There are plenty of boarding school options in the UK for mainstream children, but what is available for children with special needs? Sue Anderson Education Consultants, education specialists from the UK, visits Saudi Arabia regularly and they can offer advice to parents whose children are in this category. On her recent visit to Jeddah, Sue Anderson met me at the Meridien Hotel, and after a long chat about mainstream education, we talked about children with learning difficulties: “Whether we are talking about mild dyslexia or dyspraxia, or Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or more severe problems – Down's Syndrome, even Asperger's Syndrome (AS) and autism – I can help with all of those things. We have mainstream schools with very good learning support departments, or the next level would be a school specialising in dyslexics, or whatever the problem is.” Anderson is the ideal person to discuss this type of problem with because not only has she been in the business of education for 28 years, but she has also had personal experience of coping with a child with learning difficulties. She has four children, and her son suffered from severe dyslexia. “I maintain to this day that sending him to the right school is the best money I have ever spent in my life. At the age of ten, he asked me if he could have a brain transplant because he thought he was so stupid. And that is just heartbreaking to hear your child say that. But finding the right mainstream school with a wonderful learning support department gave him the skills and the confidence to deal with the difficulty he had. As a result, he was able to grow up and be successful in life. Without that, I don't know what would have happened to him.” She went on to emphasize the importance of having a child assessed if you have reason to believe that he has a learning difficulty: “If you suspect something is wrong, or the school has picked up on a problem, it is very important to go to the UK and have an Educational Psychologist's report done there. I would recommend that above getting this done in country. Once you have got an Educational Psychologist's report, it means you can identify the best support required for that child. We would then be able to recommend schools that meet the criteria and meet the needs of the child. The sooner that they can get first class expert help and advice, the better.” For those children who have mild learning disabilities, they can sometimes move into mainstream education – for example, dyslexia or dyspraxia, or even Down's Syndrome. “We have mainstream schools with very good learning support departments. I visited a school not long ago in the north of England and they have a Down's Syndrome boy there. They were proud to say that he has fitted in and loves it. And it's such a brilliant thing for all the other students to see that everyone isn't always just like them, there are other people out there too. The next level would be a school specialising in whatever the problem is. But there are fantastic schools that can help children. You have to select the school carefully, and it depends on the level of difficulty that the student has.” She recounted a story about a Saudi family and their seventeen-year-old son that she met on one of her visits: “As soon as I met the boy I realised that he would not fit into mainstream school – he was autistic. We therefore arranged for the family to visit some of the special schools on our list. He started at the school and within the first two or three months, they sent me a report on him. He had settled in very well and was integrating with the other students. They sent some photos, and there were pictures of him where he was cooking, he was making some dough and baking something. And then there was another of him playing a guitar, and another one where he was checking out his own food in a supermarket. He had been taken to the supermarket as part of a group and they were learning how to buy food and check it out themselves I felt so thrilled that he was learning basic life skills, something that he would not have had that opportunity to do here, and learning the independence of living away from the family. I think it was very exciting for him. I think the parents were also relieved that the burden has been shared. As these students get older, it is incredibly difficult for the family to keep somebody like that occupied and entertained.” When the time comes for these students to leave school, it is possible that some of them can live on their own, with support. Otherwise, the particular group of schools that Anderson works with have centres that they can move on to. “They have a 60-year-olds there. So there are centres in the UK where he could continue. But let's hope that one day, with the right support, the boy in question will be able to return home to live in Saudi Arabia.” Anderson has personally visited over 350 schools in the UK of which eight are for specifically for children with Special Needs. She has also been working with a group that has 15 specialist schools for students with Asperger's Syndrome and autism: “There are great advantages to sending a child to a specialist school because of the research that has been done, and the help and advice in the UK is very advanced. The teachers understand the problems completely, they use the very latest techniques, and they can adapt the programme to suit each child because usually, autism and Asperger's have a wide spectrum of difficulties. Therefore it is very much one to one, and each child will be treated as an individual and they will be learning the skills for the future.” The school fees, at around £100,000 per year, will leave a big dent in your bank balance. UK nationals may be eligible for financial assistance. Saudi families would either have to bear the entire cost themselves, or see if they can get some government funding to assist them.
