A little girl with cerebral palsy will be able to go to school with her big sister thanks to the generosity of friends and family. A total of £19, 500 was raised by Tallulah’s Fund to pay for essential alterations at Our Lady’s RC Primary School in Limehouse, London, enabling access for disabled children. Tallulah Frendo, aged four, will now join her sister Phoebe, seven. Their parents thanked everyone involved in the fund raising for their hard work and generous support.
Eastend Life, August 1, 2005

In public, teachers talk abut pupils with emotional problems, disaffection and challenging behaviour. But in the staffroom such children are often referred to as ‘nutters’ or ‘hooligans’. Elias Avramidis, a lecturer in teacher training at York University, said many teachers felt poorly-prepared to include pupils with emotional and behaviour difficulties in their lessons. He told a conference of special needs experts last week that teachers needed to think about their own classroom abilities. At the Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress at Strathclyde University, he said: ‘Teachers can be too quick to label children as having special needs. Maybe they need to examine how they are teaching rather than jumping to conclusions about pupils,’
Times Educational Supplement, Scotland, August 12, 2005

Irish students with disabilities are being forced to quit college due to lack of support in institutes of technology (ITs), a report has found. The research for AHEAD The Association of Higher Education Access and Disability, found 2.7 per cent of undergraduates in the 14 ITs have disabilities compared to 1.6 per cent in 1999. More than two-thirds of these 1,366 students have specific learning difficulties, such as with reading and writing. Much of the difficulties were said to be caused by lack of support staff.
Irish Examiner, Cork, August 24, 2005

Parents and childcare experts are being urged to help shape the future of dozens of children’s centres set for Gloucestershire. Forty centres, designed to help children under five lead better lives, have to be created in the County by 2010 under the Government’s Sure Start scheme. The centres will provide the key services needed by young families under one roof, including education, health and day care. Gloucestershire County Council, which is responsible for the centres, wants help deciding where they should be and how the services should operate.
Gloucestershire Echo, August 27, 2005

The parents of an autistic boy have won a four-year battle to send their son to a special school they set up with other parents because state schools were not catering for their needs. Samantha and Damien Hilton’s landmark victory offers hope to hundreds of parents who believe that education authorities are forcing their children to attend ordinary schools. County council chiefs in East Sussex had ruled that seven-year-old Max Hilton must attend a mainstream junior school 20 miles from his home in Crowborough. When his parents Samantha, 35, and Damien, 33, rejected the decision, saying sending Max, whose autism is ‘pronounced’, to a primary school – and one so far away – would be ‘disastrous’ for his development the council threatened them with prosecution. Now, however, a tribunal in London has agreed with the Hiltons and ruled that Max should attend the independent Step by Step School for autistic children two days a week and Herne juniors, a state primary in Crowborough, with one-to-one support, three days a week. The National Autistic Society said the dual placement between the public and independent sectors was an important precedent.
Sunday Telegraph, August 28, 2005