Council defends decision to bar disabled girl from school

A county council which told the parents of a disabled child that their daughter would not be able to attend the same school as her friends yesterday defended its decision, but offered her a glimmer of hope.

The parents of three-year-old Zoe Palmer, who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, were told by Suffolk County Council that she could not attend Thurston Primary School, along with her friends from playgroup, because it could not afford the necessary alterations.

Richard Robinson, the council's spokesman, said that Suffolk had a budget of pounds 10,000 for special needs improvements to 135 schools, and could not afford to spend 70 per cent of that on the chair lift and ramps that the council said the school would need.

The decision was criticised by Zoe's parents, who said that they had already raised pounds 4,500 for an electric chair, and that they should not have to raise more money to get her into her local school. "All she wants to do is go to the same school as all her friends in the village," Zoe's mother, Juliet, 27, said.

But yesterday Mr Robinson said that Thurston school itself could apply to the Government for access grants, and that if it could raise the money, the council would not object "in principle".

"We strive as much as we can to ensure that every parent gets their child to go to the school they want to," he said. "This girl has another 15 months, another financial year to go before she even has to go to school. It's still very early, there's a lot of mileage."

But he warned that even if Zoe Palmer were able to go to Thurston Primary School, she would eventually be faced with the same problem.

"The primary school have said that whereas they would love to have the girl at their school, at age nine she would still have to break off from her friends to go to another school because Thurston's middle school has no access," he said, adding that the alternative schools the council had suggested were nearby and had good wheelchair access.

Zoe Palmer's parents could not be reached for comment on Mr Robinson's remarks yesterday.