Hi all

Just wanted to start a thread about mainstream vs. Education Support facilities.

Our boys both have autism.

The older one is more severely affected and possibly also has an intellectual delay. We built our house about 2 years before #1 came along and about 4 years before he was diagnosed but we managed to pick a suburb that had an education support centre on the same school site as the primary school - luck I guess!! He has been in the Education Support Centre since year 1 (mainstream kindy and pre-primary as the school didn't have ed support for those) and we have been extremely happy. How did we decide? We did haggle over it a lot - and in hindsight wished we hadn't let ourselves get so anxious. Firstly, the decision is not set in concrete. Secondly, if we had just thought "What is best for him?" instead of thinking "What do we want?" it would have been easy. He wasn't coping in a large noisy, busy mainstream class - and that would only get worse as the years went on. In Education Support the class numbers are much smaller and the staff are more experienced and often more highly trained for working with our kids. On our angle, the parents and staff were much more empathetic (not sympathetic) and we got access to the special school bus. Would he miss out on social interaction and verbal role models?? NO because there is a lovely mix of kids - very social and verbal right through to non-verbal and socially immature like our boy. He has started in a new high school this year that starts at Year 7 and we have been fairly happy how that's going. he's in a separate ed support class with lots of his peers from the primary school class he was in.

The second one is less severe - PDD-NOS and has more Asperger's tendencies is in a mainstream year 3 class with an Education Assistant 0.6 of the time. She's the same one we've had since pre-primary and she's fabulous!!! He also had the great advantage of being selected for Kindy and Pre-Primary in an Autism Unit - 3 kids to 3 adults all highly qualified with Applied Behaviour Analysis. If you ever get the opportunity, go and have a look. The kids are selected the year before they start kindy. This did wonders for him and us too.

With this one we've had the Autism Intervention Team from the Centre for Inclusive Schooling visit several times over the last few years and they have been fabulous and have assisted his teachers/EA to modify things in the classroom and curriculum for him. He has a computer which follows him right through school - when he reaches high school I hear on the grapevine it converts to a laptop. It has several high priced programs which help him with literacy, numeracy and other things.

I'm not saying ours has been smooth sailing but we are pretty content with school just now.......it's been a bumpy road!

So tell us about your experiences........good and bad.

cheers
Del

what a drama. For my family it has been a series of disasters,

First of all why didn't the teacehrs figure out there was something different about my boy? It took till year 5 to get a teaqcher to say that I needed to get him assessed thank god she did.
Then despite having the answer the teachers did not get anywhere near sufficient support and so primary school was a waste of space.
High school even worse. We moved ot the city to get a school with experince and they stuffed up so badly that in teh end the pediatrician recommended he home school and now 2 1/2 years later we still homeschool.
Have taken DET to the human rights and equal op commision only ti find them to be toothless tigers.

Was told we should take it to court but what single parent has the money.

Nope school was an absolutel disaster.

So I keep pushing for change in the departments handlign of ASD families. Ihope that no one else will have to go through what we did but unfortunately I hear to many stories like mine.

We need to open an ASD specific school.

Donna

I can't say that we have had it easy either, after Zachary went to mainstream kindy and preschool the district school "psyche" decided that Zac should move to a "ed support" system as the school could not cope with his disability there. I can't see why the teacher was doing a really good job? So off we went back and forth fighting the principal at the time who really didn't want Zac there and then my husband decided enough was enough and put Zac into an ed support unit nearby. I was mad first then as Zac started at the school I decided that if he was happy then I was. It hasn't been without dramas though with some more "disabled" children being rough and hurting him and me trying to sort it out. But hopefully the worst is over. Now I have to decide where he will go to high school - luckily that is about 4 years away.

Bye for now. Marie

My son was in a mainstream classroom up to the middle of year two when we started homeschooling. He did reasonably well the previous year despite having no aide time. We did get aide time the next year but it wasn't really used to benefit him and school refusal became the usual thing for him. My older son had had a nightmare year the year before due to his own educational and attention issues and wasn't learning at all so pulled both boys out of school. I don't really think an ed support unit would have been the way to go for us but if he'd had more appropriate support he might have remained in school. Homeschooling has worked out well for us so that's what we will continue to do.

My boy has only been in mainstream, as that is all we have here. It has been some years good, some years bad, some years neutral. Kindy and year 1 were the worst as we didn't have a diagnosis then, and the year 1 teacher assured us there was nothing wroing, so we thought he had grown out of it. Hah. She was just blind. Last year was hopeless he went backwards in his maths which is his best subject. Preprimary, year 2 and 3 were his best years, he had great teachers those years who looked at him as an individual and seemed to actually get him. The year 4 teacher tried, but she just didn't get him. The one thing we really regret is not keeping him down in pre primary, but he is very intelligent so we thought it would be better to move him along, of course we didn't realise at the time that he had autism, we just thought he couldn't relate to the kids in his class, I can't relate to half of them either, so thought that was fine. So far this year is a good year, his teacher is happy to talk to me, and seems to understand that I do know what I'm talking about. Early days yet, so we'll see.

Jenny