PARENTS of autistic children have called for more teacher training to counteract bullying, abuse and exclusion in schools.

Recent figures suggest that 40 per cent of children with autism have been bullied at school and one-in-five get excluded due the lack of appropriate special needs support, experts claim.

Pre-school manager Kay Whiddon of The Drive in Ilford, said her 14-year-old son Jake, now at Beal High School in Woodford Bridge Road, suffered psychological abuse at the hands of a primary school teacher.

The-mother-of-two said: “He is mentally scarred for life. This one teacher used to call him evil and wicked, steal his special autism toys and hide them in the bin and make him sit in a small room by himself.

“The other kids in his class would look after him and complain to their parents about how cruelly he was treated.

“It took me a long time to find out and I’ve never had an apology from the school despite being told by the headteacher that everybody knew what was happening.

“Even now he refuses to let me drive anywhere near the school because of all his bad memories.”

Eoin Mason, from Barkingside, was lucky enough to receive help at Canon Palmer Catholic High School in Aldborough Road, Ilford but still found it hard to adapt.

He said: “I had trouble being able to understand other people and to get other people to understand me.

“After GCSE some of the changes are at a drop of a hat and you are told to be grown up right away which I found difficult as an autistic person.

“I was very lucky in the support I had. There was one guy that used to pick on me just because I was different and would use autism as an offensive word.

“One time I got into a fight with him and was lucky not to be suspended. If it wasn’t for the special help I received I don’t think I would have even made it to sixth form college let alone university.”

Thanks to the help he received, Eoin is currently thriving in his second year studying journalism at the University of Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey.

The figures on bullying and exclusion were revealed by the Government after a Parliamentary question from Ilford North MP Lee Scott.

He is a patron of the South Woodford-based UK Autism Foundation which is calling for bullying on the grounds of disability to be taken more seriously.

Chairman Ivan Corea said: “Children with autism need one-to-one support in classrooms in a mainstream primary/secondary school setting for example.”