After a 30-year career spent working in education, Susan James might have expected to spend her retirement cheque on a grand holiday or some other carefree whim.

Instead, she has chosen to buy her autistic grandson a future, setting up her own school to cater for him. Joshua, 7, was unable to cope at the local school, and James’s daughter Catherine was buckling under the strain of fighting to get his needs met.

“I used to take Joshua to his mainstream school,” says James. “He would literally howl all the way down the very long drive. I used to feel like a monster.”

The Jameses took Joshua out of the school on the advice of his teachers, but hit a brick wall with their local education authority, who wanted to place him in a school for 90 children with a huge range of learning difficulties — contrary to the modern expertise on autism, which recommends specialist care in small units.

Now, Joshua is flourishing in a small school for autistic youngsters, the Step by Step school in Sharpthorne, East Sussex. The school is modelled on the TreeHouse school for autistic children in London, one of whose founders was Nick Hornby, the author. Funded by charity and run by parents, Step by Step caters for five youngsters but could take 12.

“It is costing us £15,000 a year,” says James, a former inner London education authority inspector, “but it’s worth it to see Joshua making progress. He is a different child.”

The school recently passed its first inspection from the Office for Standards in Education with a glowing report. Despite this, the education authority is hostile to the school and has refused to pay for Joshua’s education there. “The battle is horrendous,” says James. “I am constantly amazed at the efforts of parents. My friend has remortgaged her house to send her child part-time to Step by Step.”

James is one of many parents, teachers and education professionals who contacted The Sunday Times last week in response to an article on the crisis in schooling for the disabled, following Baroness Warnock’s admission that the principle on which she crafted her landmark 1978 report on special needs — inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream schools — has been taken too far.

Readers took up the call for a fundamental shake-up of the special needs educational system, with a “manifesto for change” centring on a revitalised network of specialist schools. In mainstream schools there would be minimum quotas for children with disabilities; teachers trained to a national standard; and an end to the postcode lottery of special needs provision.

Many of the letters to The Sunday Times told moving stories.

One family wrote that they have for two years fought in court for their 12-year-old daughter, who is blind and dyslexic, to be educated at a special school, “or at least to have Braille introduced into her curriculum. Our education authority will stop at nothing to save themselves the expense of sending a child to a special school,” they said.

Others told of successful special schools being closed, or their provision downgraded. Alan Millard, a retired head teacher from Hampshire, backed The Sunday Times’s call for a legally required qualification for special needs teachers.

“When I was appointed headmaster at a school with a special unit attached in 1981, no one at interview asked if I had any specialist qualifications . . . On taking up the appointment I discovered that none of the staff managing the unit had any special qualifications either.”

Last week, the government rejected Conservative calls for a moratorium on closing special schools. Beverley Hughes, the children’s minister, said a moratorium would create “complete gridlock”. She also apparently contradicted an election pledge: to undertake a national audit to get information on provision of special schools in each area. David Cameron, the shadow education secretary and father to a child with special needs, said the audit was limited. “The audit should cover all special schools and listen to parents,” he said.

It is an issue the Conservatives are pressing. At a debate on special needs scheduled in the House of Commons on Wednesday they are expected to announce the setting up of a special commission charged with examining special needs provision in Britain and making recommendations for change.

Meanwhile those left to pick up the pieces of a system in crisis are frustrated at government inaction.

“Your manifesto should be taken up as a priority by this government,” says Susan James. “Receiving a diagnosis of a learning disability is a terrible blow to families, the realisation that you face years of fighting to obtain the education that will help your child is devastating. Many parents cannot face the struggle and many children are denied the chance to improve their quality of life.”