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Alex Lo

She says 13-year-old was expelled, but school says he is welcome to return

A pupil with a very high IQ who suffers from dyslexia and paranoia is being forced to jump from school to school because of a lack of proper academic support, his mother says.

Chau Sin, 13, has an IQ score above 130 in government-run tests, his mother, Ho Sui-kuen, says.  But the gifted boy is also dyslexic and paranoid about going to school for fear of being beaten up by pupils from a nearby school in Tuen Mun.

Ms Ho says he was kicked out of his school, the Chung Sing Benevolent Society Mrs Aw Boon Haw Secondary School,  this month.

But the school told education authorities that although the Form One student skipped classes for weeks on end, he was welcome back any time. And the Education and Manpower Bureau said there had been no expulsion.

Ms Ho, a single unemployed parent on social welfare, said she was personally informed  about the expulsion.

'A senior teacher told me face-to-face that he can no longer attend the school because his school place has been 'transferred back to the [Education and Manpower] Bureau',' she said. 'What can this mean other than expulsion?'

She said she had found a place for him at TWGHs Mr and Mrs Kwong Sik Kwan College, also in Tuen Mun.

Both schools were unavailable to comment yesterday.

Mother and son live in a tiny unit at a Tuen Mun public housing estate. She wants authorities to fund her son to attend a school for the gifted and to provide therapy for his dyslexia and behavioural problems.

'He has friends, but sometimes he can offend people when he thinks you are stupid and calls you an idiot,' Ms Ho said. 'He also has low self-esteem because school teachers always round on him and criticise him.'

In primary school, while classmates were learning arithmetic, Chau devised a kind of logarithm that allowed him to perform calculations in his head.  But his dyslexia often made him mix up parts of Chinese characters when writing.

Chau had to repeat Form One this year at the Chung Sing school, where he failed mathematics and most other subjects, Ms Ho said.

A spokeswoman for the Education and Manpower Bureau said Chau regularly missed school and failed to turn up at counselling sessions with an educational psychologist from the bureau.

'He was never expelled. We have confirmation from his own school that he is welcome back any time he wants to go back,' she said.

There were currently no provisions to send him to special schools, the spokeswoman said. 'There have been preliminary tests which showed he had a high IQ, but we are scheduling him for more extensive tests.'

Ms Ho acknowledged Chau had missed many classes and some psychological sessions. She said he was fearful of going outside.

'He has been threatened by some pupils from a school near his own school and he is very worried they would beat him when they see him,' she said. 'Sometimes he is afraid to step outside our own home.' She said she believed he was not just being paranoid.

Lau Sing,  director of Baptist University's centre for child development, said mainstream local schools did not have enough resources to help students with special needs.



No support for gifted dyslexic, says mother