Black Forest Primary School principal counselled after Year 3 boy with ADHD put in time out all day

A mother’s fury has been unleashed after a principal banished her child to time out all day after an altercation with another student.

A principal has been counselled after keeping an ADHD diagnosed eight-year-old boy in time out for a whole day and telling his mother he was “very deliberately trying to make sure this is something he hates”.

Black Forest Primary School principal Iain Elliott wrote an email to the boy’s mother at the end of the school day saying her son had been kept in the front office “with no work and nothing to read”.

In the email, seen by The Advertiser, Mr Elliott added that he planned to impose the same consequence the following day.

A principal has been counselled after keeping an ADHD diagnosed eight-year-old boy in time out for a whole day.

It came after the boy, who has been diagnosed with ADHD, pushed over another student during a game in the schoolyard that morning, on February 29.

The previous day his mother Kathryn, who did not want her surname published, had been asked to collect her son early from school after he hurt a different classmate.

Mr Elliott has since apologised and the school has made changes including offering staff further training.

However, Kathryn said her son “feels unsafe” at school and worried the consequence would be imposed again.

“You can’t do that to a kid,” she said.

“(My son) said to me ‘If he puts me in that office again I’m going to run away from school’.”

Education Department chief executive Professor Martin Westwell said Mr Elliott’s email “was worded inappropriately - and I have been assured it won’t happen again”.

Professor Westwell said Mr Elliott “believed he was acting in the best interests of the safety of all students at the school”.

“The principal apologised at the very first opportunity, with the school and family working positively together since then,” he said.

The Advertiser contacted the school to seek a response from Mr Elliott but was referred to the department’s media unit.

In the response provided Professor Westwell said the school had arranged extra training for staff “around self-regulation” and organised a behaviour coach and lunch time soccer club to support the boy at school.

The child’s mother said her son “feels unsafe” at school and worried the consequence would be imposed again.

“Classrooms can be very complex environments, with education and positive partnerships between families and schools imperative to ensuring success of students,” Professor Westwell said.

Kathryn told The Advertiser she felt Mr Elliott’s email was inappropriate and that she should have been contacted in the morning to discuss how he planned to discipline her son.

“If I had known that was his plan I would have absolutely come and picked him up,” she said.

In his email to her, Mr Elliott noted that Kathryn had been sick the previous day and he had waited until the afternoon to contact her “in the hope that you might have got some rest and weren’t sitting at home all day worrying about this”.

He went on to say he would “keep (her son) up here again tomorrow”.

“I have left him here today with no work, nothing to read, very deliberately trying to make sure this is something he hates,” Mr Elliott wrote.

“I’m hoping he is beginning to not like being up here!”

Two weeks after receiving the email, Kathryn lodged a formal complaint with Education Minister Blair Boyer’s office.

An adviser from his office rang her the next day and a meeting was arranged with Education Department leaders.

According to emails seen by The Advertiser, Mr Elliott apologised at a meeting on March 26.

In her original complaint Kathryn described the response to her son’s behaviour as “a cruel punishment - not consequence - and torture for a neurodivergent child to say the least”.

Kathryn said she chose to keep her son home the day after he was put in time out “as I could not knowingly send him back to school for further punishment”.

She said her son had been sent to the office before but had previously been allowed to continue with school work.

He has an individual learning plan, known as a One Plan, and has not been suspended for past behaviour.