Child with Disability, Down Syndrome, Intellectual Disability, Learning, Schools, Special Needs 
No Comments One Sleep
In early June this year each grade six student was required to complete a form listing the three secondary schools they wish to attend next year attend. Now there’s only one sleep until all these children are notified of their offers of positions. For us though, it will be a longer wait, until mid-September actually. This is because of several extra layers of bureaucracy concerning Poppet’s capabilities.
Schools here are divided into ‘zones’ and each zone includes a number of government-run schools, independent schools and at least one ‘special school’, (SS) and one ‘special development school’, (SDS). If you wish to send your child to a school outside your zone, you need to make a special application to that school. The application is assessed against a number of criteria, including the school’s capacity.
A SS takes children with IQ’s between 50 and 70, and an SDS takes children with IQ’s from 30 to 50. These students may also attend independent or mainstream schools, but there is a matter of funding and also the preparedness of the school to accept and include someone with special needs that needs to be considered. (Yes, there are schools that simply won’t consider taking on a student such as Poppet, even though it is against the law.)
Some students with special needs require a great deal of support, whilst others need minimal help. The level of support required is assessed by the completion of a comprehensive survey that is completed by the student’s current school principal, their parent, the teacher and a representative from the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.
Based on the outcomes of this survey, the government allocates a ‘level’ to that student, which is supposed to be commensurate to the needs of the student. If the student attends a government-funded school, the school could receive around $28,000 each year to help meet any additional costs associated with the student’s needs. Should the child go to a Catholic school, the government will pay the school around $1,800 and an independent school will receive around $1,500. These figures are exclusive of the student’s needs.
For us, if we wanted Poppet to go to an independent school, we’d be required to pay for a full-time aide for her, which would be around $40,000 each year, as well as school fees. This is out of our league financially unfortunately for there was one independent school that would have seen Poppet shine in all respects.
As for government schools, in Poppet’s case, she would automatically be accepted at our local secondary school or the SDS. The calculated level of funding would therefore go to that school. The level of funding that will be apportioned to Poppet’s secondary schooling will be decided by mid-September, which is why we are left waiting to learn of her options.
I’ve mentioned before how emotionally taxing this has been. In fact, I’ve been agonising over this decision for over 18 months. With the end now only a matter of weeks away, I’m a little excited and hopeful, but also circumspect. I am worried that my daughter may miss out on the best opportunity to help her shine. I’ll try to cross that bridge when we come to it. My next post will cover the process we had to take to decide which schools we nominated, which was quite a complex process.
If you’re interested, try these links for more thinking about this issue: for some of my thoughts about special development schools, go to: http://downswithups.com/category/schools/page/4/ and http://downswithups.com/category/schools/page/6/ .
For some of my thoughts about selecting students for special schools and special development schools, go to: http://downswithups.com/category/schools/page/5/ .