Should you strive to enrol your child in mainstream education?

Finding a suitable preschool for Yohanes has been one of my most challenging journeys, which I am very sure is something many parents can attest to. Truth be told, at that time, I wasn’t in the best of my mind. I couldn’t tell a good school from a bad one. I blamed schools that rejected Yohanes, and later, when I became more experienced, I realised that it is the correct thing to do for the school. I also foolishly thanked schools that preached inclusivity and accepted Yohanes, thinking they were being extremely generous with us, which I now know is not the case. In this article, I will write about my journey of exploring preschool options and my thoughts on sending an autistic child to a mainstream school in Singapore.

Many preschools promote inclusive education, and there is a wide range of thoughts and opinions regarding inclusivity within the autism community as well. For some, it means not labelling my child as autistic; for others, inclusive education means accepting their differences and tolerating their quirks. Unfortunately, acceptance alone is not enough for inclusive education. To learn well, children with autism require specialised learning support. Without that support, they are simply tolerated or, worse, ignored in the class, and that ultimately excludes them from the learning plan.

My personal experience best illustrates this. After that wonderful time Yohanes had at Novena with Teacher May, I was eager to find a similar experience for my child. After carefully considering my limited options, I decided to enrol Yohanes in a childcare centre in Bukit Timah. They claimed to practice inclusivity, which sounded appealing to us at the time. Just a week later, they called us to see if we would consider extra services for him. We are already receiving behavioural therapy services with Johnny, so we politely declined. If we wanted additional services, we would request them directly from Johnny. At that point, they weren’t discussing shadow support or involving our therapist at the school. They just wanted to establish some 1:1 classes with him.

A few weeks after that, his teacher informed my husband during a routine pickup that there were some faeces stains in our son’s underwear and a toilet incident. We were puzzled because at that point, he was already fully toilet-trained. We suspected that he had been left alone in a corner and had no choice but to soil himself or find a convenient place. Unfortunately, without him being able to tell us what happened, we could only guess. We quickly removed him from that preschool and settled him into a specialised special education school, where he completed his kindergarten without any incidents.

I am sure you agree by now that in most cases, an autistic child will do well in a SPED school, but if you wish to enrol your child in mainstream, you need to be prepared to spend more time supporting your child at the school. I know of a mummy who selflessly goes to her son’s school every day, waiting and getting ready for a call from the son’s form teacher, then rushing upstairs to the class to settle her son. Of course, you can also pay for shadow and counselling services if you have the means. All I can say is that you need to know what you are signing up for and be ready for the journey.

If your child is a Singaporean, it is his/her birthright to enter a mainstream education; your child doesn’t need to qualify, no pre-test, and no report is required. In fact, it is harder to enrol your child into a SPED school. Pathlight, for example, requires 3 reports and a test to see if your child is Pathlight material before they admit your child.

For ill-advised or unprepared parents who send their child to an MOE school, I empathise with MOE teachers. It is already tough managing a class of 30 students, and this becomes even more challenging when there is a student with autism present. While it is easy to fault parents for not doing enough during the early years, many of them simply lack the knowledge and resources to make informed choices.

In addition to the challenges from misguided preschools, another primary concern is the denial of parents. Progress is unlikely or very slow if parents do not put in the necessary effort to address developmental delays; simply hoping that the child will eventually “grow out of it” is not a viable solution. Denial can be fatal as well, in a recent news report about the death of twin boys,

If you want to put them into mainstream, you need to put in extra work to ease them into it.

Here at Starlight, we know what we’re doing, and we also have qualified therapists to provide clinical support. If you need help or have any questions, just let me know and I will do my best to answer them.

Shout-out to preschool operators: a child’s well-being is in your hands. Do not jeopardise a young child’s future for profit. If a child is not learning well in your classroom, please be honest with the parents.

More details from ECDA are available here if you wish to open up your preschool for children with autism in Singapore.