The Tasmanian coat of arms features thylacines as supporters. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A Kempton mother says her autistic son will not be able to attend his school full-time next year because it cannot afford to employ a full-time teacher's aide to care for him.
Valda Watkins said she had been told by staff at Kempton Primary that five-year-old Ethan would be able to attend Grade 1 only three days a week unless she acted as his teacher aide on the other school days. This was because the school could not afford a teacher's aide to support him in the classroom on those days, she said.
Under its Social Inclusion Policy and the disability standards for education, the State Government is obligated to provide appropriate support for all school-age children in Tasmania. Education Department deputy secretary Liz Banks would not comment on specific details of
the case or confirm if staff at the school had told Ms Watkins to keep her son at home next year. However, she said schools did not recommend part-time enrolments for students on the basis of funding, and parents were not asked to undertake the role of a teacher aide (Read the Education Department's full response, right). Disability service advocates and the state's education union said many more parents of disabled children were facing a range of new problems as schools struggled to make ends meet after cutbacks in their discretionary funding budgets.
Next year, Ethan will be eligible for only three days of teacher aide support funded by the Special Disability Register. Any additional aide time would have to be funded by his school.
Ms Watkins said it was "hurtful" that her son might not get adequate support next year.
"I think every single child is entitled to an education," she said.
"Why should my son stay at home when everyone else's kid gets to go to school?
"I honestly don't know what we'll do. It's just not fair.
"At the moment, he goes to prep five days a week and has a teacher aide full-time."
Ms Watkins said Ethan had severe autism and was non-verbal.
"He's come such a long way at school. He didn't like going to school at the start of the year but
now he loves it," she said. "To pull him out of school ... I'm really worried about what's going to happen to him."
Autism Tasmania spokeswoman Kristen Desmond was concerned the school felt it had no option to but to tell Ms Watkins to keep Ethan at home.
"How many kids at other schools under financial pressure are going to end up in a similar situation?" she said.
"It's obviously concerning that this is the state we're getting to in terms of the funding for children both on the disability register and not on the register.
"One of the things we think may be impacting on this situation is the cuts to discretionary funding [which schools rely on to pay for additional teacher aide support]."
Ms Desmond said many parents of autistic children were already receiving calls from their children's schools, asking them to collect their child if they didn't have enough aides to support them.
Association for Children with Disability executive officer Caroline Pegg said the school had an obligation to meet Ethan's needs. "If the school is saying that he actually needs the support [for an additional three days a week] then the school actually has a legal obligation against the disability standards for education to provide that support," she said.
"The school should have looked at what other resources were available for them before the parent was even consulted."
Ms Pegg said it was unfortunate if some teachers and principals were not aware of the legal obligation to meet standards of education for all students.
Australian Education Union state president Terry Polglase said public school teachers
had welcomed the State Government's Social Inclusion Policy when it was introduced more than a decade ago because it came with the guarantee of sufficient funding to support the educational needs of every child. "With the recent withdrawal of funding to keep class sizes at optimal levels, enforced belt-tightening and moves that could see responsibility for decision making move from systems to school principals, there is a need for a guarantee that funding to address disadvantage is restored," he said.
Opposition education spokesman Michael Ferguson said Ethan's case was the "terrible legacy" of budget cuts.
"Instead of listening to schools about the terrible impact of his cuts, Education Minister Nick McKim has slashed the education budget by a further $58 million in 2012-13," he said.
"Mr McKim has caused this funding crisis in schools, so he must take responsibility for resulting outcomes."
