Choosing School

Jamie Renton: No to Mainstream


Jamie was born in 1962 in London. He attended a local special school until the age of eleven when he moved to a mainstream Jewish private boarding school in Oxfordshire. From age sixteen he attended a local college, continuing on to university.
https://howwasschool.allfie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/no-to-mainstream.mp3

Transcript

I went to the local playgroup as a child, the local mother and toddlers’ group as a child. And then was down to go to Joseph Clarke school for the partially sighted, but there wasn’t actually a place, so for the first year of my education, I went into mainstream education and seemed to be doing sort of, you know, totally okay, but the prevailing thinking at the time was, you know, the best education would be for me to go to Joseph Clarke. My parents kind of looked into it and wanted myself and my brother to go into mainstream education and the London Borough of Waltham Forest said absolutely not, it wouldn’t work, you couldn’t do it, shouldn’t try and do it, the best education is here.

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