June 1, 2023, ABC News: Concerns some schools are contravening disability legislation by not accepting neurodiverse children https://amp.abc.net.au/article/102422564
Sydney mother Jana Hunt is worried she won't be able to find the right school for her four-year-old son Harrison to start at next year.
She said it had been challenging because he had been diagnosed with autism and oppositional defiant disorder, and he was also highly intelligent.
"I'm waking up in the middle of the night so stressed," Ms Hunt said.
She said she was up-front about Harrison's diagnoses when she started the enrolment process with two private schools last year.
One of them didn't get back to her about the enrolment, while Ms Hunt said the other school was initially welcoming, but after a lengthy process told the family the school couldn't take Harrison.
"They said that we had to engage with an ASPECT school, which is a very high-needs school for children with disabilities," Ms Hunt said.
"And they said we need to go through the public system and get into a support class … it's a bit of a process, which we're in the middle of now.
"When I asked about enrolling him on the waitlist they said to me, 'We wouldn't want you to waste your money.'"
Ms Hunt explained that the suggested public school had limited placements for children like Harrison and the local Catholic school would accept him but couldn't offer much in the way of support.
So Ms Hunt is worried that her son, like many other neurodiverse children, is falling through the cracks of the education system, where he doesn't fit in at a special needs school, but the mainstream schools are proving hard to get into as well….
Every child has a right to a public education
The Human Rights Commission received more than 120 complaints related to discrimination in education in the 2021-2022 financial year, and refusal to enrol students makes up a proportion of that number.
The NSW Education Department said both government and non-government schools must adhere to the discrimination legislation, although it has no power over private schools' enrolment processes.
It also said that every child had a right to be educated in their local public school. The federal Education Department gave a similar response and added that all schools must provide reasonable adjustments for students with disability.
Family Advocacy, which represents people and families with disability, said it often advocated for them when schools were "gatekeeping" or keeping special needs children off the enrolment books.
Executive officer Cecile Sullivan Elder said the education department did "push back strongly" and try to stop it, "but there's a long way to go".
Ms Elder agreed that by saying no to neurodiverse students, schools were contravening the discrimination and human rights legislation.
"We do believe that every child, regardless of their complexities and disabilities, should have access to their local school or school of choice, if we're talking about a private school," she said.
"There will be many types of students that will fall between the gaps and so that transformative change is needed in how we do education in this country."
