It’s an absolute nightmare: maternal experiences of enrolling children diagnosed with autism in primary school in Sydney, Australia

Abstract

In this article I analyse maternal narratives of informal school exclusion at the point of transition into primary school in Sydney, Australia. The common thread that connects these narratives is the experience of stigma. Some scholars have argued that the link between stigma and disability is weakening. The material presented here, drawn from interviews with 22 mothers of children with autism, gives a picture of the continuing pervasive stigmatisation of children with autism and their mothers, as well as a systemic failure of all sectors of the education system in Australia to meet the promises of policies of school inclusion.

Keywords:

• autism
• education
• school
• exclusion
• transition
• stigma
• inclusion
• mothers

Acknowledgements

The author thanks her doctoral supervisor, Professor Jennifer Bowes, for continued support, and The Institute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University for financial assistance with transcripts. The author’s husband, Neil Maclean, contributed invaluable pragmatic and scholarly labour. The anonymous referees gave very helpful and constructive comments. The author is especially grateful to the mothers who generously shared their stories. The research project drawn on here has ethics approval, granted in 2009, from the Ethics Review Committee (Human Research), Macquarie University (HE27NOV2009-D00187) and from Autism Spectrum Australia.