An eastern Bay of Plenty school is still digging in its heels against the Education Ministry for refusing to enrol a 13-year-old girl who attacked a boy at her previous school with a Stanley knife.
The boy's wound needed 40 stitches.
The unidentified secondary school has refused to accept the girl, who
has been taught by correspondence since last year, despite ministry warnings that it must accept her.
Patrick Walsh, principal of Rotorua's John Paul College, and an independent education lawyer, said he had been giving legal advice to the school.
Mr Walsh said the girl had previously been excluded from her intermediate school. Students under 16 cannot be expelled.
A group set up by the education ministry to provide children with special needs had offered to provide some teacher aide and other programmes but Mr Walsh said that was not enough. The girl's father had also offered to be in class fulltime with his daughter, but Mr Walsh said that was not satisfactory.
"What teacher is going to put up with a parent sitting next to their child in each class every day?"
Murray Williams, the ministry's manager of student support for the region, said the ministry and the girl's family believed she should return to the school system.
The knifing incident occurred while the girl was having problems in her home life, Mr Williams said.
Her home life had now stabilised and she had been completing her correspondence studies very well.
- NZPA
