Autistic preschool student wanders off but gets rescued by MRT staff; teacher is unable to remember how it happened


In a Facebook post today, a mother named Justina Ong told netizens about her experience with her child enrolled at My First Skool on Serangoon North Avenue.


According to Justina, her child’s preschool had lost track of their student, and that they were completely unaware of the child’s whereabouts for a certain period of time.


What made matters worse was that Justina's child is autistic, and could have thus explained why the student wandered off.


Here’s her post:



According to Justina’s account, her child is enrolled in My First Skool on Serangoon North Avenue.


From her post, she mentioned that at 10:48 in the morning, she received a call from the school that her son was missing. A few minutes later, she received a call from Yishun MRT station staff that they have her son with them.


She quickly went to fetch him from the station before returning to confront both the teacher and the principal of the school.


The teacher said that she took the students out to water plants in the school garden at around 10 in the morning. Only upon returning from the chore at 10:30am did she notice that the child was missing.


But that statement was hotly contested by Justina. She insisted that it was impossible for her child to go missing from 10:30am and turn up at Yishun train station at 10:53am when the child had no money or EZ-link card on him!


This prompted Justina to query the teacher again about what actually happened.


At this point the teacher admitted that they could have possibly remembered the timeline of events wrong.


Thereafter, Justina got madder because the school could not provide a coherent timeline to explain the occurrence of events that led to her son disappearing from school.


Justina consequently warned other parents about the dangers that could still happen to children while they’re in school.


What does the Singapore online community have to say?


Here are some comments made on Justina’s post.


Some cited their experiences with the said school:


Other netizens gave advice to parents on how to keep their autistic child safe. Consider helping them memorize numbers and to make them wear tags with all important personal information printed on them.



Others empathized by narrating similar incidents which happened to their children:



Other Singaporeans were somewhat critical of Justina for finding fault with the teacher:



Some of the other commenters pointed out that the teacher may have made a mistake but lying about the incident is unacceptable:



A few other netizens reckoned that the teacher must be fired:



While others defended the teacher:



What do you think about this incident? Should the teacher be fired?


This post first appeared at Alvinology on 23 October 2017. It is reproduced with permission.


YOU MAY WISH TO READ:


5 year old son felt like dying after being humiliated by teacher


Poor kid in the PCF alleged molest case


Teacher using criminal force on boy with ADHD