A mum has lashed out at teachers who made her autistic son wear a comic Christmas tie at school.

Year 9 pupil Lenny Walton goes to the Royal Harbour Academy in Ramsgate.

On Tuesday, the 13-year-old arrived at school without his tie - contrary to the school’s uniform policy, and was given the comic tie to wear instead.

His mum, Natasha Parry, said: “It was the first time he forgot his tie in two years at the school.

“I was taking my mum to hospital that morning and couldn’t go back for it.

“I told him to apologise to the teachers and explain. Instead two teachers from student services gave him a Christmas tie to wear - laughing as they did so.

“They said if he didn’t wear it, he would get a detention.”

Ms Parry continued: “When he got home from school that day I could see straight away something was wrong.

“At first I couldn’t get it out of him, but then he blurted it out.

“Because of the tie he had felt humiliated and he had been bullied all day. He was so upset. He said he never wanted to go back.”

So far Lenny has not returned to class.

Ms Parry said she had tried phoning the school every day since, to explain the effect the incident had had on her son, but she did not get a reply until 4.10pm today (Friday).

By that time, Ms Parry had posted about the incident on Facebook, asking: “Am I overreacting? Or is this genuinely not OK?

“I just want to know if this is appropriate behaviour on the school’s part or if I’m being unreasonable to expect more understanding.”

Her post quickly garnered more than 300 responses, all condemning the school’s behaviour.

Typical comments were: “Adults bullying an already vulnerable child is not ok!”

“Causing a child to be the laughing stock of the school is bullying!”

“They publicly humiliated him. Autism or not, no child should have to go through this…”

“No, I’d be absolutely livid. Surely this is worse than no tie at all!”

“Shame on the school!”

Another said: “They publicly humiliated him. Autism or not, no child should have to go through this.”

“That’s setting him up to be picked on!”

“Regardless of any conditions etc this is sickening. To humiliate anyone let alone a child is cruel.”

Ms Parry said: “When I got the phone call, it wasn’t an apology.

“It was to ask me to take the Facebook post down.

“They said they had a good relationship with Lenny but felt the post might spoil that. I don’t know if that was some kind of veiled threat.”

Ms Parry described her son as already a nervous child with a lot of social anxiety. The incident had just made matters worse.

She is hoping to get Lenny back to school on Monday.

The Royal Harbour Academy has been approached for a comment.