Aspect Riverina School

As the father of a high functioning autistic child who attended the school for two years, I would like to say that I am very disappointed in the quality of the education and care received.

My son has many of the usual behavioural issues associated with his diagnosis, and nothing especially challenging. Yet the school could not handle him. He was suspended on numerous occasions, for example, for squirting a teacher with a bottle of water and for taking a fork from the staff room (to which, obviously, he should have been precluded access through adequate supervision), before finally being expelled.

Frequent changes of management, teachers and policy on issues such as IT use by students did not help, and, as parents and carers of autistic children would be aware, maintaining consistent routines and boundaries is key to maintaining an autism-friendly environment. Arbitrary crackdowns on such things as bringing toys from home and recreational computer use created an atmosphere of uncertainty and resentment among students and parents, who were left not knowing what the new rules would be from one week to the next, and to whom they would be applied.

Finally, the work set for my son was not appropriately challenging, given his academic ability. Given the very small class sizes (4-5), an individualised curriculum should not have been too hard to manage.