Neurodiverse children are being forced out of education by Sunny View International School in Torremolinos, Spain.

An attempt was made by the School Management and Headteacher earlier this year to enforce an illegal policy whereby they were to prevent any access to additional educational support for children who required it from Year 1 onwards.

As parents of a neurodiverse 5 year-old, our child was due to progress to Year 1 in their next Academic year. They have been receiving additional educational support since they started with Sunny View's Pre-School department, and were due to continue this support into Year 1.

We were called into the school office with 1 day's notice, and told in a meeting with the school Directors and the Headteacher, that it was Sunny View's policy, starting immediately, that SEN provisions would not be permitted in Year 1 onwards (even when funded entirely by the parents - as we had been doing to-date).

After leaving the meeting we began researching the Organic law of Education in Spain, and quickly discovered that - aside from this rule being completely contradictory to their written SEN support policy - it was also completely illegal. They were effectively preventing access to education for children that required even the most basic of educational support (beyond basic schooling provisions).

After highlighting this to the school management and remaining persistent throughout numerous ignored emails, calls, and also internal requests for review by numerous teaching staff and other parents affected by the change, they finally conceded and performed a complete U-turn on this policy.

They never admitted to attempting to enforce an illegal and highly unethical policy, but they conceded to removing the policy change nonetheless.

During our time appealing the decision, in our communication with the management and headteacher of the school, we made them aware that our child was currently receiving 'shared' support - one adult was providing additional educational support to our child, alongside another. This was more than sufficient for both children to progress under this arrangement (and this was documented by all teaching staff working closely with the children) and it also kept the cost we were incurring to maintain this support, affordable.

Several weeks after reversing their illegal policy - during the final weeks of the current academic year - the school management announced that support for our child from Year 1 onwards must be performed by one, dedicated individual - not the shared arrangement that we could afford and had proven was working for our child. This also meant that our child would have to be separated from his good friend with whom he received the shared support alongside - the reasoning they provided for this was that 'there would be too many adults in the class'.

This reasoning is completely void in-light of shared support being more than satisfactory - so one adult can deliver the support that both children require, and therefore this should not affect the (self-imposed?) rules regarding the maximum number of adults per class.

We now therefore cannot return to the school - both for reasons of financial feasibility (due to the extra, unnecessary costs that one-to-one support brings), and for the fact that separating our child and forcing them to have support from someone they are unfamiliar with, when they will already be in a very unfamiliar setting, with unfamiliar friends, and a new teacher, provides no anchor of familiarity and will be highly disruptive for them.

To summarise, the School directors and headteacher knew of our position, and when they failed to enforce an illegal policy to prevent access to education for neurodiverse children, they took an approach to achieve the same result - without technically breaking the law whilst doing so.

Since the decision has been made, the school Director who was present in the meetings, and the headteacher, have ignored further questioning and requests for more rational reasoning behind their decisions, and have actually deliberately avoided engaging with us in physical interaction when passing-by during school pick-up/drop-off.

The policy changes and the enforcement of unreasonable/unnecessary support demands were all done against the wishes of senior teaching staff, and pleas/requests from internal sources were similarly completely ignored by the school management.

Is this really the sort of top-down dictatorship that you'd like your child to be a part of? Where the haphazard, uninformed decisions of the few individuals at the top - at the ignorance of its highly-experienced, highly-talented teaching team beneath them - may lead to the suspension or hindrance of education for your child.

We want to stop the school from treating neurodiverse children unfairly and covertly forcing them out of education.

Sunny View school has an 'elitist' approach to internal policies and management, despite openly advertising itself as an 'inclusive' school. Its practical policies that it applies to enrolled children, do not sit anywhere near in-line with their written SEN policies that they advertise to prospective students and parents.

Please sign our petition to help expose this unethical and borderline legal approach to education for young children - it's simply not kind, and not fair.