UPDATED: School failed to meet the needs of disabled boy, says ombudsman
Tuesday, 2pm - A GRAMMAR school has come under fire for failing to meet the needs of a disabled boy sitting the 11-plus entrance exam.
Tuesday, 2pm - A GRAMMAR school has come under fire for failing to meet the needs of a disabled boy sitting the 11-plus entrance exam.A report was released on Tuesday by the Local Government Ombudsman, which investigated claims that King's School had discriminated against an autistic boy with dyspraxia and attention deficit disorder.
%%Could not get body element policy for VersionedContentId(1.21128.UNDEFINED)Ombudsman Anne Seex found that the school had not made reasonable adjustments for the boy, whose disability required him to take the exam under special conditions.
The boy's mother, referred to as Ms P in the report, had warned the school of his disabilities, but said she was told no exceptions could be made.
His condition means he struggles if he is not comfortable with his environment and should have been seated in a separate classroom during the exam.
Ms P complained that the school discriminated against her son resulting in him failing the exam, which she believed he would have passed had his needs been met.
She said: "He was extremely distressed and he was crying after the exam. He had got himself in a state.
"The deputy head teacher of King's School just looked at me and said, 'oh dear'.
"He was distraught and later locked himself in a friend's bathroom for a couple of hours."
She appealed against the school's refusal to admit him but an appeal panel rejected it, not considering the school's duties under the Disability Discrimination Act and the government's codes of practice on school admissions and school admission appeals.
The school failed to make reasonable adjustments after acting on advice from the Grammar Schools' Consortium.
It accepted it was at fault and agreed to carry out Mrs Seex's recommendations, which were:
* to apologise to the complainant and her son, and give a gift token to the value of 50 in compensation;
* to inform applicants of how to raise potential disability issues before their child sits the 11-plus exam;
* to make reasonable enquiries and consider its responsibilities in light of individual circumstances, the law and government guidance wherever disability issues arise in the future.
Ms P's son is now 12 and he is happy at a different grammar school.
She said: "He has had nothing but fantastic support and the school has been brilliant."
National Autistic Society policy manager Beth Reid said: "There is still a lack of awareness in schools regarding their legal duties towards people with autism, despite the fact that it affects one in a hundred children.
"Without the right support, autism can have a profound, sometimes devastating effect."
King's School headteacher Stephen Howarth said: "The Ombudman's statement relates to a case which originated two years ago.
Since then the school has put in place very clear and stringent arrangements which ensure that we can seek out and respond fully to the individual requirements of any candidate with special needs.
In this case it was clear that our arrangements were not flexible enough.
The Ombudsman's view is that we should have made more enquiries and then permitted this candidate to sit the tests in his own school rather than with the other candidates who in Grantham take the tests at the grammar school.
We accept that conclusion. However, we must insist that there was no deliberate attempt to discriminate against this candidate. Indeed, the school has always been sensitive to students' special needs, and this applies particularly to the staff responsible for our admissions arrangements.
The admissions staff did seek advice through the appropriate channels (the local authority and the grammar schools consortium) in this case because they were trying to be fair both to this candidate and to all the other candidates; this was the responsible thing to do.
The LA was uncertain, as we were, and unable to offer clear guidance at the time.
The consortium's advice was given and acted upon in good faith, but unfortunately for both the school and the candidate it turned out to be mistaken advice.
Because we acted on the advice received, the mistake clearly became ours and we have accepted full responsibility for this.
We obviously regret any upset caused.
Though the Ombudsman's press release states that the candidate became very distraught in the examination, the invigilator who sat with this group of 14 candidates had been instructed to report any such occurrence and to summon support from our special needs coordinator or the head of lower school (both of whom were on standby for just this possibility in the case of this candidate), but both the tests taken by this group of candidates (on two separate Saturdays) were reported to have progressed without incident.
It is our policy to record any unusual event.
We are sorry that we appear to have missed this candidate's distress in the first test and that we only became aware of the difficulty after the results were published.
However, we are pleased that we were able to provide a remedy acceptable to the Ombudsman and also that the candidate was able to secure a place in another Lincolnshire grammar school.
Our offer of a further appeal for entry to King's was not taken up.
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Friday 03 September 2010
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