As many as 450,000 children could be removed from school special needs registers because they have been wrongly labelled as requiring extra help, the Government will announce today.
Campaigners fear the cuts could leave thousands of children "cut adrift". One in five school children in England is on the register.
The rules are designed to toughen up the diagnosis of behavioural and learning problems, amid concerns that schools are abusing the system to disguise poor teaching and climb league tables.
FATHER AND DAUGHTER: A photo provided by the Ramischand family, shows prominent local attorney Odai Ramischand with his daughter Nikita in better times.
Frustrated over the failure of the Guyana police to find the main suspect and accomplice in the brutal murder of his 18-year-old daughter, prominent attorney Odai Ramischand yesterday vowed to travel to Guyana to find his daughter’s killers all by himself.
Yesterday marked eighteen days since Ramischand’s daughter Nikita, a second-year ACCA student, was killed at her St Joseph home. Her throat was slashed by the killers, who also stabbed her six times in the abdomen. The killer and his accomplice were captured on CCTV cameras leaving the Piarco International Airport on the morning of April 26, almost five hours after Nikita was found murdered. Since then, police in Guyana have been combing several parts of the country in the hope of finding the killer and his accomplice but are yet to make any headway.
In an interview with Newsday on Friday, the suspect’s mother, who lives in an area known as Soesdyke, admitted that her son visited her one day after Nikita’s murder, but said she had not seen him since. On Friday she made a stirring plea for him to surrender to the police.
However, yesterday, Ramischand, who has not been able to work since his daughter was killed, said he will not rest until justice is served.
“I am prepared to do what is necessary to bring to justice those two filthy, inhumane scums of the earth who killed my daughter, and take them in a pickup van to the police, because unless something is done I will not be able to resume my life. Life has no meaning to me again and while I do not want to take the law into my own hands, if it reaches to that I surely will, even if I have to give up law for the ultimate. I am prepared to pay the price for the honour of my daughter, give up my law practice, even serve time in jail, because I am a lone ranger seeking justice to avenge my daughter’s death.”
He added that he will be winding down operations at his Port-of-Spain office and travelling to Guyana shortly, where his “network of persons” have already put things in place for the search of the two criminals. He added that he is prepared to walk through miles of forest, cross as many rivers as possible, and expose himself to the elements to find the persons who took away his daughter.
An emotional Ramischand accused the government of Guyana of being hopeless and hapless, and said he will be joining the opposition in Guyana to ensure that the current government never gets into power again, because he feels that they have not done enough to find the killers.
He reiterated, “I am going to find both killers myself, I have no confidence in the Guyana police.”
Ramischand said his advice to the two killers is to surrender now, because if they are innocent they should not be in hiding. He added, however, that if they do not surrender, they should be prepared to face the consequences. He said, “I would go to the end of the world to find those killers, and believe you me I will get them, and if I do not get them somebody else will have to pay the price.”
Ramischand said his last information is that the two men were heading in the Berbice area, and his network in Guyana has promised him that the men will be captured dead or alive.
Ramischand, who is Guyanese- born, said he knows Guyana very well and is not afraid to make day into night to find the killers. He said the spot at the back of his wife’s beauty salon where his daughter was murdered is now being lit with electronic lights round the clock, and this will be lit forever. He added that images of his daughter taking her last breath of life still haunt him, and he is not the same person he used to be.
“I am hurting, really hurting, because my family and I never hurt anyone and those criminals violated the sanctity of my premises by taking away the love of my life, and they will pay dearly for that, “Ramischand vowed. Checks with the Guyana police yesterday revealed that every attempt was being made to find the two suspects, but police believe they are being assisted by persons.
Sunday Newsday also understands that the mother and other relatives of the main suspect have fled their home and are now in hiding because of threats issued to them by members of a vigilante group. In an interview with Newsday on Friday, the main suspect’s mother said she was afraid to stay at home because of threats issued to her family.
A grandfather who caught and killed a 'giant rat', has said he has been getting death threats from animal rights activists.
Brian Watson, from County Durham, says people have called him a murderer since he spoke on television about clubbing the large rodent with a piece of wood.
In an interview with Sky Tyne and Wear in April, he showed a photograph of the dead animal, which was so big some observers have said it was a coypu, also known as a river rat.
Mr Watson said: "Since my last interview we've had quite a few phone calls and letters off cranks saying I'm a murderer, that it should be me that's clubbed to death because they're saying it's a coypu.
"I know the difference between a rat and a coypu, because I've lived in the country most of my life and it's vermin, and vermin should be destroyed.
"Rats carry diseases, that's why they get killed, so you crankers out there, don't waste my time and don't waste your own time," he added.
Mr Watson said at the time that the rat was so big it may have been pregnant.
He had left it on the side of a river for several days, but decided to destroy the rodent in a fire as word of its size spread.
