Our children were in the school system for the first few years. We pulled
out our first child when the help he was receiving for his learning
disabilities was determined to be "unnecessary".

We left our second child in school as she was fending for herself, not doing
well, but getting by. ((Thinking back now, I left her in school because I
feared that being with her brothers all day would be detrimental to her.
She was the one to ask if she could also be home schooled. As a testimony to
her enjoyment of home schooling despite not being with her friends, she
recently attended a party by her former classmates (after a year of
homeschooling)and was asked when she would be going back to school. She
promptly replied that she would not be going back because she preferred home
schooling.))

However, the biggest blow was with our third child. He has such severe
learning disabilities that he repeated grade one twice (at our request) and
was still behind others in his group. ((Why were his disabilities not
detected earlier with all this early childhood screening talked about in the
school system?))

Well, we did request at the beginning of his second time around in grade one
that he be tested. You know what the response was of course, "He will be
placed on the waiting list and tested when the psychologist has the time".
The year dragged on and still he was not tested. Finally in February, he
saw the psychologist and went through a battery of tests. Now we were told
that it would be some time before we got the results back. So we waited
anxiously as his situation in class was definitely not improving despite the
fact that he had now been receiving aid outside of the classroom for almost
two years!

At last, I was called in for the results at the beginning of June. After
reviewing our child's case, the psychologist determined that he was
approximately three years behind his peers and that he was definitely
eligible for an aid in the classroom, however, due to the new government
funding, submission for grants for aids for the upcoming school year were to
be submitted back in April!!!! So in other words, I restated his phrase,
you are telling me that this child is going into grade two, as he cannot
repeat grade one a third time (for his own sake), almost three years behind
his peers, without an aid until the following school year? That is correct
was his response.

Needless to say that today none of our five children will go through this
effective quality system of ours which provides satisfactory education!

- Name withheld for obvious reasons