Sir.-We wish to pick up on the statements made by Caroline Statham in a recent letter to The Gazette.

We do not agree with her inference that all primary schools in the area are of a uniformly high standard. In our experience of schools in our catchment area, this is not the case, particularly when related to children with special needs.

Our five-year-old son, who has an autistic spectrum disorder, attended our local school for 16 months. During this time we were never informed that he was placed on the special needs register at the nursery stage, nor were we told when he was removed from the register in October 2003.

Once in his infant class, no individual education plans were produced for him, and mid-term and annual reports gave conflicting information as to his progress.

In addition to this, despite him having poor social communication, he was left on two occasions all day without being attended to after soiling himself. He did manage to tell us that his classmates moved away from him because of the smell, but his teacher failed to notice. The third time it happened, the school rang us to ask that we collect him.

Shortly after this incident, although his class teacher knew he had poor motor skills, he was unable, on a particular day, to open his water bottle - a task which previously had been aided by the teacher - so went without a drink.

The communication from the school was appalling, virtually non-existent, despite the fact that we attended every parents evening, and mid-term targets meeting.

We ask how on earth can this happen in a mainstream school in the present day?

We therefore do not feel you can generalise on the standards locally, although we realise our case is exceptional and there are both bad and very good schools.

We have subsequently moved our son to another school.

-Name and address supplied.