Hi there,
Well we have been here for 8 months. For the first two months it was the Summer holidays and our Son with Aspergers has only managed 1.5 terms in mainstream School here. The understanding of the condition Aspergers syndrome is not really understood here .... they are just tipping the iceberg here and we are going home in January 2008. Our reason is we may as well look around here, our Daughter will stay in her School until 20th December and then we are off to South Island with our kiwi friends here and Australia on the way home!
Our Son did only have 6 hours 1:1 support in a mainstream Junior School in the UK but out here, to get a teachers aide, a child has to have behavioural problems or learning difficulties of which our Son has neither of these. We have been told that our Son will not get any support at all and we have watched our Son (he is now 11) go from being happy (although he missed his friends in UK cause I made sure he had a good social network of friends etc.) to a child who has developed OCD, his dyspraxia has been so out of control he walks crooked (and you won't know what I mean unless you know about this condition anyway) .... basically, I rang our local council last week and we were told had we stayed in UK, our lad was to have one of eight places (that's all that is available in every year) in an Aspergers unit in our old locality .... they tried to contact us in February and we were out here .... how awful is that for timing .... so we are going back, have been promised a home tutor by the council as our Son is not considered mainstream material.
To anybody who has an autistic spectrum child, I would say quite simply "don't do it". When we came out here last September for a holiday, a School here said "oh yes, you get support for whatever is needed" but for example, when I suggested could our Son have a quiet place to go to if the going got too tough in the playground, I was told he had to interact .... bullying, they just don't deal with it in our particular School .... we are going home! Was also told by the UK council last week that another family from the area had tried to do New Zealand with an Aspie kid in tow and they didn't last as long as we have. Good luck with whatever you do.