Arcadia Public School

I sent my son to Arcadia thinking that it's lovely rural location and beautiful playground facilities would make it an ideal place to learn. I was very wrong. Firstly, the Principal Sharon O'Brien who has not trained as a teacher but instead a librarian is incompetent and clueless. She has no ability to listen to a parent without pushing her own opinions to the point of utter frustration. My son who has learning difficulties and medically diagnosed ADHD struggled with certain aspects of learning. My husband and I were pressured by Mrs O'Brien, his teacher and the school counsellor to medicate him. We gave medication a trial but there were some very worrying side effects and while his ability to focus did improve his health and wellbeing were being put at risk so we came off the medication. When we notified the school that he would not be medicated anymore we were pressured to reconsider and once we made it perfectly clear that we would not change our minds we were patronised and made to feel incompetent. During the time when we were trialling the medication there were a few occasions when we forgot to take the pills, on those days I was cornered by my son's teacher and told that she had a difficult day, on one occasion she asked me to go home and get the medicine. Make no mistake, Arcadia Public School is all about pushing drugs on families. It's fine if your child is normal, but if you have a child with any learning difficulty or attention issues you will be pressured to medicate. I would suggest looking at the slightly larger Galston Public School. Also, last year my son who was 7 at the time was being bullied by a mentally unstable child in his class. This child told my son about oral and anal sex. He also told my son to bring knives to school and to stab the teachers and students. Utterly shocked and frightened I brought these issues up with the school. My son was not sleeping because he was having terrible dreams and was confused about what sex was but was unable to tell anyone but myself. Instead of asking me to accompany my child while the school counsellor tried to get to the bottom of the issue they spoke to my son alone. He was unable to tell them what had happened due to anxiety, so the school brushed it off as not being a serious problem. My son had to have private counselling to get over his fears. The child who basically asked my son to perform a mass murder at the school is still a student of Arcadia Public School. These two issues are just the tip of the iceberg that show the utter incompetence of Principal Sharon O'Brien.