The
time had come for me to move up to big school as I was coming up to 11 years
old.
Inevitably
this was never going to be straightforward!
Mum,
Dad and I had looked around our local catchment school, but it didn’t really
suit. One of the main reasons being that again,they took one look at my
wheelchair and saw it as a problem. Actually the chair itself had never been a
problem, only the person sitting in it as the OSO frequently reminded me! Once
people had decided that this was going to cause difficulties, no matter how
good the school was access wise if there was a general negative attitude it was
never going to work. Access was also a very big problem as well in the school
as to get from one classroom to another I frequently would have had to have
gone on my own in my wheelchair around the outside of the school building
because there were steps inside the school which obviously were a no go area
for me and my wheelchair.
So
yet again we were off looking around at other schools. We went to look at the
main LEA school in Bakewell which had a brilliant reputation for educational
standards and discipline which mattered a lot to the parents especially at the
thought of Roger progressing onto the school after me because they knew strong
discipline was going to be very important for Roger my younger brother!
So
we decided after looking around and talking to the staff at length that this
was going to be the school for me and my brothers. Access wise it was not
brilliant, but the staff were; I and my wheelchair were not viewed as a
potential problem and they actually wanted me to go there (despite having
fossil and the OSO as parents). In reality the school has realised what an asset
I was clearly going to be to the school!
It
was not that straightforward because the school was not our catchment school,
which then, made it a lot more difficult to get there. However, the OSO by this
time was getting very, very good at putting our case forward (practice makes
perfect) and eventually I was accepted at the school. It was brilliant, I
really liked it there. The staff were great and I made loads and loads of
friends all of whom saw me for myself and not my wheelchair.
Mum had to take me each day, and fetch me back
because obviously I couldn’t get on the bus, but that didn’t stop locally as the
school was out of catchment. This caused ever more juggling for the OSO, taking
me to Bakewell, getting Roger and Alistair to their schools and then getting
herself to work in Sheffield and reverse at the end of the day. It didn’t take
long to realise this was going to be very difficult so luckily, the College
where she worked were offering redundancy packages so Mum managed to get one
and stopped working there. Then (would you believe it) she managed to get a
part time job at my school, so she only had to be two places at the same time
rather than three, easy peasy for the OSO and then finding that she had so much
spare time on her hands she went and bought herself a pony with her redundancy
money!!