Carmella and Rachael

Carmella has cerebral palsy, vision impairment and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

A couple of years ago Carmella started kindergarten.

The school said it ‘had never had a child with that level of disability before’, but was willing to ‘do whatever's needed’.

It built a ramp up to the classroom and made the toilets accessible.

‘For the first little while it seemed like everything was okay,’ her mother Rachael told the Royal Commission.

Teachers promised to ‘modify the environment, so that it was more supportive’. But they quickly decided she didn’t have ‘severe communication needs'.

Midway through the year, the school still hadn’t provided Carmella with a visually accessible reader so she could point to letters to spell out words.

‘They were still assessing her verbally, saying to her, “Make the sound for this letter.” She can't make that sound. And then they were going, “Oh, she can't do it,” so they'd fail her.’

Rachael hired therapists, ‘trying to get [the school] to make adjustments … but they just refused’.

‘In the end, she had zero interest in the school … That was kindergarten, it was horrible. Then year 1, it was a disaster.’

Carmella had ‘spent the whole year inside in kindergarten’, so Rachael wanted to make sure her teachers took her outside on the playground during breaks.

‘They just didn't get it.’

They left her ‘sit and play with toys’ indoors, and she was ‘on her iPad half the time’.

‘She was segregated from her peers at recess and lunch, she was kept locked inside a classroom. She missed out on all of that socialisation which is so critical, particularly for a child with communication difficulties.’

Once, teachers ‘physically restrained’ Carmella in her chair during recess.

‘She was trapped up against the table. They'd left her for 10 minutes screaming, with the timer on.’

Rachael met with the principle about it. He said, ‘She's not the only child with a disability we keep inside all lunch.’

At that point the relationship with the school ‘really broke down’. Rachael was getting ‘almost daily notes’ saying Carmella’s ‘been rude today … she’s been misbehaving in class, screaming’.

'Behaviours are an expression of an unmet need,’ she’d reply. ‘So maybe you should work on meeting those.’

Still, they would punish Carmella.

‘This is a child who uses a wheelchair or a walking frame for mobility, has limited speech, requires so much support in so many areas of her life. And they were sending her to the principal's office and berating her.’

Before the bell went, teachers were supposed to take Carmella out of class first. ‘Because she can't see where people are coming from, so she gets really overwhelmed.’

Once, ‘all the kids stampeded’ when she was still in the room and she ‘panicked and ran for the door’. She ‘scratched a little girl's face’ trying to get her out of the way. Teachers took her ‘to the front office and made her stand in front of this little girl’.

‘She was in full-blown panic mode,’ Rachael said, ‘It wasn't intentional. So, where's the value in humiliating her publicly? … [Carmella] was totally devastated.’

Carmella is now at a new school whose attitude is that ‘she can and should learn what all the other kids are learning’.

Rachael hopes that by high school, Carmella will be ‘independent, and take herself off to class … like any other kid'.

At her previous school that idea ‘was not even on their radar’.

‘She missed out on two of the most crucial years of her education and learnt nothing. The difference has just been extraordinary, and I think it just shows that inclusion can be done, and it shouldn't be that hard.’