When my son was in Year 4, I was forced to remove him from his primary school after they reassigned his 1:1 support assistant to other duties during lunchtime—leaving him, a 7-year-old with Type 1 diabetes, to administer his own insulin unsupervised. Unsurprisingly, this led to several serious dosing errors.
I submitted a formal complaint to the governors, which predictably went nowhere. The panel concluded—shockingly—that a child with Type 1 diabetes doesn’t necessarily need insulin for a meal. At the disability discrimination hearing, the school argued that it wasn’t their responsibility to supervise him. The outcome? Because the school had unilaterally edited his medical care plan, it was deemed not their duty to monitor how much insulin a child was giving himself. A follow-up complaint to the Department for Education hit the same wall, as the school claimed they were meeting statutory guidance by supervising him. Completely contradicting the discrimination hearing.
Fast forward to Year 6: this week, my son's current school received a bundle of handover documents from the previous one. Apparently, they weren’t sure where to send it. Tucked inside were documents the original school conveniently left out of the court bundle—like paperwork showing how much 1:1 funding was allocated specifically for lunchtime support, and emails from the hospital clearly stating an adult should be supervising every insulin dose.