PARENTS have launched a protest campaign after it was revealed their local education authority is considering sending 48 deaf children to mainstream schools.

Middlesbrough Borough Council is proposing that the children be moved from Beverley School, Saltersgill Avenue, Middlesbrough, so the special school can be used for autistic children.

The authority says the number of deaf children is falling, while cases of autism are increasing.

Now, the parents have called a meeting during the school holidays to form an action committee and to prepare a legal challenge to the council's proposal.

Parents Kay and Bob Thorpe, who are among the campaigners, said their son, Robert, was almost driven to suicide by school bullies in a mainstream school.

"At the age of nine he came home and said he wanted to die," said Mrs Thorpe.

She said Robert, who has hearing problems and a speech disorder, had been bullied and ridiculed almost beyond endurance at the mainstream school he was attending.

Now aged 15, he goes to Beverley School - a recognised centre of excellence.

Each of the hearing-impaired youngsters had to be assessed, or "statemented", for a place at Beverley under Regulation 328 of the 1996 Education Act and Special Needs Regulations, 1994.

Mrs Thorpe said: "We have to press this issue and the legality of the proposal.

"When your children are statemented it is to say they need special needs education and will only get the best education. What they are now trying to do is to put these children into mainstream education.

"What they fail to realise is a lot of these children were failed by mainstream schools. We will take this issue up with the Department of Education, to the Government and the House of Lords - as far as we can and need to."

She added: "There is nothing worse than kids for being cruel."

Mr Thorpe said: "These children are going to be stigmatised straight away.''

A spokesperson for Middlesbrough council said: "There are a number of options being discussed to ensure we get the very best provision for deaf children and pupils with hearing impairments."

Formal consultation starts in September.