AS the island’s 300,000 primary and high school students prepare to start school next week, one desperate mother has given up on the search for a school for her teenage son.

Annette Francis says the public education system is failing her 14-year-old son, Ricardo, who has ‘learning difficulties’. She has decided to keep him at home this year.

In an interview with the Sunday Observer just ahead of the new school year, Francis complained that she had sent Ricardo to school after school, but his grades remained consistently poor.

The teachers also misunderstand his behaviour, such as his occasional sudden outbursts, strange hand signals and teeth grinding, made worse by a stutter and his inability to express himself.

Often he is put outside of the classroom and left to remain there, for being ‘loud’ and ‘disruptive’.

“I want to know where are the schools in Kingston where a child like him with learning problems can be taught and understand, what he is taught?” Francis asked.

Francis, who works as a housekeeper and chef at a consulate in New Kingston, tried two private schools in Kingston which cater to children with special education needs, but their fees of between $36,000 and $48,000 were prohibitive.

“He needs special attention and he is not getting the teaching he needs,” she said.

“I can’t afford a tutor to teach him one to one. I called the ministry to ask if there is a government school where I can send him, and they couldn’t give me a school,” she said.

State minister of education Senator Noel Monteith admitted that there were “quite a few cases” like Ricardo’s, which the system has not been able to help.

“We are desperately short of those institutions,” he said.

There is a School of Hope in every parish, but these mostly cater to students with physical disabilities. However, changes are expected within another three years.

“It’s all part of the transformation system where specialists will be employed to regional education authorities to address these cases,” Monteith said.

“In our new drive, we are setting up so they can stay in the regular system and employ specialists to deal with these cases.”

But within three years, Ricardo will be 17 and almost beyond the age for high school.

Francis was unable to explain her son’s condition, although he was tested seven years ago at Mico’s child assessment unit, now called the Mico Child Assessment and Research in Education (CARE) Centre.

According to Francis, his assessors “did not come to a diagnosis.”

They said Ricardo displayed “autistic behaviour, but he is not autistic,” she said.

After a year at their learning facility, Mico said they had no space.

“They couldn’t deal with him,” Francis said.

She enrolled Ricardo at Zenith Prep in Kingston which had a small number of children with mild disabilities, and there he remained for four years until he did GSAT in 2003.

It was at Zenith Prep that he started reading and writing, ironically, after a caring secretary took over teaching his class, after the regular teacher resigned the job.

After that he went downhill

“He couldn’t manage regular school at Zenith,” she said.

His grades remained low and after GSAT, the ministry placed him at the Greater Portmore High School in St Catherine, which is over 10 miles from their home in New Kingston.

Francis contacted the ministry about the problem and someone promised to get back to her. She is still waiting.

She now has Ricardo enrolled at Kingsway High, at a cost of roughly $23,000 per term.

Before school ended last term, Francis was advised that her son would have to repeat the year, which means additional expense with no guarantee of any improvement in his grades.

On the upside, young Francis knows every city and country on the World Atlas and he scored Bs and Cs in Mathematics last year.

His Math teacher’s comments were: ‘Tries hard to do well’ and ‘A hard-working and capable student’.

For all the other subjects, about 14 in total, the comments were nearly all the same: ‘With greater application, work should improve;’ ‘Tests not done’; ‘Needs extra help’; ‘Has difficulty with exams’; ‘Shows little interest’.

Francis said she would not be sending Ricardo back to Kingsway, but will try to home-school him, “because he is not learning what they are teaching him, but he is learning what he is teaching himself.”

“There are lots of children out there who need special attention . they are not going to school because there are no schools for them,” she said.

editorial@jamaicaobserver.com