Education chiefs have still to appoint head teachers for two crisis-hit Tyneside special schools which failed recent OFSTED inspections. A report criticised management and teaching at Margaret Sutton School in South Shields and management techniques were also criticised at Epinay School in Jarrow.
The Journal, Newcastle, September 2, 1997

In a letter on the exclusion from mainstream school of five-year-old Nadia Clark the Development Worker for Disability Action North East, David Colley, says the argument is not about Nadia’s ability following professional advice. ‘It’s about her civil rights to the same choices as other citizens.’ According to Mr Colley, it is possible for professional opinion to be used to justify the ‘most appalling discrimination against disabled people’.
Newcastle upon Tyne Journal, September 8, 1997

Abbey School Autism Unit, the first of its kind in East Kent, will take up to a maximum of 16 students taking the full curriculum up to GCSE and possibly beyond to sixth form studies. The youngsters will be encouraged to attend mainstream classes in the main school as appropriate but headmaster Mr Peter Walker said there would be no pressure to attend.
Faversham Times, September 10, 1997

Winchester MP Mark Oaten is backing a family’s’ struggle to get their son moved from a special school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties to a mainstream school with a special unit for children with dyslexia. Graham House, from Stanmore, Hants, says his 12-year-old son, Leslie, is not getting the education he needs at the special school. He said: ‘Leslie’s problems are from his dyslexia. He should not be there and we want him moved’. A County Council spokesman said it shared the aim of moving Leslie to a mainstream school but felt he was not yet ready.
Winchester Gazette Extra, September 11, 1997

A woman who sued her former schools for failing to recognise her as having dyslexia claiming that they condemned her to a life of ‘temporary menial’ jobs has won £45,650 damages in the High Court. The court was told that teachers failed to appreciate that Pamela Phelps, now 23, suffered from word blindness and put her failure to read and write down to being lazy and unenthusiastic. Mr Justice Garland found the London Borough of Hillingdon, as her education authority, guilty of a breach of the duty of care they owed her to give her the best start in life.
London Evening Standard, September 23, 1997

Kent County Council says that sending three-year-old Piers Mepsted to Higashi Centre in Boston, USA, will entail unnecessary public expenditure. Piers has autism and his parents say he is making tremendous progress at Higashi and will regress if he is placed at a nursery in Dartford as recommended by the County Council. According to a spokesman the cost of sending Piers to Higashi is equivalent to the annual running costs of an average size nursery unit in this country. ‘We believe all Pier’s needs can be fully by the Dartford School nursery and that he would make similar progress to that which he is making at Higashi.’ The case is expected to go before a Special Needs Tribunal early next year.
Medway News (Chatham Rochester and Gillingham News) September 26, 1997.