One Monday morning, nine-year-old Elliott Dyson, who has Asperger’s syndrome, went to school as usual but was prevented from joining his classmates and ended up spending the entire day sitting on a chair reading in the reception of Newark Junior School.

His English mother, Julia, believes her son – who was then moved to a government school – was pushed out of the independent school following a critical appraisal form she had filed.

The school’s management insists its decision – to ask Elliott to leave unless he had a learning support assistant – was based on his best interest because the boy needed individual support the school could not provide.

The school said Ms Dyson had been told not to send Elliott that Monday so “alternative arrangements had to be made”.

However, Ms Dyson insists her son did not need an LSA at Newark, pointing out that the school always knew he had Asperger’s syndrome, a disorder from the autism spectrum characterised by difficulties in social interaction. The problems, she insisted, only started after she gave some critical feedback about her son’s teacher.

Ms Dyson and her son moved to Malta a year ago and Elliott started attending a Żabbar government school before moving to Newark in Gżira. Sometime after the Easter holidays, parents were given an anonymous external review form to fill. Ms Dyson wrote in it she believed teachers needed more monitoring and negative reinforcement should be replaced with positive reinforcement, following remarks by her son that teachers were “shouting a lot”. On the positive side, she said she liked the small classroom sizes.

The same day she filed the form, on May 3, she said she received an e-mail from the school saying they could not accept Elliott without a detailed psychologist’s report on his condition in order to provide an appropriate method of teaching.

Following a series of e-mail exchanges – in which Ms Dyson insisted Elliott was happy at Newark and she wanted to solve the disagreement – the school sent her an e-mail on May 11 (a Wednesday) telling her that without the report Elliott would not be allowed in class the following Monday. Ms Dyson said she submitted the report to the school the following day when she received it from the psychologist.

The report, seen by The Times, does not say the boy needs an LSA and states that “Elliott has the potential to do well academically but requires support at school”. It recommends, among other things, movement breaks, extra time during exams and that teachers working with the boy know about Asperger’s syndrome.

On May 13, the headmistress sent Ms Dyson a scanned letter, signed by a lawyer, asking her to find another school for Elliott. It referred to a number of complaints made by Ms Dyson adding that they were “unfounded” and said that, in view of the report’s conclusions, “our client feels that your son’s particular needs could not be met within the environment of the school and alternative arrangements should be made”.

Ms Dyson replied saying she did not wish to unsettle Elliott and would send him to school on Monday, when he was not allowed into the class.

Ms Dyson said what infuriated her most was the way the school went about pushing him out of the school and making him spend a day on a chair. “You can’t isolate a child to get revenge on the mother for making a complaint... If I would have known that my child was being taken away from all the other kids and made to sit there... I’d have been there like a shot.

“I spent all his life boosting his confidence... For him to be treated like this, it just undoes the work I’ve been doing for the past nine years,” she said.

Asked why the boy was made to sit in the reception for the entire day, the school said: “Ms Dyson was directed to seek alternative schooling arrangements for Elliott on May 13. However, she still chose to send him to school the following Monday. Urgent, alternative arrangements had to be made for Elliott to be individually supervised on such day.”

Shocked by the school’s attitude, Ms Dyson eventually moved Elliott to a government school in Sliema and applied for an LSA who would help him with the language barrier. (He had been sent to a private school where the working language is English precisely to avoid the need for this sort of help.)

Questions sent to Newark’s headmistress, Lorraine Camilleri, were replied by her lawyer, Peter Fenech, who said that Ms Dyson’s version was “a complete misrepresentation of actual facts and grossly prejudicial”.

He said Elliott’s condition was initially presented as mild Asperger’s syndrome but it later transpired that his condition was more severe. The school also said that the Education Department told the school that children with Asperger’s needed an LSA.

The school highlighted the recommendations in the psychologist report that Elliott required an individualised educational programme that included specific needs such as frequent movement breaks, quiet spaces within the school for specific periods and an uncluttered classroom.

“The school cannot meet these specific requirements without disrupting the entire classroom and this confirms the school’s initial opinion that Elliott should be assigned an LSA...

“In these circumstances, the school felt that it could no longer allow Elliott to continue receiving educational instruction in an environment that is not conducive to his needs,” Dr Fenech said.

The Education Ministry will not be investigating the case as, unlike state schools, private schools have no obligation to keep a child. While the boy did not appear before what is known as a Statementing board, to determine whether he needed an LSA, the school had the right not to accept him if this was in his best interest, the ministry said.

“The Department of Education cannot intervene in the administration of private schools unless they are going against the conditions laid down in their licence. In the present case, there is no breach of the licence conditions,” a spokesman man said.