Faune and Kirsteen

Faune is in her last years of high school. She was diagnosed as autistic when she was six. She is intellectually gifted, but this has gone largely unrecognised in the many schools she has attended.

Kirsteen, her mum, told the Royal Commission that Faune’s experience across different school systems reflects the lack of equitable access to education that people with disability face.

‘I know every single parent who has a child in education with disability is facing exactly the same journey and it’s ruining – ruining us … It’s so soul destroying. I have never felt this destroyed as I have in the last couple of years.’

For her first years of education, Faune had a teacher who had just completed autism training.

‘So she actually made her classroom autism friendly, which was brilliant,’ Kirsteen recalled. ‘She kept the room very calm, the lighting very calm, and things went quite well there.’

The school didn’t progress beyond the early years, so Faune moved to a small public school. It did not go so well.

‘I got called constantly almost every day to come and get [Faune] because she was hiding under tables and crying. They would say she wouldn’t communicate with the teachers, but she actually wasn’t able to communicate with the teachers … There was no assistance offered from any professionals, allied health, nothing.’

Kirsteen enrolled Faune at a private school next. The principal told her Faune would be welcome, but it wasn’t long before ‘it all fell over’.

‘They wouldn’t do any reasonable adjustments. Their idea was that they would welcome [Faune] with her disability as long as she fitted into how they already operated their school.’

The situation deteriorated as Faune became a target of bullying.

On the advice of a psychologist, Faune withdrew from the school and Kirsteen homeschooled her.

This happened again during high school. Several times, homeschooling and distance education became necessary interludes to the bullying by students and lack of understanding and care from teachers.

At one school, teaching staff excluded Faune from activities.

‘We had problems with her attempting swimming, sporting events, cultural programs, everything. They would either block her and say she needed to stay back on campus, or they’d take her with a really clear plan that I had helped develop with them and then totally ignore the plan,’ Kirsteen said.

At another school there was an inclusion unit and a ‘really good learning plan’, but Faune’s teachers ‘just flatly refused’ to make reasonable adjustments to her work or ‘to change anything they were doing, any of their processes at all’.

During one period, Faune became ‘really distressed and unregulated all the time’.

‘She started pulling her hair out, ripping her nails down to the bed til they would bleed. And other things were starting to happen. She was in a really bad way.’

To prepare for her last years of school, Faune enrolled in a TAFE college. She thought she was on track to study for her higher school certificate, but the head of her unit had enrolled her in a different program for people with disability.

This led the principal to think Faune needed to be in a ‘special class for people like her’.

‘He was allowed to say that about me because I’m disabled so I don’t matter,’ Faune said. ‘[That] I’m not smart, I’m not going to benefit society in any way. So just shove her over there and let her put labels on jars.’

Faune is not sure if she’ll give school another try.

‘I just feel like it’s – that the teachers don’t want to teach me ... It’s almost like they’re setting me up to fail … And I think that at this point – like, why go and try and get an education from people who I believe just don’t like me? There’s no point.’