Turing House in the headlines today - and not in a good way.

[MrsSalvoMontalbano]

boy with learning difficulties turned away

And mum is quite right to highlight that there are a huge range of different needs some very complex, requiring different skills and experience to enable the child to achieve their potential. It would not even be desirable for every school to have the resources to cater for all., which is exactly what the process is designed to do, identify the needs and match the child to the right environment.

Heathclif like I said, Turing House will have to play its part, and if it is to build up expertise and be properly inclusive, it will have to take students with a range of special needs. For example, Orleans Park doesn't just have dyslexic pupils, it has students with physical disabilities and other complex medical and social needs. But if Livingston House couldn't be adapted for wheelchairs, for example, it's not a suitable home for a school for three years, or beyond that as a primary school. That goes for portakabins on RACC car park or whatever temporary building they are putting up in Heathgate House. In this respect, it's the policy of fast-tracking free schools using buildings that wouldn't meet the building regs for maintained schools that is wrong.

One of the newsletters we got from Turing said they where doing work on the lift as well as refurbing the building so it should be suitable for wheelchairs i'd have thought.
Not even all existing schools have lifts if they're in old buildings.

Yes, it's true not all existing schools are suitable for wheelchairs, and that's a good sign. I would hope all new school buildings comply with equalities legislation, but if free schools don't even need planning permission for the first year, many could be getting round that.

Mum I agree, at the moment it is pretty much a postcode lottery whether your LA /local schools are respecting the disability discrimination. I do know a few schools that have gone all out to not just train their staff and diagnose the problems in pupils but also to embrace alternative teaching methods that often work with pupils who do not have learning difficulties /brain differences / disabilities as well but they are few and far between. I have an austistic friend who spends her time travelling around specialist schools trying to get them to appreciate the importance of even small changes that can have a big impact, eg getting rid of fluorescent lighting which can be very hard to cope with for someone with sensory difficulties.

icimoi we cannot and indeed should not be in full possession of the facts on this case, so we are not in a position to say whether LBRUT and all the mainstream schools acted lawfully or not. That is for the parents and LBRUT to resolve, indeed may have already resolved.

However it remains the case that singling out Turing for criticism based on shoddy and selective reporting and incomplete understanding of the facts when they were simply working with the local authority in what is an established process, and schools with far more facilities and experience, followed exactly the same process with the same end result, is just more unjustified Turing bashing.

I'm a bit bored of the conspiracy theories when though I am not connected to the school in any way I have been part of this thread all the way through and witnessed the idealism, determination and sheer hard work that went into providing an inclusive school for our community (however that gets defined by the eventual site). The Free School process may be fraught with inefficiency and vulnerable to people opening schools with doubtful motives but I have never seen any evidence that this school is anything but using an imperfect process to achieve it's ideals.

You would have to see the whole letter, and the full SEN statement before you could make a claim like that Icimoi. A few quotes isn't enough if you ask me.

Ici if you are going to be judge and jury based on the reporting in an article in the RTT (which was pulled quickly from the online site) written by Twickenham's finest young investigative reporter, giving some free advertising reporting this week on Stagecoach taking it's pupils to their West End showcase like they have been doing at the parent's expense, rather than on the strength of the talent of the cohort every year for the last ten years then that is obviously your right. Personally with my knowledge of the SEN process and the way it works, and my experience of the standard of the RTT's reporting in general and Twickenham Toms in particular and my total ignorance of this young boy's actual needs and which environment will best suit them I don't believe that we can make any sort of valid judgement and to do so does indeed amount to unjustified Turing bashing and a conspiracy theory.

I might add in that though extremely cynical about some of the workings of the Council, one thing I have come to admire in the course of activism in various campaigns on Schools and Planning and two Judicial Reviews is their ability to cover themselves legally, so I would add that into reaching my judgement as well