Harlow, Essex.

Be open minded

MY ELDEST son, now aged 21, was born with Down’s syndrome. He attended mainstream school from nursery age until he was 12. When he started at the comprehensive school, he was placed in a special needs unit.

After six weeks, they said that Ben was too much work for them.

It was suggested that we move him to a special needs school. It broke our hearts; everything we had worked so hard for since Ben’s birth, living as near normal a life as possible, now seemed out of reach.

Eventually we were persuaded to visit the school and never looked back. Ben was there for six years and gained far more independence than he would have in a mainstream school.

If anyone has any doubts about special needs schools, go to one when they have a concert. But don’t forget to take a box of tissues; you’ll need them.

JANE SANDERS, Pembroke Dock, W. Wales.

Lacking in foresight

AS A divorced, single working mum, a nurse, I have two sons, 11 and eight.

The eldest has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. He has struggled for the past six years in a state school.

In Year Six, everything fell apart, resulting in periods of exclusion. I fought, with the help of the Kent Autistic Trust, to have my son placed in an appropriate specialist school.

One week before the tribunal proceedings, the Local Education Authority offered to fund my son in a specialist school alongside other dyslexic, dysarthric and Asperger’s children. Yes, at Pounds 15,000 a year. With little foresight, the Labour Government closed specialist facilities for children with learning disabilities in the belief that they could be integrated into mainstream schools. Unfortunately, they failed to train the teachers and teaching assistants first.

By placing our children in mainstream schools which lack the expertise and understanding of particular learning difficulties, we are setting them up for failure.

DIANE SHEDDON, New Romney, Kent.

A class apart

AS THE epidemiologist Michael Marmot has repeatedly stated, the inequality gap in this country is ever-widening and the ‘solid fact’ is that private schools do education better. The eternal child’s cry should rise to a countrywide wail: ‘It’s not fair!’ I feel sorry for Ruth Kelly for exposing herself as a hypocrite when she only wanted to give her child the best private education that she herself enjoyed.

Her mistake lay in patronising us all in the past by pretending that what Tower Hamlets offered was anything approaching the educational and extracurricular activities available at private schools.

This country should look to the modern-day private school system, learn from it and provide all our children with an education to be proud of.

JESSICA STREETING, Student Community Specialist Public Health Nurse, London South Bank University.

Keeping poor in place

I WAS not at all surprised by the hypocrisy of the Labour Government as Ruth Kelly opts for private education. How nice it must be to be able to afford to send one’s children to a private school.

I am a mother of three children, two of whom benefited from a grammar school education because of an assisted places scheme.

Ruth Kelly and others in the Labour Party disgust me. Why do they not practise what they preach?

The present Labour Government are not socialists. They are selfish, greedy egotists.

The assisted places scheme was the only means parents like myself had of sending their children to grammar schools.

Perhaps Ms Kelly will contribute to my youngest child’s education so she may also have the benefits of a private education.

The abolition of assisted places was the best way to keep people in their place and not let them aspire to better things. Thank you, Labour, for keeping us in our place.

JANE COLLINS, Fallowfield, Manchester.

Priced out of education

I SEEM to have a lot in common with Ruth Kelly. I am also a mother of a nine-year-old boy with severe dyslexia and dyspraxia. He is grossly underachieving and would benefit greatly from a nurturing private school with the privileges of small classes and a laptop.

However, unlike Ruth Kelly, I am not in a financial position to pay the Pounds 17,000 a year which will enable my son to have access to those lifechanging provisions.

I fully understand her decision to send her son to such a school. It is a shame that these facilities aren’t available in mainstream schools, so more children such as my son would have access to them.

KATHARINE FRIEDA, Stanmore, Middx.

Staggering arrogance

RUTH KELLY is probably doing her local school a favour by sending her child to a private facility.

‘Included’ children are often disruptive and take up too much teacher and support staff time because the resources were not put in place to compensate for the closure of special schools.

The money allocated to ‘ statemented’ children is sometimes used for other children who are presenting challenging behaviour.

Having said all this, the arrogance of Ms Kelly is staggering.

Mrs M EDMONDS, Shevington, Wigan.

Let down by Labour

I AM a Conservative borough councillor. My wife and I have two children, a son and a daughter, and are very proud of them both. My son is happily married with three children and is employed as an engineer. He is acutely dyslexic.

He went to the same state primary and secondary school that I went to and now his children are going to the same schools. If one of them should show symptoms of dyslexia, we, as a family, will probably have to consider having them educated privately.

As a school governor, I know that the splendid special needs teachers we have are too stretched to provide the necessary support in the state system for the 18 per cent of children who need them.

If you are a parent of the one in five children who has special needs and you cannot afford to ‘go private’, the Government has let you down and Ms Kelly should have the integrity to admit this.

MIKE HARRIS, Chelmsford, Essex.

This is how the rest of us have to cope, Minister

MY 11-YEAR-OLD grandson is now out of school. From his first year at the local primary/junior school there were problems, mainly social exclusion, bullying and humiliation over untidy work, though his reading was extremely good.

Despite repeated pleas, the school refused to recommend him for assessment of special educational needs. His family took him to an educational psychologist who diagnosed an IQ placing him in the top one per cent of the population, along with dyspraxia. A further diagnosis revealed Asperger’s.

A gentle, sensitive boy, John was deeply unhappy. His parents had no choice but to remove him from the school where he felt so tormented.

We heard of an independent school which had done wonders with a friend’s dyslexic goddaughter. The headmaster agreed to give John a week’s trial and subsequently offered him a place, at approximately Pounds 9,000 a year.

For two years he made amazing progress. He captained the third rugby team until he was promoted to the second, took part in school debates and became popular with his peers.

When he passed the entrance exam for the upper school, the school generously offered a 40 per cent bursary. John is aware it may not be financially possible for him to remain at the school where he has been so happy. His anxiety has led to sleepless nights.

Last September, the local education authority finally agreed to carry out an assessment. His parents’ plea for the Pounds 4,800 or so allocated per year per child in state education was completely ignored.

They had made it quite clear that without some help with funding they cannot keep him there any longer. They have already remortgaged their home. This gifted young boy who has suffered so much already, is now out of school, confused and very unhappy. What a tragedy that this Government abolished the assisted places scheme, thereby denying gifted children from families of moderate means the educational advantages so many of them are able to buy for their own.

Name and address supplied

Right to do her best for her child

I DO not usually agree with Ms Kelly’s policies, but in this case I do. She is making a choice as a parent, not a minister.

My youngest daughter has dyslexia. It was, and still is, a battle to get help for her even though she had a statement of special education needs.

Even with this she did not get all the help she needed or was entitled to, and now that she is at college, it is even harder. It is through her own determination that she has got this far.

If I could have paid for my daughter to receive private education to help her, I would not have hesitated, nor do I believe that those who criticise Ms Kelly would either if it were in the best interests of their child.

Mrs EILEEN GATHERCOLE, Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

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