Privately educated boy slowly going blind is refused help

A seven-year-old boy whose vision is deteriorating has been refused the specialist help he desperately needs because he goes to a private school, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Little Rowan Antolovi, who has a rare genetic eye disorder, is struggling to manage in the classroom because of his failing eyesight.

But when his concerned NHS hospital consultant referred him for urgent assistance to help him cope, he was turned away when the local council found out he went to a private day school.

Now Rowan’s furious mother Virginia Osborne has accused them of discriminating against a little boy who needs help because ‘of a decision we made as parents about where to educate him’.

And the 45-year-old, who lives and works on her parents’ farm outside Dundee, which is also under threat from Labour’s policies, has warned that ‘a culture of prejudice against children who are educated in private schools is seeping into society’.

She says she is sick and tired of the government villainising hard working parents for choosing to spend their money on private education with ‘totemic policies’ such as their tax raid on school fees.

She told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There will be much more affluent families who choose to go to state schools and then they will access these services while being encouraged to think ‘of course the rich parents should pay!’.

‘We are not rich. We are an ordinary working family as are most at his school. We have saved money for the government by sending our child to a private school.

Little Rowan Antolovi (pictured), who has a rare genetic eye disorder, is struggling to manage in the classroom because of his failing eyesight

Rowan is pictured feeding a cow in Dundee with his parents, Lorenzo and Virginia, and his one-year-old sister

‘As a result of our choice we are now precluded from accessing council provision for children even though we have also paid all of our taxes which pay for those services.’

It is the latest in a string of discrimination cases exclusively revealed by The Mail on Sunday including Edinburgh City Council’s denial of free tuition to sick children in hospital if they went to private schools which sparked a furious row.

Virginia, who also has a one-year-old daughter, explained how the family suffered ‘blow after blow’ when Rowan was diagnosed with the disorder which causes bilateral cataracts just after his fifth birthday, only months after his father Lorenzo had been diagnosed late with the same condition.

He had already been forced to give up his job as a joiner and work on the family farm, meaning the family’s income had halved, explained Virginia, when she ‘noticed clouding in Rowan’s eyes’.

‘He was diagnosed with the same condition which was a shock as my husband has already had multiple operations.

‘We thought Rowan could be operated on but if we operate now, it could do more harm than good because child cataracts are different to adult ones,’ she said.

While there is a ‘learning window’ for a child’s brain to learn to see clearly, operating too soon could mean an increased scarring risk which could mean multiple operations to improve that and the risk of triggering complications like glaucoma, she explained.

Advised by the NHS to wait, she said Rowan was instead being regularly monitored but when the school said his eyesight was ‘adversely affecting’ him in the classroom, his consultant at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee found further deterioration.

When an NHS hospital consultant referred Rowan for urgent assistance to help him cope, he was turned away when the local council found out he went to a private day school

‘He told us we would get specialist help from a Teacher Qualified in Visual Impairment (TQVI) who would come to his classroom to advise staff on how to help Rowan.’

She said she ‘got a phone call from the TQVI a few weeks later who asked us what local school he was at’.

‘We told her and there was an “oh I don’t know about. I don’t know if I can cover that”. She said she would come back to me but we never heard back.’

When the NHS eye clinic chased up the referral, she was told the council would not pay for the service because it was ‘policy not to attend a fee-paying school’.

Virginia told her son’s school, the High School of Dundee, but they said the council ‘must have made a mistake because they had never heard anything like it’.

But after contacting her local MSP Graham Dey (SNP), he reiterated that local education services would not cover him because of where he was at school.

Now she says she will continue to fight on and is ‘not willing to back down’.

She fumed: ‘My son has a visual impairment that will adversely impact him throughout his life. If he was deaf, he would get a hearing aid – it’s exactly the same. This is 100 per cent discrimination.’

A Dundee City Council spokesperson said: ‘It would not be appropriate to comment on any individual cases.

‘If a parent wants to discuss an issue, they can contact the city council’s Children and Families Service directly.’