Natalie Pinnell’s daughter, Erin, is eleven years old, and although she is theoretically enrolled in her local school in Aberdeenshire, in reality she hasn’t attended since October 2024.
“Two years prior to that, she was violently assaulted and experienced several quite distressing and traumatic incidents within the school environment,” says Natalie. “We had several meetings over those two years with professionals detailing the decline that we were seeing in our daughter. I was asking for the authority to consider alternative provision for her. They refused to do that.”
The local council, she says, have insisted throughout – and continue to argue even now – that Erin is “happy and settled in school.”
The authority’s refusal to consider alternatives pushed Erin’s family to seek a suitable alternative themselves.
“We went to look at a few different options and New Struan was one of them. I went to see it initially, not wanting to take Erin until I knew that it was potentially an environment that might be suitable for her. I went there and could see the children thriving and felt like that was an option, even though it was so far away. No parent should have to travel two and a half hours to find the closest appropriate provision for their child, but that was the kind of situation that we were forced into.”
Despite the distance, they decided to take Erin to see the school for herself, and she told them that she wanted to stay. For the family, it felt like they could see a glimmer of light, and they put in a request to transfer their daughter to New Struan. The council refused to sanction the move, forcing them to continue their fight through the Tribunal system.
They were around halfway through that arduous process, and had received confirmation that New Struan was willing to accept Erin, when suddenly everything changed: Scottish Autism, which runs the school, has now confirmed that it will in fact be closing in June 2026. In a statement, management said that the decision had been driven by a consistent fall – perhaps more accurately described as a collapse – in referrals from local authorities, who are increasingly reluctant to fund the blend of education and care that Natalie believes her daughter needs.
The result, she says, is that children like hers are being left with “no options”. She feels that these young people, some of the most vulnerable in the county, are being dismissed as “collateral damage”.
To make matters worse, Natalie insists that Erin’s needs are only so extensive because of the ways in which she has so far been failed.
“Erin's needs should never have been so severe that she needed New Struan. Unfortunately because she was forced into the mainstream environment with significant needs, and with support being removed rather than provided, her level of need now is now probably 10 times higher than it was when she started school.
“New Struan has highly specialised staff, higher staff rations, and a smaller school roll. The environment is really holistic. It is adapted and suited for those children.
“I had hoped that my child might be able to attend New Struan and heal from her experiences within mainstream and be able to come back to our home and our community to then potentially reintegrate.”
Instead, the family are now faced with the prospect of having to move away from their home in Aberdeenshire in search of provision that can meet Erin’s needs, keep her safe, and give her the best possible chance of “a sense of self-worth and a sense of belonging to a community,” neither of which she has now. Natalie explains that her daughter is not only traumatised by her experiences, but also blames herself for them; she says that she wants to be able to talk about her Erin “thriving”, but that in reality her focus is just on her surviving.
“It is devastating when my daughter expresses how she feels about herself, and how isolated she is. People are paid to get it right for every child, and to care, and they are failing her. It’s all seen as transactional, and she is just an expense – an expendable expense. That’s the worst part.”
For Natalie and her family, the loss of New Struan, and what it means for their daughter, is a personal and immediate problem, but she is keen to also place it in a wider context. She points out that children across Scotland are already being failed – a position supported by a wide range of groups and individuals including the Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland – and wants to send a message directly Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth and First Minister John Swinney:
“Your education system is at crisis point, and thousands of children are being failed.
“Without appropriate funding, training, and resourcing of mainstream schooling, the current model of ‘inclusion’ is deeply flawed with the most vulnerable who are paying the price.
“It isn’t just Erin who is experiencing this. There are countless children and families across Scotland who are being forced to fight for what should be their most basic human rights.
“Through my advocacy, and in my work with Empowered, we hear similar stories almost daily of young people pushed into unsuitable placements, denied the support they need, and ultimately being set up to fail.
“The closure of one of the very few specialist schools that was ‘getting it right’, a place where children had to fight to even secure a place, should set alarm bells ringing. Instead, it feels like another door has been closed on those who need support the most.
“This is not just about a few families. It is about the future of education in Scotland. Right now, that future looks bleak.
“So my question to you is this: what are you going to do to fix this mess?”
Share