A nursery school has apologised to the parents of a child with special needs after accepting she was treated less favourably because of her disability. The parents of Amelie Cummins took a disability discrimination case on behalf of their daughter against Trinity Nursery School in Bangor, Co Down, Northern Ireland.
It was lodged with the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal was supported by the Equality Commission. Amelie, who was born with Down’s Syndrome, has a statement of special educational needs which provided for her to attend mainstream nursery school with 22.5 hours of classroom support each week.
She started Trinity Nursery School in September 2020 but her family say they were told that Amelie had to start school 15 minutes later each day than all the other children in her class, even though she had a dedicated classroom assistant. They also say that the school wanted Amelie to finish 15 minutes earlier too, but they refused to accept this and removed her from the nursery school three months later, in December 2020, reports Belfast Live.
