When year nine pupils at the Petersfield School got this new classmate, they must have wondered what he’d been eating.
Prince Summerfield claimed he was 14 but he has been kicked out over suspicions that he is a decade older, the Daily Mail reported.
Teachers have even labeled the 5ft 8in a ‘child protection risk’ to other pupils.
Head Nigel Poole said: ‘When asked for his date of birth, he said Sept. 24, 1986, before
correcting himself to 1996. I would not be surprised if he was born in 1986 ― he looks closer to 24 than 14. I believe I have been misled.’
Prince, who was born in Malawi, enrolled at the school in Petersfield, Hampshire, for this year’s spring term in an extra large school uniform.
Just 48 hours later he was sent home with a letter to his mother Ennettie explaining that the school feared her son could be a danger to the other pupils.
Staff said they wanted to ensure that Prince really is a teenager to ‘comply with our robust child protection policies.’
Poole said Prince’s parents had been ‘far too quick’ to produce documentary proof of his age as if they expected a challenge.
But the pupil’s mother and stepfather are adamant that Prince is 14.
He has a Malawian birth certificate which shows his birthday as Sept. 24, 1996 but it was only registered on Sept. 8, 2009.
His mother, 30, said: ‘If the school’s claims were true, I would have been five when I had him. I can’t believe he was treated this way.’
His stepfather David, 49, added: ‘We are considering legal action. The letter was unacceptable.’
The school, which is famous for performing arts, assured Prince’s parents that he can return as soon as they can prove his age.
In 1994, there had been a similar affair like this in Scotland where Brandon Lee, 34, had enrolled at Bearsden Academy and fooled teachers who did not remember he had been a pupil there in the 1970s.
Source:Korea Times
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