00:00Music
00:06Switching to homeschooling was the best thing to happen to Liam Waltoff.
00:11His meltdowns are far and few between now.
00:14He's become more confident in himself.
00:18Liam, who lives with ADHD and autism,
00:21had been a student at a public school in Canberra's North.
00:25His parents say from kindergarten the school failed to accommodate his complex needs.
00:31We were ignored. We weren't listened to.
00:34Our needs were ignored and weren't taken into account.
00:38Liam was denied access to the small group program
00:41for children who need additional support.
00:44He didn't get the daily help of a teacher's aide that he needed.
00:47Even a request to wear a necklace for sensory overload was refused.
00:52As a result, Liam struggled to participate and learn.
00:56How did you feel when you were going to the school?
00:59Uh...
01:02Left out and sad.
01:04I felt very different.
01:06As punishment for not finishing his work,
01:09they would keep him in at lunchtime and not let him go outside and play.
01:13Kate and Andrew begged the school to instead send Liam's work home to finish.
01:18But they wouldn't.
01:20Liam was segregated from his class, from his peers.
01:24He was the bad one and he was being called aside.
01:28And that's how he felt.
01:29That's how it made him feel.
01:30He was the...he was the problem.
01:32They watched their little boy's self-esteem disappear.
01:36It was a terrible time.
01:38Like, he was...he was not the same kid he is now when he was going to school.
01:43It was awful.
01:44Angela Burrows is the ACT branch president of the Australian Education Union.
01:50She says stories like Liam's prove the public education system is in urgent need of repair.
01:57We need to properly resource all ACT public schools.
02:00Miss Burrows also wants to see a reduction in class sizes.
02:04The class size model is so out of date, it doesn't take complexity into account.
02:09And that's a critical piece of work.
02:16I got to the point where I was contemplating suicide.
02:19It was pretty bad.
02:21It's hard to overstate the trauma Jacob Stern finds suffered at his public high school in Canberra South.
02:28Obviously it...it's affected my life, still affecting my life now.
02:32Jacob, who lives with autism, was overwhelmed by the class sizes,
02:36the unfamiliar environment and the rotation of teachers.
02:40His mum requested one-on-one support, sensory resources
02:45and a quiet space for her son to self-regulate.
02:48Every request was met with resistance.
02:51It came down to funding. The school didn't have the funding.
02:54It was infrastructure changes that needed to happen.
02:57Jacob's education suffered.
03:00I learnt more off watching people on YouTube than I did in school.
03:06He also felt isolated, excluded and was bullied relentlessly.
03:11I would say they cared more about trying to be inclusive to all races and people on the LGBTQ
03:21than they did for people with disabilities.
03:23The ABC has spoken to a dozen families across Canberra with children living with a range of disabilities
03:29who attended public schools.
03:31They all identified similar concerns, inadequate funding, a lack of resources
03:36and teachers struggling to cater to the needs of every student in their classes.
03:41The Education Minister is quick to concede there's room for improvement
03:46and assures work is already underway.
03:49She points to the inclusive education strategy and the public school system resourcing review,
03:55adding she's open to addressing outdated class sizes.
03:59What I want to make sure is that every child across every school is getting the funding that's required
04:04to give them the best possible education and that it's done sustainably.
04:09A factor often missing from this conversation is the impact on parents of children with disability.
04:16It's a really hard battle.
04:18It's for that reason ACT Parents has been pushing for government funding to start an advocacy service
04:24to help families navigate the public school system.
04:27We need to understand that parents feel really overwhelmed and very isolated in this process.
04:33It's an individual process.
04:35It's not something that there's a lot of support for.
04:38And when we support people we can actually get to better outcomes.
04:42A point that applies to students and teachers too.
04:46Rosie King, ABC News, Canberra.
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