SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

Let’s say you’re desperately worried about your 10-year-old son who’s is in terrible trouble at school - he’s still can’t read more than a few words; he hates school; and lately he has started to display very serious behaviour problems. You think that your son needs to be referred for testing and special help, but the school won’t listen. What can you do?

Obviously, you have already talked to your son’s teacher and the school principal - and got nowhere. If you turn to the school council, you are sure to get a brush-off, since they can’t get involved in the problems of individual children and anyway they’re mostly about fund-raising. So you approach your school board trustee, and you are astonished to learn that she, a former high school geography teacher, cannot or will not do anything for your son since, in her words, the educators at the school are the experts. Furthermore, your trustee informs you that you would be wasting your time to apply to the board of trustees since they never discuss individual cases.

It looks as if the only way you can save your son is to pull him out of his current school. Unfortunately, your school board has a firm policy of assigning students to schools on the basis of where they live, and you soon discover that you are not allowed to ask for a transfer to a different public school. Your only options appear to be a private school or home-schooling. Let’s hope you are in a position to consider one of these options, because otherwise it’s highly likely that your son will become a statistic.

Given the current structure of Ontario’s education system, most of the province’s parents have very little wiggle room if one of their kids is unlucky enough to encounter problems at school.